Guilty pleasures are for chumps. Why should you feel guilt because something gives you pleasure? Why would you cringe in embarrassment when one of your shithead buddies is thumbing through your collection and finds that Rita Coolidge or House of Pain album amongst the rare Corrupted and Paysage d' Hiver vinyls? I like Duran Duran, well the first three albums anyways. I like their uber-slick cocaine-on-a-yacht pop music, I like how they embody everything cum-soaked and greedy about the '80s. I like their hair, I like their white shirts. If you are my age and male you hated Duran Duran when this album came out. You hated them because every teenage girl in America wanted to be fingerbanged by Simon LeBon and John Taylor, and not you. The very existence of Duran Duran was a giant fingerblock. But listen now, plunge into the hymen tight rhythm section of the Taylor tots. Get the cosmetic keys (to my creations and times) of a haircut named Nick Rhodes all over your face. Snort a huge line of cheap, glassy guitars. Swallow up the loveless, semen-smooth vocals of a douchey dandy named Simon. Ahhhh, now you get it. This album is more evil than Beherit, darker than Bonnie Prince Billy, more lonely and crestfallen than a hundred funeral doom albums. It's the sound of the air conditioned plastic emptiness of the nineteen-eighties. It's blood flecks on an Armani handkerchief, it's the arrival of AIDS, it's the constant fear of Mutually Assured Destruction, it's anonymous sex, it's Patrick Bateman, it's cold legs in a cold city, it's whore's sweat, it's death. It's a whispered lie from the urethra of oblivion. And now I have spooked myself.
34 comments:
goddamnit thats funny. And I will join this party.
And thanks again for a great read. Fantastic review.
The Associates & Japan cacked all over them.
"This album is more evil than Beherit". More produced also maybe.
This is the greatest description of any record I have ever read in my life.
Also: Anyone who can't get down with Duran Duran is a fucking idiot.
This is your best writing in a while. I'll take the Russolo. He won't leave me dog paddling in an ocean of semen with a sore ass.
This album and 'Rio' fucken rule. But I'm old enough to actually remember the 80's but young enough to appreciate the pop from the era and not get uptight about it.
Good call.
God damn, sir. I always knee that Duran Duran were the epitome of complete soulless evil. But never has anyone put it so perfectly. They really are the anti-BEHERIT: no magick, no familiar darkness, no gnawing Satanic touch. Just one big pristine emptiness.
This definitely captures the Patrick Bateman 1980s in all its disassociated and objectified horror.
There is a completely inhuman void to this music. One where no warmth exists, only non-stop PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN is inflicted. However, they actually wrote melodies and songs and stuff. Current pop music doesn't even do that. They only repeat a chorus-like phrase over and over again for four to five minutes [example- the ultimate unholy and annoying band, the fucking Black Eyed Peas. Please kill me now. I don't care how you do it. Just kill me rather than make me ever hear even a minute of that again.]
Being a make of your age 'sop, I too hated duran duran with a passion. They play a ton of it at work though and I'll be damned if it somehow doesn't make the day go by a quite bit smoother. Lovely write up as well.
If Duran Duran were on the edge of being sentenced to death for 80s pop crimes and you were the defense lawyer.....you just saved these lads from the chair. DD always ruled my on my side of the tracks. "Hungry like a wolf" is total lycanthropy worship...Far more evil than Black Metal for sure.
Holy shit, you've outdone yourself!
Re the above message: are you THE Daniel Menche? I was listening to 'Vent' the other day. Everything I have heard by you is amazing. Come back to LA sometime!
Oh, and Aesop, that is the most hilarious write-up yet. I am 43 years old and I remember the 80's obviously. For better of worse....
has anyone heard about Duran Duran Duran ?
I loled.
That is the Daniel Menche.
You hit the nail right on the head. Thanks for this amazing review.
-Danny B.
I was an on-the-fence hater of Duran Duran as a child of the late 70s/80s (thought they were 'gay', but loved View to a Kill). Recently, I watched the Classic Albums: Making of Rio documentary on Netflix and quickly became a fan, mostly because of John Taylor's amazing bass lines....he's like a pop Jah Wobble. Great post!
Had to be resuscitated a couple times but I lived through the decade you disparage so fondly. Thanks for the memories...
best review ever!!!!!!!!!!
goddamn, love that writeup.
There's a good story about one of the members from Joy Division pissing on Duran Duran from a balconey in Belgium.
best writeup was the Nasty Savage one, that cannot be beaten.
I would like to hear Patrick Bateman review this album too!
I like the first three Duran Duran albums too. It's really interesting how openly soulless that 'new romantics' thing was. Vacant yet deadly serious. I even like the Killing Joke records Jaz made to fit into that particular niche.
you are the poet laureate of music blogs. bravo.
hell, i think i just caved into giving this album a solid listen. HA!
Your writ sells the album, as much as I despised Duran Duran back then I'll give them they knew what they did and the American Psychoesque aesthetic I now associate with them, thanks to your writing, will probably somehow appeal to me. Will be interesting to see how I'll actually react, all I recall is "Girls on Film" and "A View to a Kill" besides generic annoyance.
"the cosmetic keys (to my creations and times)"
well-played.
Why aren't you writing for some rock journal yet? You, sir, are clearly the next Lester Bangs.
@Aesop I feel the saem way about INXS's's' first 1980 album. It is by far their most amazing, Kick is okay, but every song on the self-titled is a 5-star
pffeewww, what a review !
greatest review ever
its a good album ,but japan rules!ciao nice blog..
Is that "Chauffeur" track on this? I always thought that jam was pretty good.
Post a Comment