Category: Music

Gig Review: Duran Duran at O2 Academy Birmingham, 14th September 2021

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It’s been two and a half years since I last did a gig review on here! I’m a bit out of the habit…

Like many other things in my life post-pandemic, going to gigs is not as frequent an occurrence as it used to be. I like my evenings at home on my sofa and it has to be something special for me to buy tickets these days. However, I have been to a few since the world started returning to normal (nine, by my calculations) and have one or two lined up for the future. It’s probably time I start catching up with some reviews again.

It was, of course, highly appropriate that my first post-pandemic gig back was my first time getting to see Duran Duran. They’ve been my favourite band for years now but for various reasons I just hadn’t had the chance to see them. When a couple of surprise dates were announced in September 2021, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

I reviewed this gig for both Daily Duranie and Cherry Lipstick at the time, so my much fresher thoughts are out there already and I won’t repeat those. Really it’s just nice to look back, in hindsight, at a really special experience – the suddenness of the announcement, heading down to Birmingham for the evening, the incredible atmosphere at the O2 Academy (a much smaller venue than the arenas Duran usually play) and the overwhelming feeling of experiencing something for which I’d waited a long time. Not to mention excitedly livetweeting the gig (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) 😀

Duran Duran

Now, for the first time in nearly four years, I shall update my Band Aid baby bucket list:

Updated Band Aid baby bucket list progress: song artists 11/37 (29.7%); message artists 2/7 (28.6%); total artists 13/44 (29.5%).

Playlist Pick: Arctic Monkeys, ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’

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Rumours of the death of Playlist Pick Wednesdays were apparently premature. New Wednesday series now starting NEXT week instead. I haven’t had time to organise it this week with the game competition deadline and everything!

Today’s playlist pick is another classic from the mid-’00s, which is a period in pop-rock for which I have been a bit nostalgic recently.

I also thoroughly recommend listening to the Anton du Beke cover in order to celebrate his long-overdue installation as a Strictly judge (for 2021 at least…):

We did a quickstep routine to this in the ‘Strictly Dance’ exercise class I attended pre-pandemic. I will get back to that class someday.

Playlist Pick: John Carpenter, ‘Halloween Theme’

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This will be the last Playlist Pick for a while, as I’m starting a new Wednesday series next week!

I put a few tunes together for my current game on Beepbox yesterday and had to work fairly hard for them NOT to sound like they were aping John Carpenter. I don’t think I succeeded with all of them. Geth kept telling me he was visualising pumpkin lanterns.

It is a classic, though….

…and I found myself staring at my lineup of Halloween DVDs on the shelf this afternoon while lying down to start my recovery from Zombie Eye III: The Reawakening (my first uveitis attack in two years). I think the film may be getting a run out soon. Possibly even before this Hallowe’en.

And while my current game mostly doesn’t suit a Carpenter-esque soundtrack, there will be plenty more suitable opportunities in the future…

Playlist Pick: The Strokes, ‘Last Nite’

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In recent years, following the chart on and off, I’ve been a bit disappointed that rock music seems to have all but disappeared from the scene. I know it’s still going on in a more underground way (all forms of music are still going on in an underground way, as I know very well having been a goth for so long and more recently a synthwave fan!), but it’d be nice to see it back in more popular consciousness. Maybe there’ll be another big revival in a few years’ time.

Anyway, the earworm part of my brain has been casting back to the early-to-mid-’00s recently, when things were very different and there was a LOT of rock in the charts. A lot of it was rubbish, but I always liked this Strokes hit.

It takes me right back to the rock clubs of Edinburgh and a very different time in my life.

Playlist Pick: The Beatles, ‘Drive My Car’

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I had my first vaccine dose today and was trying to find a suitable song. Google has a lot of suggestions but none of them seem quite right. Earworm playlist is constant Duran Duran this week anyway as I’ve been listening to them so much!

Instead I’m going to go with a car-themed one for today.

I’ve always liked ‘Drive My Car’. It was a childhood favourite at a time when driving a car seemed like a fun, cartoony thing to do, rather than a stressful adult world of traffic jams and poorly signposted roundabouts. The 1960s can also seem fairly cartoony to those of us who weren’t there, and this song is a good example of that for me.

Playlist Pick: Duran Duran, ‘Invisible’

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There was only one song that was ever going to make my Wednesday playlist pick today. It’s ‘new Duran Duran single’ day!

I woke up early to listen to it on Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 show this morning, and have been enjoying it on and off all day. I really liked it on first listen, which is unusual, as most songs take some time to grow on me.

The new album (which is coming out in October) also became available for pre-order at midnight last night. I may have ordered both the signed CD and the green vinyl. New Duran albums don’t come along very often.

Now off to listen to the single again…

Playlist Pick: Kraftwerk, ‘The Model’

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Or ‘Das Model’ to give it its original name!

I became an ’80s obsessive during the first big nostalgia wave of 1998-2004 (my teenage years), and I had this song on every playlist I made during that time (it was actually a late ’70s track, but one of those late ’70s tracks that was ahead of its time and is more associated with the ’80s in popular awareness today). I’ve been in a synth mood again this week, and this is a highly suitable song. Nostalgic for many reasons!