A crappy Insta ad for the Duran Duran gig as part of BST at Hyde Park cropped up in my feed far too early for me on Wednesday morning but it did kinda catch me. I was caught up in the early morning Wednesday Duran Duran vibes. I never knew such a thing existed.
I had little spare time as I slurped away on my endless morning cups of tea, pondering life and wondering at what time of the day it would be suitable to give up on the idea of doing the housework during a balmy heat wave.
I admit to getting sucked in ever so slightly down a Duran Duran rabbit hole. I never thought I would be spending my Wednesday mornings doing this.
My own Duran world never really get going with the first album, but I went in big time with Rio. I say big time, that phase probably lasted no more than a couple of months. That’s the pace at which the musical timeline operates when you have a young and eager musical mind, and £3.99 to indulge in vinyl each week.
I started scrolling, following the links, and generally being ushered into places in the Duran universe where I really didn’t want to be.
One of those portholes was Neurotic Outsiders. This was the supergroup that involved John Taylor, Steve Jones of the Pistols, and a couple of members of Guns and Roses. I thought I went to see this rabble back at the old LA2 club in Soho around 1996. What can the modern interweb provide me with here?
The gig itself was part of my different life when I was working in the crazy world of Rock and Roll. Every night was GIG NIGHT back in those days.
I rode the Britpop wave, blagging up all the freebies, seeing the most shitty, shitty Britpop bands in toilet venues, to then dining out with royalty at the major Britpop events.
Something such as Neurotic Outsiders didn’t really fit the times. They were an LA rock supergroup, very much out of kilter with the Cool Britannia vibe that was going off.
I have very vague memories of the evening. I remember it being bakingly hot. I have no idea what the set list was, and if I close my eyes I can just about visualise what I saw on the stage. I may have even left early.
I managed to stumble on an online review from some Pistols fanboy site. There’s no grainy YouTube footage of the LA2 gig, but there is of other Neurotic Outsiders gigs.
The set list surprised me. They opened that LA2 gig with Planet Earth. I’m sure I would have remembered that at the time? Some Pistol songs, as well as even a Clash cover, are in the set list. I was probably boozing, but I doubt if I was completely out of it.
This then got me thinking about all those gigs that I attended from around 1990 in Sunny Colch, a manic period of a year and a half or so of some truly classic early Britpop gigs at the Charlotte in Leicester, and then my two years of gigging and ligging it on the London music scene.
Tickets weren’t really a thing those days. Most of the gigs on the London circuit were either showcases or guest lists as part of my job. It was a pretty cool as fuck job to be honest.
I really would struggle to perhaps name possibly even a tenth of the gigs I went to during that period. I did have a long lost digital file of the artist I interviewed, but even that has somehow been lost in time.
I really wish blogging had been around back during that period. My archive would have been an absolute goldmine for me personally in trying to capture and remember many of those live performances.
I often whinge now seeing Young Boys and Girls Around Town trying to capture every single moment of live experiences on their phones; just live for the moment, etc.
Maybe that’s the approach I should take with my long lost years of Sunny Colch, Leicester and London gigging. I had some hit and miss moments, but the highs definitely outnumbered the lows. I’m sure they meant something special to me at the time.
Lesson learned: never fall down a Duran Duran rabbit hole at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.
Oh - and something I do remember is interviewing part-time Duran guitarist Warren Cuccurullo in his Putney home during this period. It was another heatwave day. The front room was completely blacked out and he had an unhealthy collection of dildos on his mantelpiece.
Like I said, the crazy crazy world of rock and roll.