Arena

Product Information

They brought a color and vibrancy to the Top 40 with their keyboard textures that had been presaged by David Bowie on Low and Heroes, one that pop radio wasn’t quite ready for in 1977 and 1978 but was well primed for by the 80s. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. It wasn’t the last time I snuck her into a concert actually – I took her to listen to Bob Dylan outside a different venue a couple of years later, and once security took down the barricades before the encore we slipped in to see His Bobness sing “All Along the Watchtower” (big mistake taking her to this one – a Bob Dylan concert is not something a pre-teen girl finds impressive, she kept begging to go home. By the way I think you’re spot on about Le Bon’s extraordinary ability to pour such intense feeling into a line or phrase. And I mean, yeah, everybody and their brother bought a copy of Frampton Comes Alive in 1976, but does it really belong on a list of the 50 greatest live albums ever?

For some reason I guess I thought Duran Duran concerts were mostly pre-recorded, not sure why I thought that, guess it was the obsession with sequencers in the early 80s that seemed to obviate the need for actual musicianship for many bands. Although I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one, any list of “The 50 Greatest Live Albums Ever” that is thoughtful enough to include Wings Over America and Pulse and The Song Remains the Same along with a couple of live Queen albums is all right by me, even if for some inexplicable reason it has not only Kiss Not-Very-Live but also Kiss Not-Very-Live II. to the frantic “Careless Memories”, this is an album chock full of strong melodies, strong enough to carry the frankly ridiculous lyrics they are saddled with. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Mystery and menace abound in the staccato keyboard riff of “The Chauffeur”, and for a few minutes I’m out there on the tar plains with the glides looking for a new place to drive and grooving on some sparkling pan flute.Popular though they may have been in their prime, but they were pretty formulaic in the early 80s, and hearing any random Duran Duran song was hardly different than hearing any other. Union of the Snake" • " New Moon on Monday" • " The Reflex" • " The Wild Boys" • " A View to a Kill" • " Notorious" • " Skin Trade" • " Meet El Presidente" • " I Don't Want Your Love" • " All She Wants Is" • " Do You Believe in Shame? About halfway through the show one of the concessions workers got off and saw me sitting there while my daughter was playing over by the pond by the entrance, and offered me the free ticket she had, which was very generous of her and which I gratefully accepted.

Do I really care that wild boys never lose it, never chose this way, never close your eyes but always shine? I have no idea what it means to “save a prayer ‘till the morning after”, but I don’t really care because the melody pulls me in regardless. But then when you have a countryful of people taught almost from the moment of conception that they are part of the specialest, most amazingest, most freedom-and-democracy lovingest God-blessed sun-kissed country from sea to shining sea there ever was or ever will be, well, frankly, that is going to do some really weird things to your national psyche. Two further live cuts from the 1984 world tour were released as B-sides to singles in 1984: " New Religion (Live in LA)" on the North American single for " The Reflex" and the live " Cracks in the Pavement (1984)" on " The Wild Boys". And as far as the American charts went, that was mostly that (although I will always maintain that “Electric Barbarella” from Medazzaland may just be their finest song ever, and for a fleeting moment recaptured that early 80s magic in a way no band has since).I bet even he couldn’t tell you what a single song on the album is about, none of them are about anything really, they are just a bunch of random lines the band thought sounded cool. This is a really decent album, and whilst it claims to be a 'live' album, it seems to have been produced to a level that makes it closer to a studio album, albeit with more atmosphere and depth. Rio may be an 80s touchstone, after all, but truth is, when I am I the mood for some Double Duran, I will reach for Arena every time.

By that time Duran Duran’s star was on the wane – side projects were going on by that time, three of the members had already released the greatest album Duran Duran never recorded with Arcadia’s So Red the Rose, a personal favorite of mine I plan on reviewing someday. So when I see a link for an article on “ The 50 Greatest Live Albums Ever”, do I really have time to read about 50 live albums that may or may not be deserving of the appellation of “greatest ever”? The Duranies were a pretty tight band live actually – I actually snuck my nine-year-old daughter into one of the shows on the Astronaut tour with the five original members back in 2004. You don’t lose anything with these versions, but you do gain quite a bit more energy and a new sense of life that has been breathed into these songs. Sure, their keyboard driven backdrops seem less futuristic now than they did in the early 80s, but I say they still have a unique sound all these years later, a kind of Brian Eno-ish approach more compatible with mass consumption than anything Eno himself ever did.I also just read this one, “ The Greatest Prog Guitarists: An Essential Top 25 Countdown” (and slots 1-10 really should have been Robert Fripp) . Simon Le Not Bono’s vocals were a lot less stilted and staid on this release compared to his vocals on the studio versions – his vocals have more life, they feel more natural and organic, I can actually hardly stand to hear the studio versions in comparison as far as the vocals go. Arena would be the only full-length live Duran Duran release until the 2003 Encore series of official bootleg recordings, taken from shows in Japan and the West Coast of the USA.