MANILA, Philippines - Duran Duran bassist John Taylor once tried to go solo. In one of his club gigs, there were 20 people in the audience.
Thursday night at the Araneta Coliseum, Taylor proved he played best with his old band, dubbed the Fab Five at its peak in the mid-1980s. It?s been more than 20 years since and fab might have given way to some flab, especially in the case of front man Simon Le Bon. Still, something must be said about how Duran Duran could give its now middle-aged fans reason to get up and dance?with New Wavish poise.
The fun started on the second song, when Le Bon hinted he was kinda ?hungry? ?a cue for ?Hungry Like the Wolf.? The vocalist, dressed in a dark suit with a slightly loosened tie, sounded in tip-top shape.
To his left, Nick Rhodes?looking stoic and sporting a mop of Andy Warhol hair?presided over on keyboards with a MacBook to boot. The thumps from his synthesizers would reverberate throughout the evening.
Spacey quality
Complementing the well-mixed drum tracks was Roger Taylor?s own live pounding on the skins, which?in true ?80s fashion?was technologically enhanced to emit a spacey, Sensurround audio quality.
The third Taylor, Andy the guitarist, had joined the reunited original lineup but quit again in 2006. His replacement, Dominic Brown, was not a bad choice; his solos served as a refreshing counterpoint to Rhodes? machines and effects.
The band?s claim to relevance, the new album ?Red Carpet Massacre,? also the name of this current tour, was prominently plugged when the title track was performed. The funk groove and echoing rhythms made it hard to discern the lyrics.
Another track from the same album, which Le Bon introduced as co-written by Justin Timberlake, was about getting over one?s pride and calling for help on desperate moments.
What matters most
Was the band desperate when it decided to regroup in 2001? Maybe not financially, since the members were said to be comfortably living off royalties and merchandise sales of past albums, and in fact paid for production expenses while writing and recording new songs.
The question of whether the group still matters today is debatable, although some relatively new stuff heard at the concert, including the brooding ?Come Undone? from 1993, could provide a fair, positive answer.
But as far as the screaming female fans were concerned, all that was important was to hear the old hits. Everybody stood up upon hearing ?The Reflex? and ?View To a Kill??the former reminding us what the art of remix was about, and the latter insisting that a seductive groove wins over lyrical genius: ?Dance into the fire.?
Le Bon was obviously too heavy around the middle to do his signature pirouettes, though he managed a few spins in ?Notorious,? ?Wild Boys? and ?Rio.? Rhodes and John Taylor? the art school buddies who formed the band?displayed a dexterity that belied their ages.
Whether it was accurate to have labeled Duran Duran a New Wave band in the past was lost in the dance at the Big Dome. Come to think of it, almost every group that had synths and fab hair was called one.
