Duran Duran – Rogers Arena – August 28, 2016
Sunday night, Duran Duran brought their Paper Gods World Tour to Rogers Arena in Vancouver. While known as 80s New Wave icons, the group hasn’t stopped recording and touring in the ensuing decades, keeping there fingers in the industry through changing styles, genres and tastes.
Their fans have stuck with them too, an effervescent energy bubbled through the arena in anticipation of the group taking the stage. When they did, to the title track “Paper Gods” it was like thousands of teenage fantasies came true as the female dominated audience cheered and danced their hearts out for the next two hours.
Over the years Duran Duran has had an ever-changing line-up, tonight it was a trio of original members, Simon Le Bon, John Taylor and Roger Taylor. Nick Rhodes was back in London attending to some family issues so in his place on keyboards was the multi-talented American singer/songwriter MNDR. Nick was present in the backing video montage to “Pressure Off”, the lead single to Paper Gods album, for which producer Nile Rodgers also joined them onstage.
Balancing old with new, the setlist included something from nearly every one of their past albums; Wild Boys, Hungry Like The Wolf, A View To A Kill, Notorious, Planet Earth (which included a Space Oddity, David Bowie tribute), Ordinary World, White Lines, The Reflex, Girls On Film, Save A Prayer (including a couple lines of Little Red Corvette as a nod to Prince) and Rio. It was nice to see some of the audience members had brought their children to share their fave music with another generation and everyone (except for maybe the couple next to me) danced the night away and most likely spent their journey home humming a Duran Duran tune.
The Paper Gods Tour continues tonight, August 30th in Calgary and then through the U.S. West Coast and south.