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Grimli favorited a video
(4 weeks ago)
1984) The video for "The Wild Boys" was directed by Russell Mulcahy. The cost totalled over one million dollars, a staggering sum for mus...
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1984) The video for "The Wild Boys" was directed by Russell Mulcahy. The cost totalled over one million dollars, a staggering sum for music videos at the time, as his design filled one entire end of the "007 Stage" at Pinewood Studios with a metal pyramid and a windmill over a deep enclosed pool, and called for a lifelike robotic face, dozens of elaborate costumes, prosthetics, and makeup effects, and then-cutting-edge computer graphics. The choreography of dance routines, intricate stunts and fire effects added to the cost. Mulcahy meant the video to be a teaser for his full-length Burroughs film, demonstrating his vision to the movie studios he was wooing, but that project was never made.
The video featured all of the band members imprisoned and in peril, wearing uncharacteristically rough and ragged outfits similar to the pieced-together clothing of the film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. John Taylor was strapped to the roof of a Mercedes-Benz car suffering a psycho-torture with pics of his childhood and early past, Nick Rhodes was caged with a pile of computer equipment, Roger Taylor was put in a hot-air baloon that was tangling from the ceiling, leaving him high off the ground, and Andy Taylor was bound (guitar and all) to a ship's figurehead. Singer Simon Le Bon, strapped to the spinning windmill which dunked his head beneath the water with each revolution, supposedly found himself in real difficulty when the windmill stopped with his head underwater. He was given a tube to breathe through and the issue was promptly fixed, but the British tabloids had a field day exaggerating Le Bon's "near death experience". Le Bon himself has dismissed this story in more than one interview as an "urban myth", claiming nothing of the sort happened.
"The Wild Boys" was named Best British Video at the 1985 BRIT Awards.
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Duran Duran represents a turning point in the sexual history of new wave: Girls pulled their hair and screamed, while boys complained that they were fascist pop puppets taking up valuable airtime that rightfully belonged to Black Flag. But the girls were right, as they always are. The Fab Five combined New Romantic synths, disco bass lines, flash guitar, wedge haircuts, and a host of art-glam pretensions into some of the '80s' juiciest pop trash.
Duran Duran's first three albums are butter: Simon Le Bon sings of love and fashion, his mouth alive with juices like wine, while Nick Rhodes presses brightly colored keyboard buttons and all three Tay-lors boogie down. The debut has the insanely catchy "Planet Earth," the lecherous "Girls on Film," and the nuclear-war-pondering "Is There Something I Should Know?" Seven has "Union of the Snake" and "New Moon on Monday." But Rio is definitely the one to get -- even filler like "Hold Back the Rain" has lipstick cherry all over the lens. The title tune evokes a mysterious femme fatale with a fetish for dancing on the sand, and when she shines she really shows you all she can (huh?). "Save a Prayer" is a drippily suggestive slow jam raising the hermeneutic conceit "Some people call it a one-night stand/But we can call it . . . paradise." "Hungry Like the Wolf" is lycanthropic disco madness, complete with orgasmic moans from some lucky she-wolf or another, culminating as Simon gets all Romulus on your Remus by the moonlight tide. A classic.
Although their imminent demise has been predicted many times, the Durannies have hung around long enough to age into the despot dowagers of the new-wave empire. Indeed, even a devoted fan has to be puzzled by their staying power. After the live Arena, and a lull with the side projects Arcadia and the Power Station, they returned as a trio (minus Roger and Andy) on the Nile Rodgers- produced Notorious -- and yes, that's 16-year-old Christy Turlington posing seductively on the back cover. The later albums are spottier, but the hits kept coming every couple of years or so, and Greatest rounds them up (with a little too much '90s stuff). The earlier best-of Decade has an ugly cover and no "New Moon on Monday." Thank You was a popular, though not very good, 1995 album of covers, including a version of Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines" that became a fluke urban-radio hit. By Medazzaland and Pop Trash, John Taylor had dropped out of the group, surely just a temporary glitch. Not until the last Duran Duran fan passes from the earth shall its name go unhonored. And Duran Duran fans shall never, never pass from the earth, not as long as there is sand somewhere upon which Rio can dance. (ROB SHEFFIELD)
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I don't know where a place to debate besides here and facebook, so if you can tell me where to go then I will. I am too flexible with my schedule.