DURAN DURAN TURNS OTHER CHEEK TO PAST THE BAND SHUNS MOST OF ITS '80S HITS IN CONCERT TO HIGHLIGHT NEW SONGS

Published: Monday, November 24, 1997

BY KEVIN C. JOHNSON, Beacon Journal pop music critic

It was hard to tell what was more amazing about Duran Duran's performance Saturday night at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium -- that the very '80s, very MTV band can still thrill a crowd long after its heyday, or that it can do so while barely touching most of the songs it's known for.

Surprisingly missing from Saturday's show were staples such as Union of the Snake, The Reflex, Notorious, Girls on Film, The Wild Boys, New Moon on Monday, and a slew of others.

But the crowd of 1,400 or so fans didn't seem to mind the band's agenda this night, which was to push its new Medazzaland album -- a not-bad, though poorly selling effort.

It was clear it was a Medazzaland night from the top, when the band opened with the mostly instrumental title track, which featured some computerized spoken bits from keyboardist Nick Rhodes, the band's sole founding member.

Lead singer Simon Le Bon didn't appear until the second song, Big Bang Generation, a Medazzaland song that sounds like an offshoot of Men Without Hats' old Safety Dance. From here on out, Le Bon spent the night acting as part fashion model and part John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, strutting, wiggling, posing, pouting, licking his fingers, grabbing his crotch, etc., as if the night's paycheck depended on it.

Rhodes, guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and the rest of the band made sure Le Bon was never lacking a techno-rock dance beat to shake his stuff to, as on the quirky Be My Icon, the all-out party of Rio, and the disco-tinged Electric Barbarella, the first Medazzaland single.

Electric Barbarella, by the way, was at the center of what sounds like a prefabricated "controversy" (who even knew about this except for the band's publicists?) over its video, described as sexist and misogynistic. MTV and VH1 supposedly decided not to air the video because of this, but when has MTV ever had a problem with sexist or misogynistic videos?

Le Bon calmed down for songs like Come Undone, Ordinary World and Out of My Mind, and was actually stiff as a board on the guitar-fueled ballad Who Do You Think You Are? A few of the oldies performed with giddy glee included Hungry Like a Wolf and A View to a Kill. Le Bon dedicated the concert to INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence, whose body had been discovered in a hotel room earlier in the day. Le Bon said this was a particularly hard show for him to do. He got choked up and appeared teary. He made a few comments about Hutchence, though they were hard to make out because of rude fans wanting to be heard.

Oddly named Miami band Al's Not Well didn't go over well with this crowd, but the coed band was the big surprise of the night. The eye-catchers, dressed in pink and black, and sporting unusual hairstyles with fluorescent stage decorations, displayed 30 minutes of power punk that left this listener hungry for more.

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