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Arena

Arena

RRP: £99
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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 intro to “The Seventh Stranger” is like going over a musical waterfall and dropping into an enchanted, sumptuously extravagant synthesizer lagoon. The album featured most of the band's big hits in a live environment, as well as some album tracks from Rio ( 1982) and Seven and the Ragged Tiger ( 1983), and a new studio track " The Wild Boys" produced by Nile Rodgers, who had previously remixed the single " The Reflex".

Other criticism arose from the omission of some of the band's biggest songs like " The Reflex", " Girls on Film" and " Rio".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). For some reason I guess I thought Duran Duran concerts were mostly pre-recorded, not sure why I thought that, guess it was the obsession with sequencers in the early 80s that seemed to obviate the need for actual musicianship for many bands. I mean let’s be honest, if you have “Hungry Like the Wolf”, you really have a good chunk of the truly essential Duran Duran songs you need. 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.

Planet Earth" • " Careless Memories" • " Girls on Film" • " My Own Way" • " Hungry Like the Wolf" • " Save a Prayer" • " Rio"• " Is There Something I Should Know?

I mean really, the guy puts an incredible amount of emotion into the most incredibly meaningless lyrics you could ever hope to hear. And I mean, yeah, everybody and their brother bought a copy of Frampton Comes Alive in 1976, but does it really belong on a list of the 50 greatest live albums ever?

Hungry Like the Wolf” would be laughable if it didn’t have the hookiest chorus 1982 had to offer, one that made it undeniably iconic. 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.And even if you aren’t willing to go that far, if you have any love whatsoever for New Romantic poseur music from the early 80s (and who can resist its gaudy charms really? But then when you have a countryful of people taught almost from the moment of conception that they are part of the specialest, most amazingest, most freedom-and-democracy lovingest God-blessed sun-kissed country from sea to shining sea there ever was or ever will be, well, frankly, that is going to do some really weird things to your national psyche. I can live without “The Reflex”, I can live without “New Moon on Monday”, but the few Duran Duran songs I can’t live without are all here (except “Rio”, but the 2004 remastered version with the bonus tracks fixed that): “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Save a Prayer” and “The Seventh Stranger” and “The Chauffeur”, and then a bunch of the kind of interchangeable songs where it hardly matters which songs they picked.

There are few things as quintessentially American as thinking you are better than most of your fellow Americans, most of whom are thinking the same thing about you. And then to top it off you are usually taught that whatever group you happened to born into in this country (be it Republican, Democrat, evangelical, Amish, Trekkie, or what have you) is better than any other group found in the most incredible nation that history has ever seen, well, it is no surprise that most Americans inherently have a pretty bad case of better-than-most-everyone-else-itis, and I am probably no exception. You don’t lose anything with these versions, but you do gain quite a bit more energy and a new sense of life that has been breathed into these songs. At 14, i bought this album on cassette in a bin in a French gas station and played it to death, as my Australian family travelled through a frozen European winter in 1984.Sure, Arena is no Live at Leeds or Made in Japan or anything, but I can think of a couple of albums they could drop from that list and at least get Arena in at number 50 or maybe even 49. And – other than the hit James Bond theme “A View to a Kill” – Arena was our last glimpse of Duran Duran at the top. By the way I think you’re spot on about Le Bon’s extraordinary ability to pour such intense feeling into a line or phrase. By that time Duran Duran’s star was on the wane – side projects were going on by that time, three of the members had already released the greatest album Duran Duran never recorded with Arcadia’s So Red the Rose, a personal favorite of mine I plan on reviewing someday. 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.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
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