Duran Duran: Arena

Duran Duran: Arena

1984

Capitol Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Is There Something I Should Know?  2. Hungry Like the Wolf  3. New Religion  4. Save a Prayer  5. The Wild Boys  6. The Seventh Stranger   7. The Chauffeur  8. Union of the Snake  9. Planet Earth  10.  Careless Memories



A live album with one new studio track, although if you're not paying close attention you might not even notice it's a live album...They reproduce their studio counterparts with incredible accuracy, essentially mix out audience noise, put empty spaces between each track and the new studio song is smack dab in the middle of the album...So yea, they're not exactly going for a "live vibe" here...

 They also rely pretty heavily on sequencers and choreographed video footage, which hems you in musically when you're putting on a live performance...They can't really go off or else the whole thing would fall apart, so yea, don't expect any radical reinterpretations or too much spontaneity and you'll find that it works as a greatest hits package...I actually like it better than their official greatest hits releases (due to fortuitously being recorded the split second before the band started to suck)...

Oh, yea...The new studio track is "The Wild Boys," which is (again) a song that looms large over my childhood...I used to have a videocassette that contained the video...

The clip was a ghoulish spectacle like little else I had seen...With freakish monsters, unsettling purple lighting and a post-apocalyptic feel, I could tell that it was obviously more than just a "music video, but what exactly was it?

I needed additional information, so I reached out to an adult who obviously had zero idea either but decided to hazard a guess anyway..."This is Star Wars," they informed me. That was all I needed to hear! I was obviously looking at expanded universe Star Wars material! I proceeded to watch the video no less than 10 gazillion times...I manged to drive everyone I lived with absolutely nuts while I struggled to work out where in the Star Wars saga this new sequence fit in...

Turns out it wasn't Star Wars at all...This video was basically a test reel for an unproduced film adaptation of William S Burrough's "The Wild Boys"...Which would explain the homoerotic vibe I was getting as a kid...

 (Y'know, between "The Wild Boys" and the "Union of the Snake" video, I get the distinct feeling that Duran Duran were actively trying to terrify their audiences...)

(The song remained lodged in my head for decades after the fact, mainly because my band used to always play at this club called "Rock M Billiards" that was attached to a make strip club called (you guessed it) Wild Boys...)

All in all, this is nothing earth-shattering...Just a sterile, slightly hollow live album with a new single that's probably only memorable due to its off-the-hook video...Still, fans looking for a live fix (or more accurately a greatest hits album featuring slightly alternate versions) will like this, although I doubt even the biggest Durannie on Planet Earth will get too excited about any of this...Practically the definition of a "get it only if you find it cheap" album...

Here's the amazing video for "The Wild Boys"...Enjoy...