duran duran RIO

The journey from the title track to "Last Chance on the Stairway" is like experiencing The Waves.

This is the greatest album in pop history. Y'all can't believe how uncool it was to proclaim it in 1991.

Well, Big Thing and Liberty were consecutive terrible albums so 1991 was a low point. They got their cred back in 1993 with Ordinary World and Come Undone though!

Don't think coke had entered the picture yet btw

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 2 December 2020 17:54 (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this explains a few things

iirc rio was no. 1 on britney spears' ballot for vh1's 100 greatest albums of all time countdown, and that is absolutely the reason i bought it

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 2 December 2020 17:56 (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

so does this

If you put Too Late Marlene on side 2 of Big Thing, that may be my favorite single side of a Duran LP

Liberty I haven't heard apart from "Violence of Summer" and "Serious," the latter of which is good.

iirc rio was no. 1 on britney spears' ballot for vh1's 100 greatest albums of all time countdown, and that is absolutely the reason i bought it

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, December 2, 2020 10:56 AM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

on second thought this may have been diva by annie lennox but i believe both were on there. my memory is terrible but i watched that countdown like 1000 times

that said i can't listen to it and wonder how the hell Rhodes and Taylor worked out their synth and bass parts; it is extremely amazing & advanced pop composition.

So true

Spears must've heard her mom's cassette copy of Diva in the station wagon.

Liberty I haven't heard apart from "Violence of Summer" and "Serious," the latter of which is good.

I picked Liberty up for like $2 at a used CD store in the 90s and had never even heard of the album prior to seeing it there. "Serious" and "My Antarctica" are the two songs I remember liking

Pretty great excuse to learn to play bass here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtcLKAGN-II

Taylor might be my favorite bassist. He's done several of those videos.

Britney has excellent taste unsurprisingly. You could probably trace a direct line between LeBon's braying and Britney's cluck

Also those lyrics are amazing, if i was in a band and the singer came in with "catch the mirror way out west" i'd be like 'wtf??? this is genius'

It may be nonsense but it's really colorful, alluring nonsense

Well, the lyricist's last name is Le Bon.

Le Bon Mot

wow John Taylor has aged incredibly well! I hope I look that sharp when I'm 60.

Also is that a bottle of vodka on the floor behind him?

This talk of how great John Taylor is a good excuse to post the Amoeba What's In Your Bag clip from 2009 with him and Simon. I've watched this many times and could listen to John talk about his favourite records for days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMymK9st49M

So Annie Zaleski's 33 1/3 book on the album is out, already literally sold out almost everywhere and going into a second printing. It's a fantastic read, just got it today and burned through it. What an album and what a band.

Ah, thanks for the heads up! Was really looking forward to this, thought I had it pre ordered but can't find a confirmation so ordered it just now, hopefully the 27/5 availability date is correct :)

Hopefully! The book both makes the case for the album and its creation as well as exactly how in America it became the monster that it was -- an interlocking combination of factors that always centers the band's particular drive at making it just that.

The chapter on the album's snail-paced crawl up the charts fascinated me: a peek into changing programming strategies and MTV's rising prominence.

frankly the greatest album ever made

You're not wrong

It could be the atmosphere sinking

yeah the guitars are perfect too, but they're like the adornments on top of this monstrously great architecture

― imago

I so want Graham Coxon to be the guitarist in this band, he pushes even harder against the grain of a song than Andy Taylor and would therefore have been an ideal foil to John. Every time I hear the Chauffer I anticipate a wobbly Coxon anti-solo that never arrives, it is a far better canvas for him than Damon's mockney showtunes.

Interesting. I think Andy could have played more assertively, and either (a) decided not to or (b) was actively discouraged from doing so by producers and engineers. His side projects and solo work display more independence.

I think in DD he understood his role and played it willingly, but I have no way of knowing this. Well do I remember that at the time of Rio, guitar bands were out and glossy Roland and Yamaha synths were in. Had guitars been more prevalent in the mix, D2 would have sounded out of step.

Long digression: That said, it still surprises me in hindsight to see how many New Wave acts were still fundamentally based around a four-piece rock band. I look at videos of Flock of Seagulls, Go-Gos, Devo, Talking Heads, Human League, Bangles, New Order, the Cure, even Depeche Mode sometimes and it looks suspiciously like the 70s template of a "band" - there's an acoustic drum set in the back middle, flanked by amps; cool-looking people holding conventional instruments on either side, somewhere there's a keyboard or two. Even in records that sound almost wholly synthesized, many acts continued to present pretty standard instrumentation when on MTV.

There are exceptions: Eurythmics, Ultravox, Pet Shop Boys,Thompson Twins, Thomas Dolby. If you were trying to form or join a band at this time (as I was), these acts seemed pretty inscrutable because like, where are all the sounds coming from and how are they getting made simultaneously by this one dork with a DX7?

I read somewhere that LeBon attributed DD's success in the States ​to the recruitment of Andy Taylor and the introduction of a hard rock guitar element to their sound. Which both makes sense and seems contrary to the role their dance remixes played in breaking America.

I don't think Coxon fully asserted himself either until Blur's 5th album, at least in terms of his position in the mix. But his sound is leaner and more cutting than Andy Taylor's. The similarity I perceive is that both guitarists play a role of saboteur. They differ more in degree than in kind.

There's defo something a bit "wrong decade" about what i'm suggesting tho. Blur were derivative enough of DD that it's usually easy to envision what GC might have played. I imagine the spiky Hendrix chords from 'Stereotypes' all over 'Union of the Snake', for example. In my head at least, the schizoid artistry of it is a match.

I read somewhere that LeBon attributed DD's success in the States ​to the recruitment of Andy Taylor and the introduction of a hard rock guitar element to their sound. Which both makes sense and seems contrary to the role their dance remixes played in breaking America.

Yeah that's interesting - quite a few of the brit synth/new romantic bands went in either a rock or a soul direction towards the mid-'80s (some did both I guess, like The Human League going from doing 'The Lebanon' to working with Jam & Lewis) and both of these moves seem like obvious attempts at reaching out to a US audience. I didn't know that about Duran's remixes though.

I direct y'all to Annie Zaleski's marvelous 33 1/3 book.

I find Deflatormouse's thought experiment interesting but at the same time, I just can't imagine those bands being different. I know this isn't profound or anything but music history - like all history - has a contingent element. The things happened as they did, and everything contributed.

Philosophically speaking it's a bit sus to imagine that you can change any one variable and keep everything else the same. Like, a John Lennon who didn't abuse any women could exist (and I wish he did). A John Lennon who didn't get shot, ditto. But does everything else stay constant in that alternate universe? I can't imagine (ahem) that it would. The particular circumstances aligned themselves this way, and we have the culture that resulted from those circumstances.

Blur were derivative enough of DD that it's usually easy to envision what GC might have played.

And indeed, Alex James wrote somewhere that when he was tasked with constructing a bassline for 'Girls & Boys', his guiding principle was, "What would John Taylor play?"

My friend is doing a Rio 40th special on twitch tonight at 8:00 PM CST with chat by Annie Zaleski!

https://m.twitch.tv/VJBigSuit

The main DD set starts at 9:00 PM CST, but come early and stay after for choice early MTV-era videos.

What a fucking incredible album, still.