Thursday, 25 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Duran Duran


Do you like the Eighties?  Or the Nineties?  The Noughties?  Now?

Well, today is your lucky day.

Duran Duran owned the 1980’s pop charts, lived the glamorous fantasy jet-set lifestyle, married beautiful women and re-invented themselves enough times to form a dozen different bands.  

With charismatic singer Simon Le Bon, dandy Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor and rock guitarist Andy Taylor [funnily enough, none of the three Taylor’s were related], Duran Duran cemented themselves as the template for pop/rock bands.

As Durandemonium swept the world, they ruled the airwaves with a string of classic hits - including Hungry Like the Wolf, Rio, Is There Something I Should Know?, Girls On Film, The Reflex and The Wild Boys - and dominated the nascent MTV channel with their pioneering video clips.  Duran Duran took post-punk, New Romantic, synth pop trappings and meshed them with funk, pop and rock sounds recorded with state of the art production and in turn, enamoured millions.  A Brummie band, they’ve always done things differently too - coming from the industrial heavy metal fields of the English Midlands; a boy band who wrote their own songs AND played their own instruments.

The classic era culminated in the US #1 James Bond theme A View To A Kill whereby they splintered - briefly - in to the two equally successful side projects Arcadia (the great “lost” Duran Duran album) and The Power Station [with Robert Palmer - Some Like It Hot].  Then they lost 2/5 of the band but picked up a new guitarist in Warren Cuccurullo, who along with Nick Rhodes carried the band in to the 90’ with hits like Notorious, Skin Trade and All She Wants Is.

Rediscovering their mojo after 1990’s Liberty and a Greatest Hits package with 1993’s The Wedding Album, Duran Duran scored their biggest hit in 5 years with Ordinary World.  Duran Duran were cool again but things were falling apart.  Their record deals collapsed and they became a ‘greatest hits’ act that lurched in and out of the public consciousness.  In 2000, they released Pop Trash which is littered with gems - like their 2nd attempt at a Bond theme - but it flopped.

Then in 2001, all five original members of Duran Duran reconvened and the adulation began again.  With Astronaut, Duran Duran were back with (Reach Up For The) Sunrise and What Happens Tomorrow, but the fractures re-appeared with Andy Taylor leaving DD for a second time.  An entire album was recorded and scrapped before release before hitching their sound to Timbaland and Timberlake to poor results.  But if it’s one thing Duran Duran know, you fall in and out of fashion and if you keep doing what you’re good at, eventually, the pendulum swings back in your favour.

Dropping All You Need Is Now in late 2010, early 2011, Duran Duran were back once again with a blistering pop album.   Trendy with an ‘elder statesmen’ of pop tag, they continually tour the world adding to, never detracting from, their legacy.

And now, in 2015, in collaboration with Nile Rodgers, they’ve dropped Pressure Off, one of those pop/funk gems Duran Duran are perfect at.  A new album Paper Gods comes out in September, and it seems Duran Duran are back in favour with the critics though they’ve never had any problem entertaining their millions of fans.

I got on to Duran Duran with A View To A Kill.  That’s my get on, though I knew their other earlier hits from 1982-1984 from LPs we had at home and from Countdown video clips.  But A View To A Kill was “my” Duran Duran song and I’ve been a fan ever since.  Even though things waxed and waned during the ensuing 30 years, I have never been disappointed in their output.  In fact, during the mid/late 1990’s when Duran Duran were desperately uncool (like ABBA had been up to Muriel’s Wedding) they recorded some really cutting edge music that now is pretty much the sounds and production used by most of the Top 10 pop acts around now.

I could also list all their hits.  But stuff that!  Go buy Greatest.  I’m gifting you some lesser known but equally loved DD songs from my playlist.  

Duran Duran are one of the greatest bands I have ever loved.  Despite the criticism that seems to be levelled at the band, they have always been stylish, cutting edge, adventurous, entertaining!  Never boring; never compromised.

Loving Duran Duran?  Na na na na…it’s a reflex!


[Duran Duran, 1980]

[Rio, 1982]

[1984, for the Mad Max fans] OR the 2015 MM4 visual mash up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsy30eHDXnc

[Liberty, 1990]

[The Wedding Album, 1993]

[Thank You, 1995]

[Medazzaland, 1997]

[Pop Trash, 2000]

[Astronaut, 2004]

[All You Need Is Now, 2011]

[Paper Gods, 2015]



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Friday, 19 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Alphaville


There are two things that tickle my fancy - the film Napoleon Dynamite and 1980’s German synth pop.  Bands like Alphaville, Hubert Kah, Nena, Software, Kraftwerk, Muncher Freiheit...

The great thing about Napoleon Dynamite (if you haven’t seen it, you must).

