Post by Taylorholic78 on Jul 27, 2005 5:17:57 GMT -5
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/columnists.nsf/suburbanfringe/story/BC5AD4092F552D6A86257049006A2008?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2C%22Duran%22+AND+%22Duran%22
A Duran Duran fan comes out of the closet
By Bob Rybarczyk
STLtoday.com columnist
07/26/2005
I’m not a person who goes to a lot of concerts. I love music, but I have a hard time seeing the value in paying $50 or more for a two-hour show. There just aren’t many acts that I’d pay that kind of money to see. The Beatles would be one, but they’re half-dead, so it seems unlikely that they’d tour soon, which is a bit of a bummer.
Duran Duran, in my mind, was not one of those bands. Yeah, I liked their music when I was growing up in the ‘80s, but that was a long time ago. And those guys weren’t exactly a bunch of bikers. I usually try not to publicly admit that I owned and knew all the lyrics to “Seven and the Ragged Tiger.” I might as well walk around with a T-shirt reading “Please Point And Laugh At Me.”
While I do still enjoy listening to some of those 20-year-old hits from time to time, I hardly would put Duran Duran at the top of the list of bands I’d pay to see live. They weren’t as low on the list as, say, Weird Al Yankovic, but they were low.
Colette (my fiancée, whom I’ll call Colette since that’s her name), on the other hand, had kept Duran Duran near the top of her list for years. She had seen them in the early ‘90s, when the song “Ordinary World” was still new, and she has been dying to see them ever since. She about fell out of her chair recently when she heard on the radio that they were playing at the Fox the following Friday.
She was all atwitter when she called me with this “news.” Colette and her sister had already decided they were getting tickets. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of buying $55 tickets, but we’d never been to a concert together, and Colette was really excited about it, so I agreed to go.
As much as I enjoyed the band’s music during my formative years, when I was but a geekling, I wasn’t all that excited about seeing Duran Duran. I figured it would be fun for the retro-ness of it, but that was about all.
Maybe the mirrors at her house weren’t working
When we arrived at the Fox on the night of the show, I realized that Colette wasn’t the only thirtysomething Duran Duran fan in St. Louis. The place was absolutely packed.
But something wasn’t quite right about the crowd. For whatever reason, it seemed to mostly be packed with women who had decided to show up in the same outfits they wore when “Rio” was still in the Billboard top ten. Which would have been fine if the women hadn’t apparently spent most of the past two decades refining their appreciation of cheeseburgers.
We were aghast. I hadn’t seen that much exposed flab since the last time I went to Six Flags.
I didn’t get it. If any of those women were hoping to attract Simon LeBon’s attention, those outfits weren’t going to get the job done. Unless maybe they figured that, if he happened to look at them, he’d be so horrified that he’d be unable to tear his eyes away. I saw stuff hanging out of tube tops, short shorts, stretch pants, you name it. If it went out of style 20 years and 40 pounds ago, it was on display.
What was even weirder is that all of these people seemed to know each other. Every five minutes, we’d see two horribly dressed women spot each other, then run together and hug while squealing like hamsters in a blender. It wouldn’t have seemed odd had we seen this happen once, but we literally saw it happen five or six times. It was like we were crashing a high-school reunion.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that I wasn’t the only straight male in attendance, either. While the audience was mostly female, I did spot more than a few guys. I felt like snickering at them for being at a Duran Duran concert. I didn’t actually snicker, though. It would have been too confusing.
My name is Rio, and I’m dancing on the sand
Before I knew it, the lights in the theater dimmed, and everyone, us included, stood. People began cheering wildly. Then five shadowy figures walked onto the stage and stood front and center in the darkness. Even after all these years, I recognized them. I saw Simon and Nick and John and Andy and even Roger. And I didn’t even feel like a total loser for knowing all of their names.
I found myself star-struck.
“That’s Duran [expletive]ing Duran,” I said to Colette. “That’s actually them.”
They slowly moved from their positions in front of the stage, picked up their instruments, and all at once started belting out “Planet Earth.” I don’t even like that song all that much, but it didn’t matter. Like everyone else in the audience, I started rocking out. And for the next two hours, I just kept on rocking. Well, if you can call listening to Duran Duran “rocking.”
I don’t think I fully realized just how many great songs those guys wrote in the ‘80s until I heard them all back to back to back like that. And the newer stuff they played was, for the most part, just as good. Every song was great. Well, every song except “Union of the Snake.” As good as they were that night, they weren’t able to make that tune any good. U2 wouldn’t even be able to make that song listenable.
By the end of the night, I was belting out the chorus of “Rio” at the top of my lungs. If I stood on a street corner and did that, I’d be laughed at, beaten up and arrested before I could get to the part about the river twisting through a dusty land. But that night, no one even noticed. I was just one of about 5,000 people, all of whom were acting as idiotic as I was.
The show was so good that it rekindled my Duran Duran fanhood. I was so inspired that from now on, I don’t think I’ll consider them a guilty pleasure. I’ll think of them as a great band from my youth that came back during my adulthood and picked up right where they left off.
And maybe I’ll start rolling through the streets of St. Louis with my windows down, blaring “Notorious” at full volume and singing like a mental patient.
Then again, maybe I’ll just keep my windows up. Being laughed at really gets old after a while, ya know?
