The stage show was impressive, and the music was solid, but someone blundered big time booking Duran Duran at the Agannis Arena on Wednesday night. Capacity is 7,000, and my estimation is that the venue was probably at 2/3 capacity (at best). Let’s just say there were a lot of empty red seats…but we got a free upgrade, so I pretended not to notice.
First off, you should probably know that my wife was a hardcore DD fan in the 80s. We’re talking “I scour the import bins of my local record store for the latest shipment” fan, back at a time when that was the only way to get hard-to-find songs. So, needless to say, this was her show, although I expected to know the bulk of the songs they played. I was a child of the 80s, after all.
So, all in all, I was pretty impressed with the concert. I happened to see DD as part of the MixFest at the Garden four or five years ago, and that set was a real disappointment, especially considering they were the headliners of an 8-band festival. This concert was an entirely different experience. It’s great to see four of the five members from the band’s heyday still at it (only guitarist Andy Taylor is no longer a part), and they’ve aged pretty well.
For 2 hours and 15 minutes, Simon LeBon and Co. had the crowd of thirty- and forty-somethings pretty pumped. Opening with the Clockwork Orange theme was an interesting touch, as was a techno-heavy “electro-set” of songs in the middle of the show that featured the four original members standing closely next to one another on electronic drums, samplers, and synthesizers (a la Kraftwerk). The crowd seemed a little less enthusiastic for this break, perhaps because it included only lesser known songs. I actually found it to be a fresh and welcomed diversion.
As for the hits, the band managed to work in almost every one of them – "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Planet Earth," "Come Undone," "Reflex," "Save a Prayer," "View to a Kill," "All She Wants Is," "I Don’t Want," "Notorious," "Ordinary World," and "Wild Boys." Although it featured a rather drawn-out band intro, “Girls on Film” was my favorite number of the evening, and the “Rio” encore was predictably climactic.
The crowd seemed thoroughly pleased overall, with lots of packs of suburban women gettin’ down in the aisles, and behind the section of floor seats, where there was plenty of room for dancing. Best of all, my wife got her first Duran Duran fix in a long time.