And if you haven’t listened to a 1980’s German synth pop band called Alphaville…you should.

But I’m betting you’ve already heard one Alphaville song (or it’s cover version by Aussie band Youth Group [about a decade ago]) titled Forever Young.

Forever Young is one of those songs slightly nihilistic, almost paranoid Cold War pop songs that Germans did so well as the Americans and Soviets marked their territory in a divided Germany.  There were many songs of this ilk [think Nena’s 99 Luftballoons] and these days, Forever Young is often used in ads or by Eistedford’s or as in Napoleon Dynamite, a song at the prom!

Forever Young…
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever young.

Alphaville though were (and still are - sporadically) a group who pioneered a fair bit of synth music and their influences continue today.  Their keen ear for a pop tune is uncanny and on their first three albums - though possibly dated in sound (tinny drum machines; sax!)- never miss a beat.  Best of all, they knew how to get you to dance and were avid users of the remix single for dance halls and discos.  Nor were they immune for the early 80’s love of what was considered at the time the exotic Japan or the ‘big budget’ film clip that plays out like a cheesy cinematic movie.

They released a swag of singles (and 12 inch dance remixes) to a range of success and did quite well especially in Germany.  Their ‘peak’ period included three albums from 1984’s Forever Young LP, 1986’s Afternoons in Utopia and 1989’s The Breathtaking Blue.  

Tracks to sound out would be Big In Japan, Sounds Like A Melody, The Mysteries of Love, For A Million, A Victory of Love, The Jet Set, Summer Rain and of course, Forever Young.














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Thursday, 11 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Tear Council


Alright, keeping in the ‘let’s be quick’ [I know you read these whilst sipping a coffee or sitting in the loo…or in that brief millisecond has you hit delete] and with an eye to ‘fresh’ tunes making (air)waves, here’s a newish indie-pop band breaking out called Tear Council who I had to share with you.

And they’re so ‘fresh’ I don’t actually physically own any of their gear yet, merely two I-tunes downloads…such is the modern world of music.  So no photo of me with anything to hold.

Now according to the band’s Facebook page, Tear Council is a side-project for none other than Matt Van Schie who is a member of another fantastic electro-synthpop outfit called Van She (who you should check out too).  This fact I only found out tonight looking up the band after a week of having listened to their songs.

Tear Council’s two singles (thus far) - My Car and Anywhere - are emotion charged, low-key electro pop slices of heaven and well worth downloading off I-tunes.

Or, you can check ‘em out here on Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/tear-council.

Anyway.  I really liked ‘em both.  My Car is a downcast, melancholy toe tapper…if there is such a thing and I really like the sound of it as it’s got ‘something’.

So here’s hoping you don’t mind them either.

Here’s to a cool weekend.  And nothing says ‘cool’ like yellow tints.

Also...follow them on FB: https://www.facebook.com/tearcouncil







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Thursday, 4 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Kermit the Frog - The Rainbow Connection


A frog…a banjo…a ballad.

What more can you want?

When I was a kid, The Muppet Show was at its peak.  A variety show that was big in the ratings, it attracted celebrity A-List guest stars to interact with the puppets and churned out a zany, cheesy mix of song, dance and humour.

I guess, when you look it now, it inhabits a similar place Hey, Hey It’s Saturday does and reflects a simpler time when people were easier entertained.

Take for instance - music.  In the old days, magazines would carry ‘rumours’ of a band recording.  Or releasing an album.  Or touring.  Hearing a song on the radio meant going to the record shop and having them search the coming release guides, find the label and catalogue number, write out a pre order and wait 2-6 weeks for the single to come in to stock before racing back to buy it and listen to it.  That’s why people like Molly Meldrum were cool - they knew all the stories and gossip.  

Now, I can watch a band live on the internet recording their latest track, upload it on my mobile phone and have listened to it a million times before it even hits the stores.  It’s instant, immediate, now!

The Muppet Show, along with it’s sister production Sesame Street, spawned an industry under the care and guidance of Jim Henson and his creative workshop.  There were albums, movies and animated shows. It’s now owned by Disney.

Of course, eventually, we all grew up and technology made things much more accessible.  Variety entertainment died as the internet exploded and you can find literally everything your heart desires online.

However, one Muppets song that resonated with me through the years as a kid and now as an adult, is the wistful opening number from The Muppet Movie.

The Rainbow Connection is a beautiful song (weird to think it was written by Paul Williams who was Little Enos Burdette in Smokey and the Bandit!!!).  Dreamy, yearning, wistful, positive and full of hope.  It should be cheesy but it never is.  

It’s one of those little oddities that strikes a chord in every listener, and I for one, adore it.

And as Statler and Waldorf would heckle from the balcony:  MORE!!!  MORE!!! 

