Monday, July 13, 2015

Song of the Day # 540 Duran Duran


Duran Duran. Who'd have thunk it! Old Simon Le Bon's eminently punchable fizzgog leering out at you from this blog. I'd certainly not have thunk it when I set off on this particular exercise 540 days ago. Really from that time I'm a Dexys, Echo & the Bunnymen and Joy Division man and Duran Duran never fitted remotely in there. They were in another part of the classroom chatting up the girls.Watch them pout, preen and lip synch shockingly in the video to this.What a bunch of tarts!

Five pretty boy clothes-horses who rode out of Birmingham on the back of the New Romantic movement in the early eighties to fame and fortune and legions of screaming girls. And here's a song about absolutely nothing at all. It's full of that vague European  paranoia that was so common in British pop music at the beginning of the eighties. The band soon shed all this Futurism with their next record of course along with their New Romantic clobber for suits and aspiration and sleeker, more refined songs. It all served them well.

Like I said they're not a group I would have expected to feature on here but I'm not particularly bothered about credibility at my point in life, The playground is far behind me.I don't own the records and most of them generally leave me cold. Sure they're an unashamed pop band but I'd go to Lexicon of Love  or Dare from that era in preference. Like most muso types with our innate, inbuilt snobbery I'd plump for their first album rather than their second one given a choice. On second thoughts, most muso types would disregard this particular group altogether.

I found my way to this song the other day though and it did more for me than most of their stuff, largely for the 'Georgie Davis is coming out..'  hookline that took me back. It seemsed strange and out of place as a Simon Le Bon lyric somehow. It's a particular reference to the time and place that they were in which was not like the band as for the most part they were about escape.

George Davis was an imprisoned felon in the late seventies who had a much publicised campaign built around him proclaiming his innocence round about that time. For the record, Sham 69 wrote a song about him but I'll leave it to you to track that down.


All of this would have meant nothing to Americans at the time. Instead, the line was misinterpreted and seized upon in Gay Clubs and turned into something of an anthem. ver the next decade Duran Duran built a credibility in The States that they never managed here. You can hear their influence in The Killers, The Bravery and the Dandy Warhols, possibly Arcade Fire.  George Davis meanwhile is still maintaining his innocence decades later despite further convictions. 


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