Tag Archives: Concert

➤ 22 territories tune in for tonight’s Duran Duran concert live on the web

Posted on 23 Mar 2011 | Leave a comment

David Lynch, Duran Duran, Unstaged, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes (DD videograb)

Rehearsals at the downtown Mayan theatre, LA: David Lynch, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes

❚ TONIGHT WEDNESDAY MARCH 23 audiences around the world can tune into Duran Duran’s live online concert in 1080p HD, enhanced by film-maker David Lynch in Los Angeles. It is being streamed live on Wednesday at 7pm Pacific Daylight Time / 10pm Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−04), which is Thursday 2am in the UK (02:00 UTC).

View at the band’s YouTube channel /DuranDuranVEVO where, if you miss the live broadcast, the YouTube blog says you can catch highlights on their channel immediately following the event. The full 90-minute show will also be repeated for UK audiences at 8pm Thursday, according to the sponsor Amex’s Facebook page.

This webcast launches the second season of Unstaged, a music series sponsored by American Express in partnership with Vevo. Guitarist John Taylor said: “It’s not going to look like any concert film has looked before.” He said that viewers will be able to switch between the high-definition main stream and alternate “Lynchian” artistic viewpoints. Lynch insists that he won’t be directing the band themselves, but creating abstract visuals in what he describes as an “experiment”, one where he hopes there will be “many happy accidents”.

Duran’s official website lists these 22 territories (based on YouTube licensing agreements) which can view Unstaged as a live stream tonight at 02:00 UTC:
Argentina,  Australia,  Brazil , Canada,  Czech Republic , France , Hong Kong , Ireland, Israel,  Italy , Japan,  Korea, Republic of  Mexico,  Netherlands,  New Zealand,  Poland,  Russian Federation,  South Africa , Spain , Taiwan Province of China,  United Kingdom , United States.

➢ Shapersofthe80s reports on Duran Duran in America — plus media verdicts on the new album All You Need Is Now
➢ How to unstage Duran Duran — A conversation with David Lynch at the Huffington Post

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Posted in Asia, Australasia, Europe, London, Media, North America, Pop music, TV

Tagged 2011, All You Need Is Now, Amex, Concert, David Lynch, Duran Duran, Russia, South Africa, South America, Taiwan, Unstaged, Vevo, webcast, YouTube

2011 ➤ Spandau and Duran square up for battle just like the old days

Posted on 14 Mar 2011 | Leave a comment

Spandau Ballet, 2009, press conference, HMS Belfast, pop music, free CD

Spandau Ballet in 2009: answering our questions at their reunion press conference

❚ EVEN AS A UNIQUE CD COMPILATION of Spandau Ballet’s landmark hits is set for massive free distribution with The Mail on Sunday next weekend, Duran Duran announce a global concert live online at YouTube only days later, along with their own album release on CD. It could be the 80s all over again when the two arch-rival bands vied for the title of leaders of Britain’s New Romantics movement. So which veteran band will score the bigger hit in 2011?

Duran Duran, 2011, All You Need Is Now, YouTube, live stream, pop music

Duran Duran earlier this year: US and European tours, plus a live concert stream. Picture courtesy duranduran.com

Spandau’s special-edition CD features 12 tracks — half, including True and Gold, are remastered from their originals, with six live tracks coming from their show at London’s Sadler’s Wells in 1983, including the club anthem Chant No 1. The cover-mounted disc will be delivered free across Britain with every copy of the MoS, presumably because its marketing director expects Spandau to boost the paper’s circulation well past its average of 1,924,589 copies. Last Sunday Gary Kemp recalled the 80s for MoS readers: “It was madly competitive as we were all tribal. Duran Duran wanted to be more successful than us, we wanted to be more successful than ABC, or Culture Club, or Duran themselves. We spurred each other on.”

Meanwhile today, Duran Duran announce that David Lynch — fabled director of the movies Eraserhead and The Elephant Man — has been enlisted to direct a live DD concert to be streamed online on March 23/24 to launch the second season of Unstaged, a music series sponsored by American Express and Vevo. Amex has pushed this internet venture to team breakthrough artists with influential filmmakers using interactive social media as the outlet (full details at Billboard).

During a Facebook Live chat from SXSW John Taylor admitted that how Lynch intended to video the show was still a mystery but “we know it’s not going to look like any concert film has looked before”. Audiences around the world will be able to switch between the director’s high-definition main stream and alternate “Lynchian” artistic viewpoints when they tune into YouTube on Wednesday in the US at 10pm EDT / 7pm PDT — which is Thursday at 02:00 UTC. The concert will also be rebroadcast for the UK on YouTube at 7pm on March 24. (Check here for regions where Unstaged will be viewable live. The Los Angeles concert will then remain online for a month.)

Can Duran attract a bigger audience than Spandau’s 2million Mail readers? With their US tour starting this week, DD’s comeback album is released in the US as a physical disc next Tuesday. The video of its title track All You Need Is Now has scored 629,689 views since it was posted on YouTube on Dec 20, so it’s anybody’s guess how many fans will tune in for the live webcast. What’s yours?

