OMFG DURAN MFing DURAN!!!11!

Last night’s Duran Duran show was, without a doubt, the best of the three times I have seen them to date. Brilliant. Absolutely at the top of their form…it was like they had walked out of 1985. Hell, Simon even looked distinctly less puffy than when we saw him in NYC in 2000…boy’s obviously been hitting a gym.

Basically, a greatest-hits show, with a few tracks from the latest CD, but they played no less than 3 songs from their first album (“Planet Earth”–which they opened with, appropriately enough, “Careless Memories” and “Sound of Thunder”–during which they took an extended breakdown, while Nick switched the synth hook over the famous Giorgio Moroder riff from Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, which the back-up vocalist sung a few verses of while Simon grabbed some water). They also played “New Religion” and “View To A Kill”, which was very cool. During the breakdown of “Girls on Film”, they broke into Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Wanna Take You Higher” before sequeing back into “Girls on Film”, and then into Dee-Lite’s “Groove is in the Heart” for a few bars. It was obvious that they were having fun playing together, and that really made it out into the audience.

Herself picked up a DD three-quarter-sleeve T-shirt, and I grabbed the CD from the amazingly good opening band, Stimulator, which features the lead singer of Pillbox and the guitarist from Snake River Conspiracy doing a sort of retro-heavy Blondie-meets-Garbage kinda thing, which completely won over the crowd (which is saying a lot when you’re the opening act for a legendary band, and nobody’s ever heard of you). I’ll be providing a sample of their work this coming Friday.

Of course, the minute that Duran Duran took the stage, the entire place stood up, and remained standing for the 2+ hours that followed. So, yeah….ouch, ankles.

Finished up some work this morning, then went to lunch with Laura and Yosa, who then proceeded to drop me off to see The Devil’s Rejects while they went pattern and fabric shopping. I liked the film, but not as much as House of 1000 Corpses (in particular, I think his choice to try and make the killers somewhat sympathetic in the second half of the film was a mistake).

…and that was my weekend.