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Concert Review
Yeah, so I managed to prattle on for several paragraphs and manage to say sweet little about the actual concert. So, shoving my prose back into the back of my brain, here's some basic details about the show.
I ordered my tickets only a couple days before the show, but got row 7 seats for me, Lizz and our daughter Jillie. She's 8, but already likes a lot of Duran Duran's music. Plus, I was pretty sure it'd be a "reasonably safe for child consumption" concert, and I want her to experience rock shows. And I'd like to experience them with her. Going to shows is really about the shared experience, I think.
We got there early enough to get a good parking space and pick up the tickets from Will Call - - I have to say, "Will Call" is one of my favorite bits about concerts. It's the next best thing to saying "the band left tickets for me."
The opening act was a young group calling themselves "Natalie Portman's Shaved Head" - and I discovered that when a band names itself after a pop culture moment you instantly recognize, the band itself loses a bit of their mystique. But they were fun, and had the most god-awfully dedicated fans dancing in the aisle for their entire set. You know it's going to be sad when, as the young man SCREAMS out requests for their songs, everyone in the audience not only hears him, but giggles nervously on behalf of the band. But I'll be honest - if I were in the band, and we had only ONE fan there, I'd totally want it to be that guy.
After a 15 minute break between sets, Duran Duran showed up to thunderous applause. These guys still have an enthusiastic fanbase. I don't really include myself in that category - at least, not for the past 15 years. I still pick up their albums, but I don't really follow their news or anything. I think I've been to their website a couple times, but just to basically see if anything new's been released without noticing it. But clearly I am still enough of a fan to have been able to pick out any song they performed within the first measure or two. But on the last 3 or 4 cds, I'm not quite that knowledgeable. But come on, they've put out more than a dozen albums, not counting compilations or remix eps, etc. That's not a bad run; and they're working on their next CD at the moment, too. So it's not remotely the end for these chaps. Roger, John, Nick and Simon, seeming no worse for the absence of Andy - and frankly, I don't think anyone really minded. I've had to work with obnoxious people before, and even though it's possible to work with people you don't like, it's definitively and exponentially more enjoyable when you don't have to. And it was clear throughout the show that, even with the unavoidable random problem, these guys genuinely enjoyed working together.
We had good seats - not something I would've bragged about when I was 15, but then everything was general admission back then. And even when dozens of women rushed the stage, I had nothing blocking my view except the arms of the lady right in front of me. We took turns lifting Jillie up so she could get a clearer view of the whole stage, but even in between those times, she could at least see the stage between the people in front of her. We had to leave Lizz's camera in the car - they said it looked like a professional camera, but later saw a lot of much bigger and more professional cameras there anyway. Lame.
I got a lot of photos with my BB camera and pulled a few songs off with my Kodak video camera. I'll upload the best ones to YouTube later. The sound got pretty distorted just due to how close we were. I can't quite tell if you can hear me singing along. I know I was, though.
The set list was pretty enjoyable. They opened with the Arena CD original "Wild Boys", and from there danced around from recent titles like "Red Carpet Massacre" to "Rio" and "The Reflex." With their ample discography, they have a lot to choose from and were careful to pick the ones the fans really wanted to hear. They even performed the Arcadia project's most well known single "Election Day", which was a particularly fun moment for me. I'll admit it, with all the politics of the past year, I'd added that to my iPod's playlist, so it's a current guilty pleasure of mine. "Ordinary World" was something of a disappointment for me, though. Either Simon's voice or the playback monitors were having issues, because it just never clicked for the entire song. It was a disappointment for me specifically because it's my favorite of their songs, and it was, I think, the worst of their set. And that's including when Simon came in about a full measure late after the break in Hungry Like The Wolf.
One of the more amusing highlights for me was when the band came back for their encore. Their current guitarist (sorry, dude, I still don't know your name) started soloing out a bit of a James Bond tribute on "Goldfinger", and he and Nick played a little duet for a bit across a couple other Bond themes. We all knew what was coming, but were still pleasantly cheered on when Simon came back out sporting a white tux to sing a slower ballad version of "A View To a Kill" - after a couple verses of it, they burst out into a fully charged version of the song.
In fact, they did a lot of mixing of their songs, stringing 2 or 3 into a long montage. That's a nice way to tie them together - they ended the night with a mix up of Planet Earth and Girls on Film, with "Super Freak" tossed into the middle of it.
At the end, as the crowd screamed their names, it was good to see the full band come down to the edge of the stage and shake hands, smiling and sheen with the sweat of a good show. Even Nick was grinning like a little geeky schoolboy, which made me feel a little less silly for doing the same.
