Post by BassEcho on Jul 9, 2008 13:03:21 GMT -5
Duran Duran: tribute act to old selves
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/07/2008
Michael Deacon reviews Duran Duran at the O2 Arena, London
Duran Duran's singer Simon Le Bon may be 49, but he still has a way with women, although that's not the word he uses - he prefers "ladies". Or, to transcribe it more accurately, "laydeez". "I'd like to dedicate this one to all the laydeez in the house!" he yells, before oozing into a glutinous love song called Skin Divers.
"Hey, laydeez!" he bellows later, "would you like to meet a man with a big shiny horn?" Only if you mean he's got a saxophone. "He's got a saxophone!"
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Le Bon's band have been wowing women for 27 years. To judge by the audience at their gig at the O2 in London, the same ones have been with them all the way. ("Tell me!" shouts Le Bon. "Who's your daddy?" Almost everyone here looks pretty close to the same age as Le Bon, so it's probably not him.)
Strictly speaking, the gig is part of Duran Duran's Red Carpet Massacre Tour, named after their recent album. But the crowd hasn't come here to listen to new songs (given that the dreary Red Carpet Massacre didn't even make the Top 40, they probably don't know them).
Instead, they've come to revel in the hits of the Eighties. Clearly and commendably, the band understand - they have the decency to get almost all the new songs out of the way at the start.
Then it's time for the real gig to begin, with a dashing Hungry Like the Wolf, a booming Planet Earth and a magnificently silly View to a Kill.
One of the things that established Duran Duran as the most entertaining pop band of the Eighties was their fearless capacity to make pillocks of themselves, and it's a quality they haven't lost.
After an interval halfway through, they play a run of synth-based songs, having all changed into ill-advisedly tight black leather boiler suits. It's meant as an homage to the German electro pioneers Kraftwerk, but really it just looks like a kinky middle-aged version of a Kwikfit advert.
They're soon back on track, though, with the elephantine ballad Ordinary World and finally a euphoric Rio.
Duran Duran may not have written a decent song for 15 years, but they're still worth seeing live, even if what they've become is a kind of portly tribute act to their old selves.
Roll up, laydeez and gentlemen, roll up.
www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/07/09/bmduran109.xml