Enjoy!





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Thursday, 28 May 2015

That's Entertainment : Walk The Moon


It’s been a while.  But if you’ll have me, I’ll be back.

So, oft accused of living in the past, I’m hitting you up with a band that is cresting a wave at the moment, currently sitting at #4 on the ARIA Pop Charts and #3 on the Billboard Top 100 in the USA.  

Walk The Moon - apparently named after The Police song Walking on the Moon.

This is a band who has been around for 4-5 years and released their 2nd proper album just before Christmas last year.  But through good old fashioned slow burn, their outrageously catchy ear worm Shut Up & Dance is peeking at the top end of the world’s charts.  And considering the instant gratification releases now - where artists or bands who don’t debut at #1 are seen as failures - this is a mighty fine effort.

For me, it all came from chance.  I had RAGE on for the first time in forever last Saturday and they do the Top 20 Countdown again.  So up bobs this song with it’s retro cool sounding tune, big BIG catchy lyrical hooks and nerdy but rad video clip (seriously…a chromakey suit!!!  A band after my own heart).  So in the new world, I check RAGE’s playlist, find the band, find the clip and about an hour later, I’d bought the album and fallen in love with it.

It’s got to the point this week, Zach sighed in the back seat of the car as I played Shut Up & Dance for the umpteenth time and said “why do we have to listen to this song…again!?!?”.

Because that’s what daddy does.  

With its New Wave inspirations and noodling synths, chip tune tones, shouty choruses and plenty of awesome sounding anthems that will rock your next party, Walk The Moon look like a band with the world at their feet.  And yep…you got me.  It is retro sounding, but also so damn contemporary.  It’s like having your cake and eating it too.  And then eating your co-worker’s slice of cake…and drinking their coffee.  Then raiding the fridge and eating their lunch they brought in from home.

Don’t believe me.  Nab the whole 12 track album for $12.99 at JB HI FI.  It won’t disappoint and it will leave you smiling and dancing for days.  

Being so nerdy has never been so cool.




















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Sunday, 8 March 2015

Plug It In: Django Django


The new single First Light from English group Django Django is amazing.

Check it out here:


Lifted from new album Born Under Saturn, released May 2015.




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Wednesday, 4 March 2015

That's Entertainment : Lino


In 1999 there was plenty going on.  The new millennium was just around the corner, Sydney was to host the Olympics, I secured my first full time job and spent Monday nights video taping South Park off SBS.   DVDs were new, Star Wars was back at the cinema and GST was coming.  It was a time when the internet was exploding and places like CD NOW (with a back catalogue even Brashs, Virgin, Sanity, HMV, Sandlers etc didn’t carry or import) got loads of my money.  On the music scene, 1999 was a year dominated by Nu-Metal, boybands, big beat and chill out. Personally, I was in a distinctly ‘retro’ phase, buying up back catalogue of heaps of 80’s bands. But it was also the year an Australian act won my heart.  

The band I’m talking about, of course, is Sydney band Lino.

Who?

Exactly!

Lino had a perfectly pop-tacular tune in Troubleshooting.  They had another grimy ambient track in Drop.  And then there was the whimsical little ditty Wasted.

That’s who!

I often stand accused of saying such and such is ‘criminally underrated’ but in this instance I stand firm.  You see, Lino’s self-titled debut album is as close to pop perfection as I can get.  And it’s always gladdened me that such a gem could exist but at the same time, saddened me that such a gem didn’t go supernova.  When I first entertained the idea of this column, I realised that as the band existed between 1999-2001, their presence on the internet is almost non-existent.  So in an effort to find out more, I recently tracked down singer Lisa Ffrench who kindly agreed to have a chat about her time in the band.
After a bit of email-tag, Lisa and I finally caught up and I was instantly won over by her effervescent personality. With nervousness on both sides, I launched right in, relieved and pleased that Lisa was happy to reminisce on her time with Lino, laughingly saying "the whole thing was hilarious".  Her friends (and band mates) Andrew Lancaster and Jad McAdam had put together some music for a dance company. As they sat around listening to it, Lisa put some vocals over the top.  Immediately the trio joked they should start a band.

That joke soon turned into action.  A fascination of mine is how hard or easy it is for bands to create my favourite songs, and I was pleased to hear Troubleshooting (my fave) came very easy.  In fact, the songs were done so quickly in Andrew’s studio, it wasn’t long before they cut a demo accompanied by some simple cute artwork and sent it out to the record industry powers that be. That was shortly followed by a knock on the door from Virgin / EMI offering them a record deal.  The recording process was easy and fun, basically three friends hanging out.  There was no pressure, no angst, no torture and since the demos were pretty much done, there was only a little bit of studio attention needed for the tracks.  Again, Lisa stresses it was hilarious - they had done no shows, no gigs, no press, recorded an album with relative ease and here they were with a record deal. 

