NME's second review of Thank You

[ohioduran]

NME's second review of Thank You was always one of my favorite things. I personally love Thank You almost in its entirety but find the mixing/production a bit much to make the album easy to sit through in one sitting. But as a collection of cover tracks, it's great to dip into.

I owned the NME with their second review of Thank You in as many issues. I lost the issue when I moved at some point in the early 2000s and never could find the review text online. Watching some of the "Road to Medazzaland" videos this morning and it jumped out at me.

The Chauffeur line still makes me laugh out loud.

I'm just so glad I lived long enough in this world to hear this album. No wonder they're supposed to be cancelling Spitting Image - give Simon and the lads rubber heads and they could entertain a nation forever with their witty pastiches of songs we used to like. Flaming heck, they even cover one of their own songs, 'Drive By' (aka 'The Chauffeur'). Oil WAKE UPI You can't cover a DURAN DURAN song, you twits, you are Duran Duran,

All I want for Christmas is another Duran Duran cover versions album. Let's see them do 'Ebony And Ivory', Three Times A Lady, When I'm Cleaning Windows', Two Princes' and 'Ace Of Spades'. In the meantime, the jury gives them a monster (48) out of ten just for making us all so very, very happy.

David Quantick

[ohioduran]

And John's reply

[Goalzzz]

He really really really hates DD.

It also didn’t help that the only artists at the time who were themselves influenced by Japan were themselves utterly naff: Gary Numan, at one point in the grip of a Japan crush so severe that he dressed like a heavily made-up Private Walker from Dad’s Army in emulation of David Sylvian and had actual Japan’s Mick Karn on fretless bass on his records (Numan was, interestingly, one of the many acts to have an impact on fellow uncoolster Robert Palmer). And Duran Duran, a band who homed in on the subtlety, the reflectiveness and the occasional genuine moments of originality in Japan, and threw all those things out. Duran were clodhopping stadium New Romantics and their relation to Japan was like that of, say, Kiss to David Bowie: you could see where they were getting it from, but you wanted them to stop, forever. Duran Duran, so bad they named them twice, took the make-up, the clothes and the mixture of Bowie and, er, more Bowie and turned it into a kind of home-made B&Q violence of the glams.

And while the support of Numan and Duran helped give Japan a lift up into the charts, like a burglar gaining access to a property through a downstairs toilet window, it did nothing to make them cool. Time did that in the end, time and all those David Sylvain solo records where he seemed to have a list of Cool People In Rock to work through, like Holger Czukay and Robert Fripp (and time did it to Gary Numan, too, who was, in fact, always great and has finally got the reputation he always deserved. Duran Duran, meanwhile, are still shit).

[maxim]

I have never understood the public's tendency to rely on the opinions of music critics. Fortunately, this is now largely irrelevant, as the internet allows us to listen to music before purchasing it. Or, at the very least, it gives us the opportunity to research the opinion of fans, which will usually be more helpful than that of one individual whose musical tastes may be completely different from our own.
And, yes, Thank You is a good album. At least when it comes to covers albums.

[karenduran]

Don’t forget David Morley. (I wish I could.)

Some people just don’t get it. It’s like reading a review of a comedic film by a critic who thinks they’re watching Citizen Kane. Duran didn’t make music for the critics, and of course the critics hated that, and a lot of their reviews read more like personal vendettas than journalism. Describe what you genuinely don’t think works in a piece of music, instead of resorting to petty name calling and tired jibes like ‘so bad they named them twice.’ Fortunately, most reviews today are better. But there will always be music snobs who refuse to admit they like DD.

[ohioduran]

It's been such a pleasant vindicating surprise as a pop music fan that followed a lot of chart and write-ups about music history to see so many critics come around on Duran in the last 20 years or so.

Even friends/coworkers that were previously "meh on Duran" - when confronted with their live set at a festival set or something, had to admit what a great show they saw.

[flakybandit]

I take great pleasure in the fact that while Duran is still going strong, the NME in print form has long ceased to exist.

[aftertherain]

Crazy to think how tough dd had it

Even in the early 80s I remember an FM station who sponsored the 83 SBS tour in Australia wouldn’t play them

How does that work?, the radio station sponsors DD coz they're a major band and it’s a major tour
a win win for both, but this FM station won’t play them

When the FM radio station interviewed them them, they followed the interview with a DD song and it wasn’t a DD hit but rather the B side Secret October, 
before they played it they asked dd tell us about secret October?
I remember that interview, in fact I recorded it on cassette, you could tell dd were thinking why do you wanna play that for?

this same FM station would play Bowie LDance, the cure let’s go to bed/the walk, Inxs original sin and wait for it Spandau’s gold, but not DD
in fact if I had a dollar for every time they played gold I’d be a millionaire 

Yet on that same station was DDs concert advert on heavy rotation, I have that add recorded on cassette too 
and that advert went “not since the Beatles have scenes like this been seen, don’t miss DD live at The Drive etc etc” 
Memorial “Drive” was the venue the city’s largest outdoor tennis centre 

Despite all this, at the time dd were massive, being played on all AM stations and the tour was a major success

The irony is that these days, that that same FM station plays the modern disposable pop, crappy music of today, those DJs who ignored dd are nowhere to be seen

and like fb said

DD are still to this day, a happening entity offering something worth listening to and worthwhile seeing live

[Max Zorin]

It must be a terrible feeling for them that DD still exists, records and tours. Good.

[aftertherain]

Nov 16, 2024 16:45:05 GMT -5 Max Zorin said:

It must be a terrible feeling for them that DD still exists, records and tours. Good.

exactly max 

they need to deal with it and get help if required to deal with how wrong they were
coz after all a critic should have some idea that dd had the goods to be around for a long time 
and if they missed this well, that proves they were way off the mark/point 

in this case a much longer time after they themselves (the critic) are nowhere to be seen 

look what happened to that R&R HOF bozo nut case who said dd would never be inducted 

how embarrassing for him now, I’m sure he feels awfully shamed as the R&R HOF founder