Bob Rybarczyk (brybarczyk@stltoday.com) writes stuff. He enjoys the fact that loud concerts allow him to break wind with impunity.
A Duran Duran fan comes out of the closet
By Bob Rybarczyk
STLtoday.com columnist
07/26/2005
I’m not a person who goes to a lot of concerts. I love music, but I have a hard time seeing the value in paying $50 or more for a two-hour show. There just aren’t many acts that I’d pay that kind of money to see. The Beatles would be one, but they’re half-dead, so it seems unlikely that they’d tour soon, which is a bit of a bummer.
Duran Duran, in my mind, was not one of those bands. Yeah, I liked their music when I was growing up in the ‘80s, but that was a long time ago. And those guys weren’t exactly a bunch of bikers. I usually try not to publicly admit that I owned and knew all the lyrics to “Seven and the Ragged Tiger.” I might as well walk around with a T-shirt reading “Please Point And Laugh At Me.”
While I do still enjoy listening to some of those 20-year-old hits from time to time, I hardly would put Duran Duran at the top of the list of bands I’d pay to see live. They weren’t as low on the list as, say, Weird Al Yankovic, but they were low.
Colette (my fiancée, whom I’ll call Colette since that’s her name), on the other hand, had kept Duran Duran near the top of her list for years. She had seen them in the early ‘90s, when the song “Ordinary World” was still new, and she has been dying to see them ever since. She about fell out of her chair recently when she heard on the radio that they were playing at the Fox the following Friday.
She was all atwitter when she called me with this “news.” Colette and her sister had already decided they were getting tickets. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of buying $55 tickets, but we’d never been to a concert together, and Colette was really excited about it, so I agreed to go.
As much as I enjoyed the band’s music during my formative years, when I was but a geekling, I wasn’t all that excited about seeing Duran Duran. I figured it would be fun for the retro-ness of it, but that was about all.
Maybe the mirrors at her house weren’t working
When we arrived at the Fox on the night of the show, I realized that Colette wasn’t the only thirtysomething Duran Duran fan in St. Louis. The place was absolutely packed.
But something wasn’t quite right about the crowd. For whatever reason, it seemed to mostly be packed with women who had decided to show up in the same outfits they wore when “Rio” was still in the Billboard top ten. Which would have been fine if the women hadn’t apparently spent most of the past two decades refining their appreciation of cheeseburgers.
We were aghast. I hadn’t seen that much exposed flab since the last time I went to Six Flags.
I didn’t get it. If any of those women were hoping to attract Simon LeBon’s attention, those outfits weren’t going to get the job done. Unless maybe they figured that, if he happened to look at them, he’d be so horrified that he’d be unable to tear his eyes away. I saw stuff hanging out of tube tops, short shorts, stretch pants, you name it. If it went out of style 20 years and 40 pounds ago, it was on display.
What was even weirder is that all of these people seemed to know each other. Every five minutes, we’d see two horribly dressed women spot each other, then run together and hug while squealing like hamsters in a blender. It wouldn’t have seemed odd had we seen this happen once, but we literally saw it happen five or six times. It was like we were crashing a high-school reunion.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that I wasn’t the only straight male in attendance, either. While the audience was mostly female, I did spot more than a few guys. I felt like snickering at them for being at a Duran Duran concert. I didn’t actually snicker, though. It would have been too confusing.
My name is Rio, and I’m dancing on the sand
Before I knew it, the lights in the theater dimmed, and everyone, us included, stood. People began cheering wildly. Then five shadowy figures walked onto the stage and stood front and center in the darkness. Even after all these years, I recognized them. I saw Simon and Nick and John and Andy and even Roger. And I didn’t even feel like a total loser for knowing all of their names.
I found myself star-struck.
“That’s Duran [expletive]ing Duran,” I said to Colette. “That’s actually them.”
They slowly moved from their positions in front of the stage, picked up their instruments, and all at once started belting out “Planet Earth.” I don’t even like that song all that much, but it didn’t matter. Like everyone else in the audience, I started rocking out. And for the next two hours, I just kept on rocking. Well, if you can call listening to Duran Duran “rocking.”
I don’t think I fully realized just how many great songs those guys wrote in the ‘80s until I heard them all back to back to back like that. And the newer stuff they played was, for the most part, just as good. Every song was great. Well, every song except “Union of the Snake.” As good as they were that night, they weren’t able to make that tune any good. U2 wouldn’t even be able to make that song listenable.
By the end of the night, I was belting out the chorus of “Rio” at the top of my lungs. If I stood on a street corner and did that, I’d be laughed at, beaten up and arrested before I could get to the part about the river twisting through a dusty land. But that night, no one even noticed. I was just one of about 5,000 people, all of whom were acting as idiotic as I was.
The show was so good that it rekindled my Duran Duran fanhood. I was so inspired that from now on, I don’t think I’ll consider them a guilty pleasure. I’ll think of them as a great band from my youth that came back during my adulthood and picked up right where they left off.
And maybe I’ll start rolling through the streets of St. Louis with my windows down, blaring “Notorious” at full volume and singing like a mental patient.
Then again, maybe I’ll just keep my windows up. Being laughed at really gets old after a while, ya know?
Bob Rybarczyk (brybarczyk@stltoday.com) writes stuff. He enjoys the fact that loud concerts allow him to break wind with impunity.