Good show, guys. Thanks for keeping the party going.
I ordered my tickets only a couple days before the show, but got row 7 seats for me, Lizz and our daughter Jillie. She's 8, but already likes a lot of Duran Duran's music. Plus, I was pretty sure it'd be a "reasonably safe for child consumption" concert, and I want her to experience rock shows. And I'd like to experience them with her. Going to shows is really about the shared experience, I think.
We got there early enough to get a good parking space and pick up the tickets from Will Call - - I have to say, "Will Call" is one of my favorite bits about concerts. It's the next best thing to saying "the band left tickets for me."
The opening act was a young group calling themselves "Natalie Portman's Shaved Head" - and I discovered that when a band names itself after a pop culture moment you instantly recognize, the band itself loses a bit of their mystique. But they were fun, and had the most god-awfully dedicated fans dancing in the aisle for their entire set. You know it's going to be sad when, as the young man SCREAMS out requests for their songs, everyone in the audience not only hears him, but giggles nervously on behalf of the band. But I'll be honest - if I were in the band, and we had only ONE fan there, I'd totally want it to be that guy.
After a 15 minute break between sets, Duran Duran showed up to thunderous applause. These guys still have an enthusiastic fanbase. I don't really include myself in that category - at least, not for the past 15 years. I still pick up their albums, but I don't really follow their news or anything. I think I've been to their website a couple times, but just to basically see if anything new's been released without noticing it. But clearly I am still enough of a fan to have been able to pick out any song they performed within the first measure or two. But on the last 3 or 4 cds, I'm not quite that knowledgeable. But come on, they've put out more than a dozen albums, not counting compilations or remix eps, etc. That's not a bad run; and they're working on their next CD at the moment, too. So it's not remotely the end for these chaps. Roger, John, Nick and Simon, seeming no worse for the absence of Andy - and frankly, I don't think anyone really minded. I've had to work with obnoxious people before, and even though it's possible to work with people you don't like, it's definitively and exponentially more enjoyable when you don't have to. And it was clear throughout the show that, even with the unavoidable random problem, these guys genuinely enjoyed working together.
We had good seats - not something I would've bragged about when I was 15, but then everything was general admission back then. And even when dozens of women rushed the stage, I had nothing blocking my view except the arms of the lady right in front of me. We took turns lifting Jillie up so she could get a clearer view of the whole stage, but even in between those times, she could at least see the stage between the people in front of her. We had to leave Lizz's camera in the car - they said it looked like a professional camera, but later saw a lot of much bigger and more professional cameras there anyway. Lame.
I got a lot of photos with my BB camera and pulled a few songs off with my Kodak video camera. I'll upload the best ones to YouTube later. The sound got pretty distorted just due to how close we were. I can't quite tell if you can hear me singing along. I know I was, though.
The set list was pretty enjoyable. They opened with the Arena CD original "Wild Boys", and from there danced around from recent titles like "Red Carpet Massacre" to "Rio" and "The Reflex." With their ample discography, they have a lot to choose from and were careful to pick the ones the fans really wanted to hear. They even performed the Arcadia project's most well known single "Election Day", which was a particularly fun moment for me. I'll admit it, with all the politics of the past year, I'd added that to my iPod's playlist, so it's a current guilty pleasure of mine. "Ordinary World" was something of a disappointment for me, though. Either Simon's voice or the playback monitors were having issues, because it just never clicked for the entire song. It was a disappointment for me specifically because it's my favorite of their songs, and it was, I think, the worst of their set. And that's including when Simon came in about a full measure late after the break in Hungry Like The Wolf.
One of the more amusing highlights for me was when the band came back for their encore. Their current guitarist (sorry, dude, I still don't know your name) started soloing out a bit of a James Bond tribute on "Goldfinger", and he and Nick played a little duet for a bit across a couple other Bond themes. We all knew what was coming, but were still pleasantly cheered on when Simon came back out sporting a white tux to sing a slower ballad version of "A View To a Kill" - after a couple verses of it, they burst out into a fully charged version of the song.
In fact, they did a lot of mixing of their songs, stringing 2 or 3 into a long montage. That's a nice way to tie them together - they ended the night with a mix up of Planet Earth and Girls on Film, with "Super Freak" tossed into the middle of it.
At the end, as the crowd screamed their names, it was good to see the full band come down to the edge of the stage and shake hands, smiling and sheen with the sweat of a good show. Even Nick was grinning like a little geeky schoolboy, which made me feel a little less silly for doing the same.
Good show, guys. Thanks for keeping the party going.
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