Duran Duran: The Saga Continues Again. Part Three.

Back for part three in an apparent four-part series revolving thoughts I've had about Duran Duran for a very, very long time, but have only just now consolidated to this one blog.

Duran Duran's music has been incredibly influential in terms of my music tastes post-1991, as I touched on in the last sentence of the last entry I made to this blog. What I didn't explain was the magnitude of this influence, which I still feel is an active one even in the present day. See, what Duran Duran did, as I stated before, was provide me with everything I was looking for in terms of music. They had the rhythm, they had the melodies, they had EVERYTHING. So when I became a more serious and thorough fan of their music, I began to fall for all the individual elements that comprised their music. I was attracted to the punk DIY influence peeking throughout nearly their entire career oeuvre, I loved the throbbing bass rhythm and beat, I felt thrills connected to the band's unconventional but prodigious use of synths in their New Wave rock style, and I loved the polished sophistication oozing from their pores, particularly after the band reunited post-Arcadia and Power Station.

So I began to seek out those very elements in whatever I was listening to. I found it easily with Duran Duran's most commonly associated contemporaries such as Spandau Ballet and Japan, sure, but I also found it easily with many artists not commonly connected to the band. Groups such as Gang Of Four and Wire provided for me many of the same elements I found myself enamored with via Duran Duran's music. GO4's music in particular was relatable in that they too were spawned from the revolutionary punk movement that rewrote the rules on rock music, but also contained within its music pulsating, shuddering rhythms that shook you to the core. And while GO4 didn't make use of synths until their wrongfully maligned 1983 album Hard, they always performed guitar lines that approximated that cold, synthetic sound that I so adored. As far as sophistication goes -- no one can argue that they had it in spades.

Even those musical artists I adore that could not be so easily relatable to Duran Duran's music, such as Joy Division, were brought into my life directly as a result of my Duran Duran fan adoration. Since I became a fan of Duran Duran's in the early '90s, when the only radio stations playing their music were college radio stations (who were staffed at the time with DJs who grew up with that kind of music), and since my fandom provided a need in me to pursue Duran Duran wherever they were, listening to college radio to hear Duran Duran's music played over the airwaves provided me with a direct exposure to all manner of musical artists I would have not ordinarily been exposed to had I just listened to contemporary music. MTV's retro program "Classic MTV" exposed me to more musical artists (e.g. The Church), and pursuing those rarer classic MTV clips on programs such as "120 Minutes" (during those rare occasions when I was allowed to stay up that late on Sunday night) gave me all the contemporary musical education I needed to at least give the illusion of being of the moment.

Those musical artists I now consider myself a fan of whom I didn't discover directly because of Duran Duran were uncovered for me via those other, more directly linkable artists, and going online in part to more actively participate in the fandoms ushered in pre-1997 has exposed me to even more. For example, because of my love for so many musical artists who emerged from the bosoms of the 1980s I became aware of the fact that I was a fan of a certain musical genre called "New Wave". Because of that fact, when I first went online, I searched for any and all New Wave-related resources available therein. Five years later, I discovered this exciting new resource called the New Wave Outpost, which provided me the additional service of giving me the chance to discover musical artists lost to the annals of time. As a direct result of this, I can now count several "obscure" musical artists amongst the list of artists in my fandom, and it has solidified my adoration of the whole of the New Wave musical genre set. (nb: This is coming from an Americentric point of view, so in other countries this would encompass a wide spectrum of genres. Example: One can accurately count post-punk, synthpop, and New Pop as elements of the American definition of New Wave.)

So now the question remains: Why, after all this time and all the many additional musical artists I've discovered to be just as thrilling for me to listen to, have I still maintained as much of a passion for Duran Duran as I have? I suspect part of it is because of the simple fact that They Were There First. They were my first exposure to this whole family of genres that I would later come to love and embrace. But there's also the simple fact that Duran Duran's music provides for me the proof that sometimes you CAN "come home again".

Witness my mentioning of "Hold Me" in the last entry, for example. I played it yesterday for the first time in months and it instantly triggered in me the same reaction it has induced in me since the moment I first heard the song, back in 1992. I felt the warm synths wash over me as the intense bass and urgent drumming pulsated their way into my innermost being, and when Simon Le Bon sang in a sweetly lullabying yet passionate way, I became just as sold on that song as the day I unwrapped my Notorious cassette and played it on my Walkman. And when That Guitar Solo began, I felt the sort of high that many people must seek out by trying drugs. "Hold Me" reaffirmed for me the real reason why I've never wanted to experiment with illicit substances; it's not that I have infinite stores of moderation and reserve, nor do I fear the police sufficiently enough, it's just that for me, music IS my drug, and Duran Duran has provided me with so many highs throughout my life that even when they make egregious errors in career judgement (e.g. by agreeing to work with Justin Timberlake), I will never stray from being one of their most outspoken advocates.

In fact, Duran Duran's music has touched my life so much, one can chart virtually half my life via their music. I have memories of going to the original, now-demolished Earl Abel's with my dad to pick up a family fried chicken dinner and a lemon meringue pie for my parents, grandmother, Grandma's caretaker, and I to share, and listening to Seven & The Ragged Tiger on my Walkman on the drive over. I remember being excited to the point of trembling the night MTV debuted Duran Duran's "Unplugged" special, shuddering both from anticipation and from the chill of the late autumn air as I sat, tears streaming down my face, never expecting to see my favorite musical artist featured in that manner anywhere, let alone the then-still vital MTV. I remember going through rough times in high school and being guided through them partly through Duran Duran's music; "So Long Suicide" was an especially huge assisting tool in getting me through the nonstop stress-a-thon that was my senior year of high school. "Mars Meets Venus" made me feel good during a time period when college pressures and coping with a terminally ill parent meant living through a period when little else did. And "Still Breathing" provided me with renewed hope when I was having my recent existential crisis.

In the next entry, I will touch on some more Duran Duran-related material, as well as close up with a few final remarks.