Hungry Like The Wolf

British readers and Anglophile friends of a certain age are certain to have teen memories of the UK's most commercially successful 'New Romantic' band of the 80s - Duran Duran. Still together after all of these years, one-time ruffled-shirt-strutting, post-punk, experimental art-school grad, Simon Le Bon and his band mates John Taylor and Nick Rhodes are here in the Bay Area tonight for their "Red Carpet Massacre" album launch tour, taking place as the sun goes down at Concord's Sleep Train Pavilion.

Trouble is, these slightly 'older' once-romantic troubadours are clearly finding it a bit of a challenge to find enough fans in the San Francisco Bay Area to fill a stadium. Maybe it's the economy, or maybe we all grew up and let go of those posters on the bedroom wall of our formative years! Whatever the reason, Duran Duran tix are being offered by Live Nation at two for one prices today, as a last-ditch attempt to place middle aged bums (as in bottoms) on stadium seats.

Sounds a bit brutal, but I am a believer in a time and place for everything. For many of we fortunate Brit-Rock recipients of the 1980s, Duran Duran's unforgettable hits "Girls on Film", "Hungry Like The Wolf" and "Save a Prayer" are forever glued to the memory books of Saturday  nights at the local disco tucked away in a crumbling function hall behind the rough pub that Mum and Dad would never be seen dead in.

Ah, yes, it was all so 'new romantic'. I remember scrimping and saving to buy a pair of gray suede tucker boots, which had that strange, slouchy look which weirdly resurfaced in fashion just a couple of seasons ago. The first time I wore them to swoosh around the dance floor to the dulcet tones of Simon Le Bon (plus drainpipe jeans and a frilly shirt), my partner in teen night-life crime, Sian, and brother Stu walked ten miles home from the disco in a nearby market town that rainy Friday night. Come Saturday morning those beloved new boots oddly looked as good as new. I'm going to take a guess and say that we were fifteen or sixteen, almost entirely waterproof and emphatically romantic at the time. (note to self: don't share this post with adventurous own offspring).

From what I hear on the international grapevine, Le Bon and Rhodes and Taylor have stuck it out through thick and thin and made many a transformative leap in overall musical direction, including songwriting here in California and working with America's Mr. In Demand, producer Justin Timberlake. And though they continue to strike a chord back in the UK for charity concerts and all, Duran Duran just doesn't do it for a Bay Area concert-going crowd, who are way to busy stretching their hard earned dollars for a chance to see  Britain's latest and greatest indie-rockers, such as Glen Hansard's Oscar winning Irish Rock Band The Frames .

Good luck in the Sleepsville Pavilion tonight boys, for I have a hunch that you'll be met with a small, but no doubt enthusiastic crowd of ex-pat forty something housewives who never quite moved on to the sounds of the 90s after ditching disco life for a fresh start in the States. Wonder if they still have their waterproof tucker boots? I do have a few pirate shirts for loan.

Comments

[Kerry]

Note this must have been the time before you got caught hitch-hiking home on passing lorries. Couldn't see why you got in trouble when horrified friend of mother spotted you disembarking an articulated truck, seems such a sensible way of getting around. Hmm, note to self: item number 8734 never to tell offspring.

[Frances]

Count yourself lucky that I was driving by the time you were old enough to let me dye your hair navy blue and bring you along on my scenic night time adventures around rural Lincolnshire!

[Kerry]

Cambridgeshire, pleeeease. It makes a world of difference.

[Frances]

And then came Wisbech, one of the great highlights of my formative years, majestically straddling Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire AND Norfolk as metropolis of the East.............

[Kerry]

Ah, Wisbech, aka "Murder capital of the Fens," such a pleasant little market town. Who could forget one of your first scoops, convincing that poor transvestite father to tell his story to the local paper.

[Lesley]

Now now children...

[Frances]

I actually won a feature writing award for that story. I will never forget the sight of that man's nylon's hanging on a washing line over the kitchen sink in a dark little studio apartment in one of those tall, brick, riverfront Georgian buildings Wisbech is also famous for.

[Frances]

And how truly tragic it was that his family refused to reconcile. He'd moved 10 miles away from their village, which in that part of the world is a respectable distance.