Arena

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There are few things as quintessentially American as thinking you are better than most of your fellow Americans, most of whom are thinking the same thing about you. Sure, Arena is no Live at Leeds or Made in Japan or anything, but I can think of a couple of albums they could drop from that list and at least get Arena in at number 50 or maybe even 49. And I mean, yeah, everybody and their brother bought a copy of Frampton Comes Alive in 1976, but does it really belong on a list of the 50 greatest live albums ever? It was released in 1984 and in this version there is the addition of 2 bonuses that maintains the optimum level of the album.

And as far as the American charts went, that was mostly that (although I will always maintain that “Electric Barbarella” from Medazzaland may just be their finest song ever, and for a fleeting moment recaptured that early 80s magic in a way no band has since). There’s more kick to the instrumental parts too, and you still have all the assorted sounds that pop in and out (I have no doubt were prerecorded).And what, you may be wondering, is the appeal of what was probably intended to be little more than the kind of contractually obligated live release most bands are forced to put out by the record company after a few studio albums? Mystery and menace abound in the staccato keyboard riff of “The Chauffeur”, and for a few minutes I’m out there on the tar plains with the glides looking for a new place to drive and grooving on some sparkling pan flute. I mean really, the guy puts an incredible amount of emotion into the most incredibly meaningless lyrics you could ever hope to hear. The Union of the Snake” sounds like it’s a secret society that is about as threatening as the Mickey Mouse Club, but that’s one hell of a monster melody in the chorus. I have no idea what it means to “save a prayer ‘till the morning after”, but I don’t really care because the melody pulls me in regardless.

So unlike a lot of live albums up to that point, you aren’t really missing anything in the live versions compared to their studio counterparts, the band thoughtfully made sure to include all the bleeps and bloops and unexpected sound effects that were always popping out of nowhere on Duran Duran records, and they even included that marvelous pan flute solo at the end of “The Chauffeur”. I don’t think I even realized back then it was a live album, but I really loved it – great song after great song. Which is why I am not surprised at the quality of the musicianship on Arena, although there’s not a snowball’s chance in Satan’s front yard that there weren’t some fixes in the studio (I always thought the two bonus tracks tacked on to the 2004 remaster sounded a lot rougher than the tracks on the original album, which I take to mean they didn’t get the same amount of “fixing” the ones that made the cut did). The album featured most of the band's big hits in a live environment, as well as some album tracks from Rio ( 1982) and Seven and the Ragged Tiger ( 1983), and a new studio track " The Wild Boys" produced by Nile Rodgers, who had previously remixed the single " The Reflex". Duran Duran’s arrangements were always interesting, always thoughtful – it took real planning and even architecture, if you will, to construct the sounds they did.For some reason I guess I thought Duran Duran concerts were mostly pre-recorded, not sure why I thought that, guess it was the obsession with sequencers in the early 80s that seemed to obviate the need for actual musicianship for many bands. Both the Sing Blue Silver documentary and the Arena film were reissued on DVD in 2004; the Arena DVD features The Making of Arena as an extra.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.He almost has me caring that “the union of the snake is on the climb” with the amount of passion he puts into singing about it. To cap off the band's highly successful 1983/1984 Sing Blue Silver World Tour, EMI released a live album, which according to the sleeve was "Recorded Around The World 1984".