It was 1982 all over again last night at the Faena Theater on Miami Beach when Duran Duran performed a special invitation-only concert for SiriusXM listeners. The 56-year-old Simon LeBon, 57-year-old John Taylor, 57-year-old Roger Taylor and the baby of the group, 55-year-old Nick Rhodes, showed no signs of slowing down as they crushed through a sweaty two-hour performance of their greatest hits (Rio, Hungry Like the Wolf, No Ordinary World, and more) and songs from their most recent, Top 10 charting studio album, Paper Gods. Mark Ronson joined Duran Duran on stage for a special performance of Pressure Off and Uptown Funk. The show aired live Saturday night via satellite on SiriusXM’s The Pulse (ch. 15) and1st Wave (ch. 33) channels.
Spotted up in the balcony were Matthew McConaughey, who put on sunglasses before the show started just in case the effects were too blinding, his wife Camila Alves, actor Gerard Butler, and downstairs, a cast member of The Real Housewives of NYC, Luann DeLesseps, in dire need of a cocktail, she said.
Duranies were in heaven and those who didn’t worship the glam, new wave band back in the day may have found themselves doing so last night. LeBon kept things light, though he did make fun of Trump at one point, saying to the band, “I went there” to the tune of boos from the audience upon the mention of that man.
Otherwise, it was all about the band in their heyday, with LeBon waxing nostalgic on the mythical 80s giving way to the 90s and showing their relevancy with Ronson in the 2017s. Not an easy task to do, but despite a few lines and extra pounds, the boys even managed to make the now retro Nagel picture of their Rio days seem rather current and not just a relic hearkening back to better days of music and life in general before things like satellite radio stations gave people like Steve Bannon their own channels.
Videos of the performance are available here:
Dimitrios Kambouris