WHAT THE RIVAL BANDS SAY

Talking up the imminent free CD, Spandau Ballet told last week’s Mail on Sunday what the tracks meant to them…

Spandau Ballet, Reformation tour, John Keeble, Dublin

John Keeble: Dublin sound-check as Spandau’s Reformation tour kicks off 2009

Martin Kemp “We gave Instinction to producer Trevor Horn who really turned it on its head. It became a monster.”

Steve Norman on Lifeline “We knew we couldn’t stay an underground band for ever – the mainstream pop charts beckoned and we knew we had to deliver. Cue smiles and kisses to camera!”

John Keeble “Only When You Leave was the lead single from the Parade album as the band established a more rock-based edge. It opened doors to a new group of fans and gave me the chance to rock a bit harder on the drum kit.”

Tony Hadley “Sadler’s Wells was one of the best venues for us. It was an intimate gig and perfect to showcase tracks from our album True, such as Foundation – a slice of white soul-boy funky pop – Communication – a great upbeat number – and Pleasure, which really captures the essence of the era.”

Duran Duran ,All You Need Is Now,Nick Rhodes, video

Nick Rhodes: last November's video for the comeback single, All You Need Is Now. Courtesy duranduran.com

Over in the States, Duran founder and keyboardist Nick Rhodes discusses the David Lynch webcast with Billboard today:

“The stranger it is, the more beautiful it will be. What appeals to us very much about working with David is that we like the way he thinks about things and how he’s always gone out on a limb to make things different. He works completely outside of the system, and that’s what we try to do. I think the combustion between us and David should create something that nobody’s ever seen before, something mysterious and magical and surprising.”

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Posted in London, Media, North America, Pop music

Tagged Concert, David Lynch, Duran Duran, Facebook Live, Gary Kemp, John Keeble, John Taylor, New Romantics, Nick Rhodes, Spandau Ballet, Unstaged, Video, YouTube

1981 ➤ The day Duran’s fortunes really took flight

Posted on 5 Mar 2011 | Leave a comment

❚ HAPPY 30th ANNIVERSARY to Planet Earth. On March 5, 1981, Duran Duran made their first appearance on the nationwide TV show Top of the Pops, a vital consequence of their debut single hitting the UK Top 40. Along with Spandau Ballet and Visage, Duran were the third British band to confirm the gathering force of the New Romantic movement, and TV’s pop flagship was to showcase a rush of new bands as springtime blossomed. Duran’s strongly contemporary electronic style is attributed to producer Colin Thurston, who had co-engineered David Bowie’s “Heroes”, and on his death in 2007 John Taylor paid tribute to Thurston as “a major catalyst for the 80s sound” which he was to reinforce on the band’s first album. “Without Colin’s depth of vision, we would never have become the band we became.”

Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon, Rum Runner, 1980, New Romantics,Planet Earth, video

Simon Le Bon: live on video at the Rum Runner in 1980

In the Planet Earth video mix above we see original footage of DD performing in 1980 at the Rum Runner, home of Birmingham’s then underground New Romantic scene.

The futuristic and stylish official video, shot later in a studio by director Russell Mulcahy, has been spliced in, all overdubbed with the audio track recorded at EMI’s Manchester Square studio with lyrics refreshed opportunistically to include the line Like some New Romantic looking for the TV sound (available as the Manchester Square Demo on the debut Duran Duran album remastered in 2010). One of Duran’s earliest songs, Late Bar, completed the B-side of the single released on Feb 2, 1981. An alternative arrangement of Planet Earth was also released on a 12-inch extended remix as what DD called a “night version” for the dancefloor. The single spent 14 weeks in the chart, peaking at No 12 in late March.

Among comments at YouTube, Jeremy Thirlby, musician and school friend of Nick Rhodes, points out that the dancers we see during the filming at the club were “drafted in actors” because for some reason “most regulars were excluded”! Unknown to everyone at Birmingham’s Rum Runner the very week when Duran were being filmed in July 1980, London’s ITV station was to air its 20th Century Box documentary about the Blitz club house band, Spandau Ballet. Bang! This was the starting gun that signalled the record-industry race to sign up the first of the New Romantic bands.

New Romantics, Duran Duran, Rum Runner, video, 1980, Planet Earth

New Romantics in full fig at the Rum Runner in July 1980: note the tell-tale moves in the Planet Earth video, such as the Ballet sway at 1:20, crucial handpasses at 2:18 and Pierrot’s wonky head at 3:06

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Posted in Fashion, Media, Pop music, Social trends, Youth culture

Tagged Birmingham, Concert, Duran Duran, New Romantics, Planet Earth, Rum Runner, Video

➤ Ferry backed by three bass players, Roxy back on the road — how cool is that?

