DURAN DURAN DOESN'T GIVE AN ORDINARY SHOW
Published: Saturday, August 21, 1993

By Jennifer Vigil / Staff Writer

Duran Duran seems caught between the spruced up '80s and the pared-down '90s. It showed in their Thursday concert before a sold-out Irvine Meadows crowd. The band's sensibilities leaned toward the '90s, this unplugged time of less equals more. Yet the '80s kept rearing its ugly overblown head.

On the one hand, vocalist Simon Le Bon, bassist John Taylor, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, accompanied by a drummer and string section, played a straightforward set dominated by their old hits and songs from their new self-titled CD.

The one musical risk the band took worked: a cover of the rap ``White Lines,'' Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel's paean to that most '80s of drugs. That, along with ``Ordinary World,'' seemed to reflect the band's attempt to separate itself from the Decade of Excess. Le Bon, while sprawled on a video monitor onstage, even went so far as to denounce the video age that he and his mates helped spawn.

``She gives me sex, she gives me violence,'' he cried during the intro to ``Too Much Information.'' ``I know it's the real thing, just me and my TV.'' This formula was working. The Duranies, initially dismissed as a bubble gum band for the video age, showed unexpectedly strong musicianship, led by Rhodes and, surprisingly, the guitar work of Cuccurullo, late of Missing Persons. The keyboard-dominated band left spaces for Cuccurullo to show his stuff and he did so admirably, particularly in the band's early hit, ``Hungry Like the Wolf.''

Typical of recent theatrical tours, though, the band couldn't leave well enough alone. The stage was dominated by a preposterous everything-but-the-kitchen-sink set, with ramps, a huge bullet that opened up to show a lipstick and a chamber that looked like the nasty thing that turned that poor guy into ``The Fly.''

The chamber figured in a ridiculous interpretation of ``UMF,'' with Le Bon, looking more like an octopus than a helpless victim of science, entering it with lines that dangled from the top of the stage attached to his head. There must have been a better way for the band to portray the unprintable full name of the song.

Particularly ironic was the inept handling of the video accompaniment, considering that Duran Duran - with the possible exception of Madonna and Michael Jackson - was the only master of the art at the beginning of the MTV age. Round video screens reflected everything but an ``Ordinary World,'' segueing into particularly silly displays during ``A View to a Kill'' and ``Rio.' Hey, guys, the songs were standing up for themselves: Ditch the folderol.

Duran Duran could take a lesson from opening act Terence Trent D'Arby, whose set was also dominated by hits from his first release, ``The Hardline According to ...'' D'Arby refrained from theatrics, relying on his music and sensual James Brown moves to seduce the crowd. Particularly enchanting was his return to the stage in top hat and coat for his encore, sans band: ``Sign Your Name.'' The two acts will complete their turn in the Southland on Monday at the Forum.

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