Duran Duran: A Blog Post Trailer. Or Part One. You Decide.

In a world where people strain their brains for a lifetime figuring out the next thing to write....

Okay, so I only just now figured out the next topic I'll be tackling on this blog o' mine, and this topic hits especially close to home. See, I was looking back at some of the complaint-based things I've stated in the past and one common theme/thread appears to be running through all of those complaints: Why aren't you taking Duran Duran seriously?

Seriously, Duran Duran are the reason why I'm as much of a music fan as I am in the first place. They are the deeply rooted motivator behind every single post I've been making and will be making on this blog, even when said subject matter might not appear to be even remotely relatable. Duran Duran helped drag me away from a period of my life when I was just going along with whatever my parents liked, and helped me in the development of my own musical tastes separate from my parents'. Virtually anything and everything I've enjoyed listening to from the day I purchased Rio at a secondhand music store in the winter of 1991 onward is because of Duran Duran. And I'm not about to stop acknowledging that, even as I'm now witnessing them making some huge missteps that have caused me to lose a great deal of my faith in them.

Yet I don't know of a single location online, not a single resource or critical voice or someone who just Takes Music Seriously who is ready and willing to defend Duran Duran or to explain why people should take their career oeuvure (sp?) seriously. I think Steve Malins attempts to do this with his latest book, and George Gimarc almost touches on a sort of defense when he references the band in his book on post-punk, but not even Simon Reynolds, who puts up an impressive defense of the New Pop genre that Duran Duran were slotted in during their commercial heyday, does an adequate job of really destroying the destructive myths surrounding the band. And while you might see an occasional glimmer of hope here and there, it still doesn't even begin to have the kind of might that would be needed to combat the decades of critical dismissal of the group, even when the group were at their most admirably envelope-pushing and, dare I say it, experimental. If I read something online that states something positive about the band, it usually comes from a perspective deeply rooted in their stereotyped image as a teen idol group. (Perhaps a part of the blessing in disguise that is the Scars' lack of commercial success is the fact that they most certainly would have had success as teen idol figures, with their considerable music talents ignored in favor of their physical attractiveness.)

I can always sense it: Someone will point out a blog link to something that discusses Duran Duran in a praise-filled manner, and I will bet on the author of said piece to claim to have been a fan of the group's back in the early '80s, to talk about how she (it's usually a "she") had a crush on [insert Duran Duran band member here] back when she was a teenager, how she just loved the group's music back in the '80s but stopped listening to them in 1987/1988, how she was only slightly aware of their 1993 commercial resurgance but when she heard about the "original Fab Five" lineup reuniting in 2001 it compelled her to revisit the band, how much the group's newest music reminds her of her teen years, and how "weird" she finds the band's musical output from the late '90s to be. And if I were a betting woman, I would make so much money off asserting that that template would be the one that was being followed that I could afford plane fare to visit all of these overgrown adolescents, personally smack them upside the head, and curse them out for undoing all the hard work I've done in the past in proving that you can adore Duran Duran's music without devolving into silly adolescent giggling nonsense.

Also, I get incensed by these girls (ok, sometimes the offending figure is a boi) because they are the very definition of a fair-weather fan, which I am by no means interested in even dealing with. These people appear only to like a musical artist when it's commercially/critically acceptable to do so, and at the very moment said musical artist's star/estimation falls, these people just cut and run. Okay, so maybe it does have its benefits -- I wouldn't have nearly the amount of Duran Duran-related paraphernalia, including all of those cassettes and vinyl I've picked up from secondhand outlets throughout the years, but it gets so frustrating to me to have to deal with a constant editorial assault from these people, who automatically want to lay claim on Duran Duran as if they're the OG fanbeings and anyone who got into the group post-1986 is just a neophyte loser who doesn't deserve to be called a true fan. I mean, like, WHATEVER you stupid bitchlet, *I* was the one who spent days obsessing over an eBay auction in hopes of winning something Duran Duran related. *I* was the one who stuck by the group, year after year, when no one else appeared to even want to be associated with them. *I* was the one who spent hours fast-forwarding through shitty VH1 music video programming (that "The Big '80s" program stank to high heaven, didn't it?) just to see if maybe they'd play a Duran Duran video. *I* was the one who ran home from school her senior year of high school to see a glimpse of Duran Duran on Rosie O'Donnell's old talk show. You got to connect with many, many contemporaries who shared your brand of Duran Duran fanhood, while I had to be the odd duckling who liked "some group called Duran Duran" whom almost none of her classmates had even heard of. During a time period when you were busily denying you ever found any real enjoyment in the band's music, I might add.

So I'll attempt to wrest away the attention and spotlight away from these non-fans and try to posit my arguments for why someone such as myself, someone who feels like she takes music very seriously, would consider Duran Duran to be her gold standard for what she looks for in terms of contemporary/popular music. Even though -- now, this is the real killer here -- even though the band have been practically bending over backwards for the past six years or so to try to appease those little dipshit fair-weather fans. And okay, so the raw materials that made up the songs on that album Astronaut were really, really good, but seriously, I would still take Medazzaland any day of the week over that album, and this next album they'll be releasing soon is going to be the first album of theirs I have committed myself to never owning, not even if I find it on sale for $1 at some clearance sale. And no amount of convincing will make me change my mind about that. But I still cannot escape the fact that Duran Duran have remained influential in my music-listening life for as long as they have, and that I've been a member of their fan ranks for well over half my life. And yes, I still consider myself a fan of theirs.

More tomorrow.