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Arena

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Then a few years later, wonder of wonders, Duran Duran had the greatest comeback this side of Aerosmith with The Wedding Album and the extraordinary “Ordinary World”, and then they subsequently shot it all to hell with a covers album nobody really asked for. Burning the Ground" • " Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)" • " Serious" • " Ordinary World" • " Come Undone" • " Too Much Information" • " Perfect Day" • " White Lines" • " Out of My Mind" • " Electric Barbarella" • " Someone Else Not Me" • " (Reach Up for The) Sunrise" • " What Happens Tomorrow" • " Nice" • " Falling Down • " All You Need Is Now • " Girl Panic! There’s no denying that their hooky choruses, danceable grooves, and general sense of style not only suck you right in, but also made them an integral part of the first half of the decade.

When a vocalist can sing lines like “you say you’re easy honey/but you’re about as easy as a nuclear war” and I am willing to look the other way, well, I’d say you must have a pretty talented vocalist. New Religion" was recorded 9 February at The Forum in Los Angeles, and " Cracks in the Pavement" was recorded at the 5 March 1984 show at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, at the same concert where the video for " The Reflex" was filmed.Duran Duran was always a triumph of style over substance really, a whole lot of nothing wrapped up in spectacular packaging with a giant glittering bow. It was meant to be a teaser for a full-length feature film of the same name, based on the 1971 novel The Wild Boys: A Book Of The Dead by William S. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Although I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one, any list of “The 50 Greatest Live Albums Ever” that is thoughtful enough to include Wings Over America and Pulse and The Song Remains the Same along with a couple of live Queen albums is all right by me, even if for some inexplicable reason it has not only Kiss Not-Very-Live but also Kiss Not-Very-Live II.

Sure, some of it was sequencers rather than live musicianship, but all the same they were masters of musical atmosphere in their idiom. Some people think that means it lacks the atmosphere of a live album, but I beg to differ, it just means I don’t have to hear a bunch of idiots whistling while I am listening to the music. This is a really decent album, and whilst it claims to be a 'live' album, it seems to have been produced to a level that makes it closer to a studio album, albeit with more atmosphere and depth. The Wild Boys" single was issued with six separate covers in the UK - one featuring each individual band member and one of the band collectively. To cap off the band's highly successful 1983/1984 Sing Blue Silver World Tour, EMI released a live album, which according to the sleeve was "Recorded Around The World 1984".Which is why I am not surprised at the quality of the musicianship on Arena, although there’s not a snowball’s chance in Satan’s front yard that there weren’t some fixes in the studio (I always thought the two bonus tracks tacked on to the 2004 remaster sounded a lot rougher than the tracks on the original album, which I take to mean they didn’t get the same amount of “fixing” the ones that made the cut did). It wasn’t the last time I snuck her into a concert actually – I took her to listen to Bob Dylan outside a different venue a couple of years later, and once security took down the barricades before the encore we slipped in to see His Bobness sing “All Along the Watchtower” (big mistake taking her to this one – a Bob Dylan concert is not something a pre-teen girl finds impressive, she kept begging to go home. There’s more kick to the instrumental parts too, and you still have all the assorted sounds that pop in and out (I have no doubt were prerecorded). At the time of release, critics were suspicious that the mix was too polished for a live album, as most of the audience was muted.

The intro to “The Seventh Stranger” is like going over a musical waterfall and dropping into an enchanted, sumptuously extravagant synthesizer lagoon. So when I see a link for an article on “ The 50 Greatest Live Albums Ever”, do I really have time to read about 50 live albums that may or may not be deserving of the appellation of “greatest ever”?But one fantastic live album that isn’t included in the list – and to be honest probably shouldn’t be – is Duran Duran’s Arena.

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