Musicpost: New Wave giants Duran Duran, INXS

Oh, the 80s...there was a lot going on in music, so many genres fussing and coming apart. New Wave rock bands were coming out of the woodwork with all kinds of variations in sound and going back into obscurity as one-hit wonders. Not among these were the British band Duran Duran and the Australian group INXS, both of which produced hit after hit throughout the 80s and into the 90s.

Fronted by the sexy and slick Simon LeBon, Duran Duran soared to the top of the charts with hit songs such as "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Rio," and "The Reflex," to name a few, all of which rode on the ingenious use of synth arpeggios by keyboardist Nick Rhodes and the hard-to-miss rhythm of bass guitar player Andy Taylor. The videos for these songs, in heavy rotation on MTV, were even bigger hits.

Around the same time, INXS was climbing the charts and attracting an audience with its funky grooves and an intense Mick Jaggerish, Jim Morrisonish, Steven Tylerish character for a front man, Michael Hutchence.

I have many, many, many favorite Duran Duran songs, but I will stick to the 80s today, choosing for this post "Save a Prayer" from the band's second album--the multi-platinum smash Rio. This song is not only my favorite Duran Duran song of 80s, but also one of my overall favorites of the entire decade.

Unfortunately, all of Duran Duran's original videos on YouTube are disabled for embedding, so I had to go with a live performance. I chose a decent one from 1984 that shows parts of the video on a large screen above the stage. (To see a high quality copy of the original video and hear the song as recorded in the studio, go here -- I highly recommend it.)



"Don't Change" is one of my favorite INXS songs (up there with "New Sensation"), and it's from the band's third album, Shabooh Shoobah, released in 1983. Here, too, all of the original videos on YouTube are disabled for embedding, but in this case I found video with decent sound that puts together a montage of live performances from 1983 to 1997. Enjoy.



Special thanks to Darla
Copyright © 2009, Primetime Oracle
All Rights Reserved