Magic Jewball

It’s 80’s week at J-Ball! I know it’s a popular theme around here, but nothing moves time and place back to some other, specific moment for me than music. And so, I enjoy going to concerts where every single song doesn’t just remind me of another slice of my life, it takes me right there. When I see Depeche Mode, I can remember the many, many times I’ve seen them over the years but with Duran Duran, there is only one show to remember and it was twenty-five years ago. I realized that during the concert. Wowzah! I think I was only permitted to go because I was going with a group of 3 friends and one of their Dads. God bless that guy for sitting through that show.

Actually, and KP can confirm this because she went with me, there were a lot of men there this time and they didn’t just seem to be companions, they seemed to actually know the words to the songs. That wasn’t the case in my day. Back then, boys made fun of girls who liked DD. Girls made fun of other girls who didn’t like the correct guy in DD (yes, someone told me Nick Rhodes was gay and I was so mad but I was vindicated when he got married. It wasn’t to me, though.)

So the question is, do these songs hold up today? First off, I have to say that I am truly proud that even as a pre-pubescent, I liked a group which got together on their own as adults and wrote their own music. And never really broke up, not that I listened to much after 1985. Maybe that wedding album, but I wasn’t as enraptured with that as everyone else. Which is probably why I waited all this time to see them again. But honestly, except for some of those Seven and the Ragged Tiger songs, which make me cringe now, I think the first few albums are still total genius. The Chauffeur? Even the Deftones covered that.

(Speaking of covers, I don’t think my jaw has dropped further with a concert cover than seeing Simon LeBon sing “Warm Leatherette.” I kid you not.)

I sometimes wonder if bands like this get frustrated putting out album after album and then they go play a show and no one reacts to anything but the stuff they produced twenty years ago. But maybe they know how happy it makes people and that’s enough. At least I hope so. I think they must know.

Even if you don’t like Duran Duran, this post should still mean something to you. Because if you are here, it must in some way mean you like my writing. And I started writing as a kid, and this is hard to admit but here we go, writing little stories about Nick Rhodes. To this day, in my fiction the main character is always named Nick until the end when I decide on a real name for him. It’s just a little nod to tradition. You can see tiny Nick behind the keyboards up there in the pic (I forgot the real camera and had to use the Blackberry) and while I was there, I gave him a silent thank you for inspiring me to take my imagination and put it in words.

Someone asked me if I felt ancient seeing those “ancient men.” But I didn’t. I felt like young Becca, totally enthralled and obsessed, knowing every word, buying every magazine (we didn’t have the Interweb then), caring about nothing other than music but otherwise not really the me I am now. If I ever dreamed then that strangers would be reading my writing, I never would have believed it.

Not that you’re strange. That’d be me, I was the one who liked Nick.

Title comes, ironically, because the show was in Central Park and it poured so that KP and I huddled under a little umbrella yet still got drenched, from:
Duran Duran – Hold Back The Rain