Posted on 23 Jan 2011 | Leave a comment

❚ THE MAN WHO DEFINED COOL in the glitzy 70s — the decade that style forgot — was Bryan Ferry, who from Tuesday revives English art-rock gods Roxy Music — for a seven-date UK arena tour, Jan 25-Feb 7, ending at the O2. This will be a hair-tingling reunion of the original line-up of Ferry, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera and Paul Thompson…

Roxy Music, reunion, 2011 tour A propos last year’s Olympia, “his best album in two decades” with Kate Moss as the cover, and this Roxy tour, there’s a long, discursive, fan-moist interview with Ferry, “the sultan of suave”, at The Quietus. Ferry has a niggle — “Unless you have a top twenty record, Tesco won’t stock you” — but is pleased that owning your own studio “means you end up doing things that others wouldn’t be bothered to do. For instance, having three bass players on a track (You Can Dance), which people think is a bit mad. But it sounds great; it’s a great big machine. Like the great leader James Brown always had two drummers, and when I saw him he had two bassists as well. He supported me, believe it or not, at a gig at the Natural History Museum”.

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Posted in Culture, London, Pop music

Tagged 2011, Bryan Ferry, Concert, Interview, Roxy Music

2011 ➤ Strange and Egan return to the Blitz to kick off the 20-tweens

Posted on 8 Jan 2011 | Leave a comment

Return To The Blitz , Steve Strange, Rusty Egan, Red Rooms, Blitz Kids, New Romantics

Motormouths back in action: Strange and Egan interviewed on BBC London news last night in the club where they once reigned. Such were members’ powers of self-promotion at the Blitz, Egan said, that it was the 80s equivalent of Facebook Live!

❚ FED UP WITH BEING IMPERSONATED by the many lookalike websites online, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan have resolved their differences to collaborate on a brand-new official Blitz club website at:

The partnership of Strange as greeter and Egan as deejay famously hosted the Blitz club-nights which launched the New Romantic fashion and electro-pop movement in 1980, and opened the door for much more sparkling new music during that decade. Last night the legendary motormouths blagged themselves a couple of valuable minutes on London’s TV news to announce a reunion party actually at the site of the original Blitz, then a Covent Garden wine bar which these days is an after-hours saucy gentlemen’s club called The Red Rooms (pictured above). And though the BBC presenters banged on about a 30th anniversary, any original Blitz Kid knows the club actually opened in 1979.

Rusty Egan, Steve Strange, theblitzclub, Blitz club,Derek Ridgers

Then and now: Egan and Strange photographed in 1979 at the Blitz by Derek Ridgers, and yesterday, Jan 7, 2011

Not one to let that stand in the way of a party, Strange says: “The furniture may have changed but there is no doubt we are heading back to our spiritual home.” Next Saturday night the Blitz partners wrap up three celebrations in one shebang, with live entertainment thrown in.

The Return To The Blitz party both celebrates their reunion and launches their website. It is an evening-only event from 8pm to midnight, with Rusty and Princess Julia on the decks while Steve and Rosemary Turner are hosting. In addition, from 7.30pm (doors open 7pm), Jus Forest will be reading from her book Remembering Eden, which is a celebration of Ultravox’s 30th anniversary tour. Jan 15 itself was chosen to mark the day in 1981 when the single Vienna was released — the hit single that established Ultravox as the driving force for the new wave of electronic music. During the previous couple of years their vocalist Midge Ure and keyboard player Billy Currie had also played crucial roles in creating new music tailored to the Blitz club through the studio group Visage, which was fronted by Strange as vocalist.

Quilla Constance photographed by Simon Richardson

Performances on Saturday include a set by the new livepop band Paradise Point, whose bassist is Roman Kemp, son of Martin whose own band Spandau Ballet were launched from the Blitz in 1979. We’re also promised Quilla Constance, an electro-punk singer and lap dancer who will no doubt be taking advantage of The Red Rooms’ dance-poles.

True to the New Romantic ethos that insisted “the band holds a mirror up to the audience”, Rusty says: “The real stars are the people who come, dress up, dance and enjoy electronic 80s music at its best.” He is shrewdly inviting guests to “hit me with your own Top 10 — tunes I would hear in the Blitz club if it were open now … Current acts I like are LCD Soundsystem, Gossip, Muse, La Roux, The xx, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga.”

➢ Tickets are now sold out for Return To The Blitz (with Paradise Point & Special Guests) on Jan 15, 2011. Contact Rusty with playlist suggestions through the new website

➢ Remembering Eden – 30th Anniversary Tour Book celebrates the return of Ultravox, the synth-pop pioneers, to the live stage in 2009-10. Compiled by Jus Forrest and Helen Waterman, it tells the band’s story from the 80s right through the Return to Eden 2 tour, with interviews by Rob Kirby, fan reviews and many previously unpublished photos.

➢ Listen to Robert Elms interview Rusty Egan on BBC London about the Blitz club and how the new sounds he played were the springboard for a musical sea-change… “Steve Strange and me, we’re like chalk and cheese. I’m music, Steve’s fashion. But it’s obvious: music and fashion, you’ve got to have them together.”