Duran Duran - GM Place, Vancouver B.C., April 29th, 2008 - Concert Review:

















Photo copyright KulPop

All I can say is that Duran Duran still have it! After 30 years or so in the business they can still draw a decent crowd and still sound great live. Their concert tonight at Vancouver's GM Place kicked off the North American leg of their Red Carpet Massacre Tour.

Opening band Your Vegas we're okay and ended their set with the single 'In My Head' and the song 'Troubled Times'.

Duran Duran's show started with some opening music and a couple of minutes later the band emerged and started with the song 'The Valley' - the lead track on their new Red Carpet Massacre disc. The audience went wild on their fourth song 'Hungry Like The Wolf'. Another highlight was 'The Reflex' that I captured on video followed by 'Save A Prayer' (entire setlist listed below).

















Photo copyright KulPop

The band left the stage after 'Prayer' and the stage was set up for what I've heard called their 'Electro Set'. Two keyboards and an electronic drum kit are set up in the front of the stage and the remaining four original members of the band coming out dressed in black and perform a medley of tracks that includes 'All I Want' and 'Skin Trade'. It was a cool change of pace added a bit of a techno feel to the night.

Then they return to the full band setup for the remaining part of the concert. The band was joined by new guitarist Dom Brown, and a saxaphone player and female backup singer. The final part of the set includes fan favourites 'Notorious', 'Girls On Film' and 'Wild Boys'. At the end of 'Girls' Simon introduces the band, my only complaint of the evening would be that this was dragged out for a tad too long. After 'Wild Boys' the band leaves the stage and eventually comes out for the one encore, the classic single 'Rio'.

The only political comment of sorts came before 'Ordinary World' when Simon commented on Canada being a peace loving nation and that it must be hard to live above a bully (implying the U.S.). And before the encore John Taylor mentioned that when they were flying into Vancouver earlier in the day he thought it would be a nice city to live in.

The band sounded great and Simon is still the charismatic front man and the rest of the band have aged fairly well too. A decent mix of the old and the new and a typical fancy light show satisfied the large crowd and the band seemed to be having fun.

Setlist:

THE VALLEY
RED CARPET MASSACRE
NITE RUNNER
HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF
PLANET EARTH
FALLING DOWN
COME UNDONE
SKIN DIVERS
A VIEW TO A KILL
THE REFLEX
SAVE A PRAYER

Electro Set:

LAST CHANCE
ALL SHE WANTS IS
WARM LEATHERETTE
I DON’T WANT
SKIN TRADE
TEMPTED

NOTORIOUS
GIRLS ON FILM
- Simon introduces band
ORDINARY WORLD
SUNRISE
WILD BOYS

Encore:

RIO

WILL THE THOMPSON TWINS TOUR AGAIN?



Some interesting news on the Thompson Twins front. There is a comment from a promoter on the Regeneration Tour voting for bands to tour next year section that he has been talking to Alannah Currie and Tom Bailey of the band recently and that Alannah might be game for a reunion tour if the money was right. He mentions that Tom Bailey may be a much 'harder sell'.



There is also an article in today's U.K. Guardian (and one in the Independent) about Alannah and her new life as a chair artist-upholsterer (she goes under the moniker Miss Pokeno - named after a small New Zealand town that was bypassed by the Auckland motorway). It is interesting to hear what she is up to and what people are paying for her work. You can see samples of her work (like the chair she's sitting in above) that sometimes include roadkill animals stuffed by a taxidermist at this website for her upcoming solo exhibit in London. Her comment about a possible Thompson Twins tour -- "I'd rather vomit on my boots." So we're getting mixed messages from Alannah if we are to believe Rick from Red Entertainment, but let's hope someone with deep pockets offers them enough money to reform and tour (ideally with Joe Leeway as well).
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VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:





You can vote for what bands you would like to see on the 2009 Regeneration Tour here (lower right side of screen), currently The Thompson Twins are leading with 13% of the vote.




Speaking of The Thompson Twins there is now an on-line petition set up to try and convince the band's record labels to release some rarities collections, go here to sign your name. It appears that Tom Bailey is on board and willing to help search the archives for cool rarities, let's hope this becomes a reality. I believe the recent reissues of 'Quick Step & Side Kick' and 'Into The Gap' have sold fairly well, maybe that will help BMG and Warners to work together on this project.

Love the song 'Breathe' by Schiller featuring September (Petra Marklund), getting a lot of plays on my iTunes.

Imogen Heap has video blog #22 up on YouTube.

You can download the fun track 'Version' by Plimsouls over at Ohh! Crapp.

Enjoying the Ferras album "Aliens & Rainbows" that I had to download as for some reason the release in Canada won't happen until the end of May. He appears to have a new website now and hopefully he will do a proper tour soon.

I may be going to see Duran Duran at the end of the month. I saw one of their smaller club shows a few years back which was great. The new album is just okay, I hope they don't focus too much on that material and focus on the back catalogue.

ABC's new album 'Traffic' is now set for release on April 28th in the U.K. The first single 'The Very First Time is currently Number 2 on the 7Digital singles chart, right behind Madonna's 4 Minutes.

Enjoying the new sound Jesse McCartney has on the single Leavin' and leaked tracks from his forthcoming album "Departure" due out in May, hopefully he will enjoy some more success after the last album's less than stellar performance.

Still no sign of The Feeling having their second album "Join With Us" released in North America, a real shame that their label seemed to have little success breaking them here. Now to track down the 'Without You' cd single b-sides!

Ashton Kutcher hosts and musical guest Gnarls Barkley on tonight's new Saturday Night Live on NBC.

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MINOR DETAIL - CANVAS OF LIFE:




I finally found the full self-titled album by Minor Detail online and have put up one of my favourite 80's tracks "Canvas Of Life" MP3 up for download for one week.

UPDATE:
Steven, I've put up 'Hold On' MP3 here for one week.

FIVE TIMES AUGUST & VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:


I just discovered the band Five Times August who have just released a new cd titled 'Brighter Side' The band is really singer-songwriter Brad Skistimas from Dallas Texas. He just finished touring with Matt White and will be touring opening for Dashboard Confessional and Augustana in the coming months. Acoustic pop rock tracks make up the album, kind of Jason Mraz meets Matt Nathanson, the first single is 'The Good Life' - MP3 is up for one week. You can watch the music video for the single on YouTube. You can also listen to some more songs on Brad's MySpace site.

The auditions for 'So You Think You Can Dance Canada' start this coming week in Vancouver. Good news is that Mary Murphy from the U.S. version will be doing some guest judging, pity they couldn't have got her for the whole series. The worst news is that Much Music V.J. Leah Miller is hosting the series. I don't think she is very good the times I've seen her on the music video station, and a recent Spring Break special shot in Cancun really made me dislike her skanky personality. They have been running television ads for the series and auditions using the Tiga song 'You Gonna Want Me' that are cool (video on YouTube).

The cheapest place I've found to order the new ABC cd 'Traffic' is CD WOW for 8.99 pounds. I've never ordered from them before but may for this cd, free worldwide shipping also.

I've tried to upload the Alex Sadkin produced 12" version of The Thompson Twins single 'Lay Your Hands On Me' to YouSendIt but my MAC is always giving me a Safari error. Maybe they have something installed to make sure any iTunes M4A's can't be uploaded to file sharing sites, sorry XOLondon, I'll see if I can make it available somehow.

** UPDATE **

I tried again and was successful in getting the Alex Sadkin produced 12" version of The Thompson Twins single 'Lay Your Hands On Me' up for downloading, the MP3 should be there for a week, enjoy.

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