Wanted: Duran Duran fans!

Mid-October, totally out of the blue, we received an e-mail at TDGD from BNN Radio asking if we would like to appear in one of their radio programmes to talk about Duran Duran. To be honest, we did hesitate slightly at first (live radio? ... scary!!), but the invitation was too good to resist and well, it's not every day that you have the chance to talk about Duran on national radio!

The programme we were invited to appear in, BNN For Live, was broadcast on Radio 2, the national pop/M.O.R. station. The actual programme lasts 4 hours, with the first 2 focusing on upcoming college bands. During the second half of the show they broadcast a live concert by a well known artist and discuss that artist with a couple of fans.

A day before the concert the programme editor was supposed to have phoned Esther to talk her through the general topics which would be covered in the programme, but he lost her phone number so in the end Manon spent about half an hour chatting to him about why she became a fan and all the 'silly' things teenage fans do. After the show we took home the sheets of paper on which the DJ had written his questions. On the back of one sheet was a summary of the telephone conversation including the profound comment: "Manon chats easily".... :-)

So off we headed for Hilversum on a cold Friday evening. Finding the actual radio studio in Hilversum's large 'media park' proved to be quite a challenge, but after a bit of adventurous exploration through mostly empty buildings, we finally made it to the Radio 2 studio. Inside, upcoming band Frozen Bread (yes, really) were performing some of their songs. They greeted us with "are you here for Duran Duran?" as if we were an endangered species :-) Come to think of it, we almost are!

We'd arrived way too early, but we wanted some time to relax and get used to the surroundings as we were incredibly nervous. Thankfully the DJ, Jeroen Kijk in de Vegte, made us feel at ease and Frozen Bread performed a religiously-inspired cover of Kiss' "I Was Made For Loving You", which was rather comical.

At 9pm Jeroen started on a brief (musical) history of Duran Duran, playing a selection of old hits, as well as tracks by Arcadia and the Power Station and songs from '80s contemporaries. One of his very first remarks was that Duran were a band who placed concept and packaging above the music, which had us remark (off air) that if he repeated comments like that, we'd refuse to appear in the show! :-) At which point of course we knew that was going to come back during our little interview, but never mind, it had to be said! A little further on, Jeroen made a side-step to the Iggy Pop & Kate Pierson collaboration "Candy". The link to Duran being that Andy Taylor left Duran in '85 to pursue a solo career and worked with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, of which band Iggy was once the lead singer. Excuse us??? Iggy in the Sex Pistols?! We really teased him with that mistake, poor guy - but that's what you get when you invite two longtime Duranie friends to come to your studio!

Right, showtime. BNN had chosen to broadcast a concert from way back in 1989, recorded at the Manchester Apollo. Having heard the concert many times before, it wasn't incredibly exciting for us, but it was good to see the guys from Frozen Bread (aged around 18-23) singing along to the hits. Could it be becoming trendy to like Duran? Surely not.

During the concert Jeroen came out of the studio to talk to us and write down some questions, with us desperately trying to read what he was going to ask. We happened to hear that they were going to play ITSISK halfway through our little interview, which we thought was an appalling choice (one of the programmers was once a Duran fan and chose that song), so we asked if they could play Lady Xanax instead. And then we took our places in the studio, with these enormous microphones in front of us and suddenly our mouths were becoming very, very dry.