Duran Duran - Friends Of Mine

ORIGINATION Duran Duran LP
LAST LISTENED TO a few days ago
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT average
RATING ★★★★★

An album track this time and one that sounds very much a song of its period, a piece of slithering '80s pop-funk with electronic leanings. As albums go, this being Duran Duran's debut it is pretty strong, making Friends Of Mine quite a well-crafted song rather than a piece of filler. The influence of tracks like this, particularly the guitar sound and Simon Le Bon's vocal inflections, can clearly be heard in the music of many of the current '80s-leaning bands.

Duran Duran - Planet Earth

ORIGINATION Duran Duran LP
LAST LISTENED TO last night
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT absolute certainty
RATING ★★★★★

It is Easter 1984 and the two leaving-year classes are on the annual school trip to West Germany, to the Rhineland, by bus. To this day the decision to do it and who took it is lost, however the fact remains that a tape of Duran Duran, almost certainly a home-made compilation one of the girls brought along, was played on the coach stereo for almost the entire trip, repeated and repeated and repeated, until every tune was etched into our minds. Of all those endlessly-heard songs, Planet Earth is the one that stuck indelibly. It will forever conjour the freedom of the autoroute and of the autobahn, the particular alert weariness of long distance travel, mid-eighties Europe and seeing the Atomium slide by on the horizon.

Even if Planet Earth had a catalogue of faults, I would always look on it favourably and so an objective opinion would never be possible. It is one of those songs that will stay with me forever.