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.

Which is why I am not surprised at the quality of the musicianship on Arena, although there’s not a snowball’s chance in Satan’s front yard that there weren’t some fixes in the studio (I always thought the two bonus tracks tacked on to the 2004 remaster sounded a lot rougher than the tracks on the original album, which I take to mean they didn’t get the same amount of “fixing” the ones that made the cut did). And – other than the hit James Bond theme “A View to a Kill” – Arena was our last glimpse of Duran Duran at the top. But Le Bon Bon almost always had you thinking it all meant something because he put such emotion into his singing. 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. And then to top it off you are usually taught that whatever group you happened to born into in this country (be it Republican, Democrat, evangelical, Amish, Trekkie, or what have you) is better than any other group found in the most incredible nation that history has ever seen, well, it is no surprise that most Americans inherently have a pretty bad case of better-than-most-everyone-else-itis, and I am probably no exception.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.

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. He almost has me caring that “the union of the snake is on the climb” with the amount of passion he puts into singing about it. 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. Sure, some of it was sequencers rather than live musicianship, but all the same they were masters of musical atmosphere in their idiom. Do I really care that wild boys never lose it, never chose this way, never close your eyes but always shine?I mean really, the guy puts an incredible amount of emotion into the most incredibly meaningless lyrics you could ever hope to hear. Once I knew she’d slipped in, I used my legitimate ticket to get in and we joined some really nice people on the lawn who kind enough to let a couple of latecomers crowd in. The intro to “The Seventh Stranger” is like going over a musical waterfall and dropping into an enchanted, sumptuously extravagant synthesizer lagoon.