Duran Duran - Decade
With a little bit of trepidation, I popped the retrospective collection of Duran Duran’s first ten years of hits into the CD player one night, only to come away from it with a reminder of how much I liked Duran Duran’s early stuff.
A lot of the material on Decade had the privelege of radio running it so far into the ground that it pierced the crust, rammed through the mantle, and continued playing right into the core of the planet. But with the benefit of time, hindsight and giving it a shot at an unbiased listen, it’s easy to see why - Duran Duran’s early singles were catchy as hell, loaded with new wave vibes, funky basslines, hard-edged guitar licks, and some of the best vocal harmonies anyone was doing in the early 80s. Period.
Naturally, the singles from Rio dominate the first half of the CD, but it was with “Is There Something I Should Know?” and “Union Of The Snake” that I was reminded of just how good Duran Duran could be when firing on all cylinders. Those songs are catchy enough to be repeat-track material. I still think Le Bon and company reached their apex with the Bond movie theme song “A View To A Kill”, which out of necessity (and tradition) elevated the production style to a slightly more epic level. I’ll probably get lynched by some McCartney fans for saying this, but it’s as good a Bond movie tune as “Live And Let Die” (in fact, upon further reflection, I think I like “A View To A Kill” better).
Sadly, what happened after that didn’t quite hold my attention.
The later songs didn’t grab me as much as their earlier efforts, with attempts to branch out in new directions. “Notorious” lived up to its name by just not doing it for me - it went into Chic-style territory that INXS had already more than adequately revisited by that time. Likewise, I always found the faux-jazzy “Skin Trade” irritating. “I Don’t Want Your Love” was almost a return to form, but almost made them sound like a 
boy band. “All She Wants Is” gets things back on track, so naturally the album ends there.
For all their attempts to reform and hit it big again, perhaps Duran Duran would do well to take a quick refresher course in how they made it into the spotlight in the first place - they’ve never gotten back to sounding this good.
- Planet Earth (4:07)
- Girls On Film (3:30)
- Hungry Like The Wolf (3:25)
- Rio (5:38)
- Save A Prayer (5:33)
- Is There Something I Should Know? (4:05)
- Union Of The Snake (4:20)
- The Reflex (4:25)
- Wild Boys (4:16)
- A View To A Kill (3:33)
- Notorious (3:58)
- Skin Trade (4:25)
- I Don’t Want Your Love (3:47)
- All She Wants Is (4:36)
Released by: Capitol
Release date: 1989
Total running time: 59:38
What do you get with a band that seems to be equal parts Beatles influence and comedic irony? That would be 10cc, and those looking for an entry-level crash course into the band’s history could hardly ask for better than The Very Best Of, covering the British group’s six-year career and following it up with some material from alumni Godley & Creme.
After seven years of churning out the hard-hitting accompaniment for Electronic Arts’ Command & Conquer series of real-time strategy games (among others) and releasing over half a dozen albums’ worth of material attached to computer games, not to mention stints with Las Vegas bands like Home Cookin’ and Mo’ Friction, Frank Klepacki is flying solo - and proving there’s more to his repertoire than being EA’s own C&C music factory. Klepacki flexes his signature funk-techno muscle on such tracks as “Defunkt” and “Freaks From Within”, but delves into some new territory, including lounge music and even the glorious vintage ’70s throwback that is “Gonna Rock Yo Body”. In a true tribute to the roller disco era, “Rock Yo Body” features “robotic” vocoder-processed vocals, synth-string stabs, and the kind of cheesy electronic percussion you’d expect from the late ’70s and early ’80s. And the beauty of it is, it works. If you, like me, grew up during that era…this song will give you a thrill of recognition and a goofy grin. It’s good cheese, a nice little trip back to the day when Grandmaster Flash was considered new, not old-school. “Gonna Rock Yo Body” is an unlikely candidate for the best song on the whole CD, but if you’re already acquainted with Frank Klepacki’s body of game work, this track should jump out and grab you because it demonstrates what he can do outside of that genre. “Mode One” shifts into new wave gear with an ever-so-slight nod in the direction of early, pre-drenched-with-samples Depeche Mode. By the end of the album, you’ve gotten to hear so many styles and distinctive pieces that you’re not left thinking “Hey, this stuff all sounds exactly like 
Command & Conquer!”
One can be forgiven for sometimes thinking that the post-Beatles British invasion bands were a dime a dozen, but every once in a while one emerged which kept itself afloat on the power of its own prodigious talents. Some, like The Move, spread their wings immediately and mixed deft Fab Four homages with experimenation in other styles. The Zombies, however, stayed a bit closer to home, sticking fast to the beat group parameters and even borrowing some of the Beatles’ trademark maneuvers, such as covering old blues tunes (including “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”, a Smokey Robinson classic which had already been appropriated by the Beatles). But it’s sometimes easy to overlook that the Zombies had their own dynamic duo in the form of Rod Argent (later of Argent) and Colin Blunstone (who, among other solo and session work, has done guest lead vocals for the Alan Parsons Project). While some of the Zombies’ material sometimes washes into the background of Beatles imitators, there are some bright gems which singled them out for praise.