When I ask if this prompted a ‘yes…we’ve made it’ moment, Lisa laughs again.  It was all so unexpected.  She was a choreographer working at Freedom Furniture; Andrew was a film director and composer; and Jad was studying, DJing and working in a record shop.  If anything the speed with which it all happened lent a touch of absurdity.  Lisa does stress though how fortunate they were to get the deal. They delivered the album with a minimum of fuss and were given freedom by the label to produce their own film clips and present the band as they wanted to.  When I refer to the wonderful album cover, Lisa thanks me and says it stemmed from the demo artwork - cute Japanese paper dolls. When the album was to be released, a graphic designer (Mark Gowing) presented them with the concept of the wax-paper-ish, see-through album cover and they were won over.  

Whenever I listen to Lino, I noted it felt like a soundtrack, and Lisa confirms that film (amongst other things) influenced the album.  Jad was in to diverse music and would sample plenty of movies for sounds on the record, and in fact the song Han, is a tribute to everyone’s favourite smuggler Han Solo!  Lisa confesses she was in to pop and bands like Portishead, Massive Attack and EBTG, but Lino was a sum of its parts, cherry picking from art, film, dance, pop and combining it all was plenty of fun.
Considering Australia’s current popular electronica scene, I suggested that had Lino come out a few years later, they would be more appreciated.  Lisa mulled this thought and agreed that electronica in Australia certainly was more mainstream now, but it had nothing to do with them and she is comfortable that Lino was what it was - fun, nothing serious with no “this is it” moment.  Lisa did let slip that hearing their song for the first time on radio was very, very exciting.  As always, Triple J played and backed the start-up Aussie band, and rage aired the videos.  

It’s with regret, Lisa answers my next question: she very much doubts the Lino album will appear on iTunes any time soon, and that the record company own the rights.  Furthermore, Lisa is brutally honest - there’s no real call for it.  Then there’s another laugh, and Lisa says maybe she’ll bring it up with Andrew next time they speak.

I tack left and ask Lisa what was the last album she bought/downloaded and she offers up Glass Animals’ Zaba after consulting her iPhone.  Her desert island discs would definitely include Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Everything But The Girl’s greatest hits and the Grease soundtrack.  Admitting she doesn’t sing or hum her own tunes whilst in the shower or stuck in traffic (she told Andrew she was doing the interview and joked she couldn’t remember many of the lyrics these days), Lisa confides with a blush her latest guilty pleasure is Michael Jackson’s Love Never Felt So Good.  She is a woman after my own heart, deeply missing cassingles, which leads to a confession: my useless high school wood working skills went towards a cassingle rack to house all my tapes.  Together we also lament the death of album covers and agree the lack of covers, liner notes and lyric sheets diminishes the overall music listening experience.    

Having taken up more than enough of Lisa’s lunch break whilst she juggled countless meetings, I let her get back to being Associate Director of Programming at the Carriageworks.  Admitting I had a blast at the Pet Shop Boys show there last year, Lisa revealed with another of her chuckles that she been able to go to lunch with the pair when they were in Sydney and confirmed they were lovely fellows.  And all too soon our little interview was done.  I tried hard not to come across as the fawning sycophant as I gushed my thanks for such a wonderful album that sits in my list of all time faves, but I don’t think I really succeeded.  I think I ended up a bit like South Park’s Kyle telling Robert Smith The Cure’s Disintegration was the ‘best album ever’. 

The one thing I forgot to ask was there any significance to the name ‘Lino’ - as I’m sure my mother-in-law will ask me why.  But then again, all you really need to know is Lino was a great band and Lino is a wonderful album.  If you can nab a copy off Ebay, you’re doing yourself a favour.  Maybe sometime, I’ll organise a listening party at my place and revel in one of Australia’s best ever albums.  You’re all invited.

Note:  Tragically, Jad would pass away prior to the release of the second album, 2001’s Inclinator.  Inclinator is a buzzing soft-electro album nuanced with jazzy flourishes and introspective ambience.  It is subtly different from the debut; the mark of a band searching for a fresh sound and direction whilst honouring their roots.  I hate to say it, but it is a ‘mature’ audio delight.  Get By, Max and Yours are magnificent pieces that should grab your attention but overall, the richness and depth of the whole album will win you over.  Inclinator serves as a stunning epitaph for not only Jad, but for Lino as a whole.  

Again, I would like to thank Lisa for sharing her thoughts and memories, as quite obviously there are moments of rawness and sadness coupled with the fun and excitement of her time and experiences in the band.


The Lino video clips can be viewed here:


The Carriageworks 




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