Tonight at Amsterdam’s Heineken Music Hall I saw one of the great bands of my time, Duran Duran! Now I’ve been a Duranie since these guys first hit the scene with Planet Earth (which is actually playing in the background on my piss poor excuse for an entertainment center as I write this) back in 1981 when I was but a really young teeny bopper. 24 years later, to see them live, completes one of my lifes great desires.
Like a fine wine, these guys have gotten better with age. Over the 2 hours they played they took us on a journey of classic 80′s glam Duran all the way through to their new look, new millenium latest releases. Standing there dancing to the techno-electro-dance-rock-pop-new wave-synth numbers, I was transported back to being 18 again and then taken all the way forward through my young life to now. Ahhh… it was like a ride in some magical time machine with 2000 of your closest old friends.
You can see that the band really had fun too, as there was this aura of joy around them as they played. I read just recently on John Taylor’s website that after finally knocking his coke addiction on the head, he realised that he was passionate about the band and the music, and tonight it really showed!
Really, these guys represent the last of the great 80′s and 90′s rock synth fusion bands to still be recording and touring! At their peak they were icons of style and everything new wave. Unlike a lot of “pop” bands back then, they weren’t trying to keep a foot in the 70′s. Fuck no, they were going where noone had gone before! They wanted to bring a new sound to a new generation. Their influence in music would imprint itself into the dance music that was to follow them, particularly in UK house styles that was so popular in early underground rave parties.
When they finally hang up the instruments and stop releasing records (pray that it is not so for a long time), a musical era will come to an end. I don’t think the world will see their like again for they are unique as is their sound and their look.
Padwanna.
The Duran Duran and the completeness of life by Mentalechoes, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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