March 31:
Roger Taylor deejayed at Fate Awards 2010 in Belfast on March
26th. Roger, with fellow deejay Jake Fonique, has been also interviewed by
Belfast Telegraph's Gary Grattan at the Europa Hotel.
When the Duran Duran drummer was asked about the band's future plans he answered:
"We are actually recording a new album with Mark Ronson wich is supposed to be out this year but I think it's gonna be next year realistically. It's gonna be a great album."
March 30: On Saturday, March 20th, New Roads music history was made as student musicians gathered onstage with rock legends Stewart Copeland of the Police, John Densmore of the Doors, John Taylor of Duran Duran and Raul Pacheco of Ozomatli, to celebrate New Roads’ 15th Anniversary in grand style. The live performance and a companion cd were the culmination of a year-long project spearheaded by John Taylor, to bring together the school community in celebration of New Roads’ accomplishments over the last 15 years and in support of the school’s uniquely generous financial aid program. Under the supervision of Music Director, Michael Abels, and music teacher, Scott Roewe, students from K-12, faculty member, Andrew Werderitsch, plus alumni Noah Gersh, Claire Cronin, and Natalie Becerra, performed cover songs from the past fifteen years, and brought down the house when they jammed with the professional musicians.
A limited edition 15th Anniversary cd-dvd featuring the events musical performances is now available.
You can order your copy here and view Photo Highlights gallery here
John performed
on five of the day’s 15 songs, including covers of “Music”
by Madonna, “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley and “I Can Tell That
We Are Gonna Be Friends” by the White Stripes.
March 26: Roger Taylor and his wife Gisela hosted a joint masquerade birthday bash at the at Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane in London. Hidden behind elaborate mask and colourful plumes, guest feasted on mini hamburgers and chips washed down on martinis and U’Luvka vodka. Simon Le Bon made a toast to the birthday girl while his model wife Yasmin and daughter Amber added rock ‘n’ roll glamour in full length dresses. Among other guests burlesque dancer Esmè Bianco, fashion designer John Richmond, Boy George, Tatjana Rhodes, James Taylor, Andrew Taylor Jr and none other than... the lovely Madeline Farley! I assume the party was held on january 15 as official news reports that Roger played a DJ set at Dorchester Hotel on that date to aid a fund-raising by The Wings of Hope [an organisation that provides free education to children in developing countries]. Thanks to Christian for these scans from Tatler. If you want to get a bigger picture of the above visual just click here
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March
20: Joshua Blair is Duran Duran's Recording
and Mixing Engineer on their 13th studio album. From audiopros.eu
| Joshua is one of those all round nice guys who not only has
a great ear or two, he also understands how to get the best from his
gear... old and new. His credits as an engineer include everyone from
Beyoncé, Leona Lewis, Take That, Mel C and the Scissor Sisters,
through to Queen, Stereophonics, Thin Lizzy and Simply Red. Josh, is
based in London and he's currently working with Mark Ronson on the new
Duran album. |
He's recording the Duran Duran album on Pro Tools using a few choice front-end processors and mic pres. Joshua says: "The Transient Designer is as much about effect as control “Especially on the Duran Duran stuff, when we do the set-up, we have an acoustic drum kit, an electric drum kit, Bass, Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals and 16 lines of keyboards coming in, so we can use the Transient Designer as a production tool or effect. It means that we can have a drum kit sound like a great drum kit or if we want it to sound completely different, then we can do that and we have every nuance we want in between.” [...] “Nick Rhodes was telling me that when they were mixing one of their tracks back in the 80’s, they wanted the snare to have a tail where the note slid down on every hit. And because there was no automation on the processor used on the effect, someone had to sit there and turn the knob on every snare strike. But now, you can just automate it or create the effect on one snare and copy/paste it in to the rest of the track.” [...] “Now the guys know that these effects can be achieved easily, they can be far more creative with sounds at a much faster pace.” At this stage of tracking the Duran Duran album Josh is mixing almost exclusively “in the box”, so it is the front end processing of the source signal that is so important to him. “When you’re getting down to it, you don’t have time to mess about changing settings constantly on a pre. The way I do my sessions is that if it takes longer than 30 seconds to set, it’s taken too long. The producer or the artist doesn’t want to wait around all day for you to get a sound, so it’s important to get an idea of what they are looking for before you go into the studio, listen to the instrument or voice acoustically and also know enough about your equipment to know what is going to work".
Joshua speaks about the equipment he's using on the new Duran Duran album also in these two videos:
Josh Blair talks about his SPL RackPack and Josh Blair talks about the Sonodyne SM100Ak
March 18: In January it was revealed that Duran would be contributing a cover of "Boys Keep Swinging" to the David Bowie Tribute Album due to be released in May 2010 on Manimal Records.
A huge update comes from Nick's recent chat with Katy in the latest Kafe as he answers some fan's questions. Nick expresses all his admiration for Bowie, then he adds: "We didn’t pick one of the really classic songs, I mean something like 'Life On Mars' or 'Ziggy Stardus' or 'Rebel Rebel' or, I don’t know, any of the ones I feel absolutely handsome, because I think they’re are all so perfect in their original form, would be very very hard to anything radically different to them."
"We all did pick Boys Keep Swinging 'cos it’s an iconic song, we felt we could duranize it, so our version is very different to David’s version, it’s a similar sort of tempo but it got a lot of rhythm on it, there’s a lot of drum, electronic drums and real drums, rhythm machine. It doesn’t have any guitars on it, the original was filled with guitars. Simon has played around with the vocal melody a little and he’s got a very different vocal sound on it, we also used a machine on that, but don’t worry, he doesn’t sound like one of those records in the charts. I’m actually very excited about it, I hope David likes it, I hope the fans likes it and I hope it raises some money [100% of the proceeds go to War Child Uk warchild.org]. It was a lot of fun to do, we recorded it very quickly in a couple of days in London. I have to say I’m very very pleased with the mix and the sonic quality of it. You’ll hear it soon enough!"
Repetition/A
Tribute to David Bowie [2XCD - Mani-025 limited edition $15.99 - ships on
May 14th, 2010]
click here to
pre-order
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March 12: These are a couple of preview pics of the new Duran Duran reissues, Duran Duran and Seven And The Ragged Tiger. Both products will be out on march 29th. The packaging looks absolutely amazing, a real treat for all the fans. Let's just hope that the quality of the remastered albums and videos will be as good as these glossy clamshell boxes! |
March 12: Thanks to Pietro at Media Promotion we have a bunch of nice pics of Roger taken last week in Italy, I uploaded them all in a new gallery right here. I also managed to get 2 local newspaper featuring Roger:
Il Quotidiano Campobasso and Nuovo Molise | photo gallery Roger in Italy march 2010
March 10: Exclusive! Roger Taylor speaks to duranasty.com | On the eve of the launch of his new deejay set across Europe, Roger has been kind enough to stop for a quick ten question interview with duranasty.com's editor. Thanks very much Roger for taking the time and a special thanks goes also to his manager, Media Promotion and Red Passion Club.
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March 9: More from Japan! Simon took one week longer stay in Japan than the rest of the band. Just after the CLSA corporate gig Simon and Nick Wood finished all their shooting for the Save a Prayer videoclip with Sylvio Anastasio [pic on the left] and they left Tokio for three days with Noriko [the author of these wonderful pics] to go to Oirase, a wonderful town located in the Kamikita, District of eastern Aomori Prefecture in the Tohoku region of Japan. This post is just about sharing these cool pics of Simon relaxing and having fun with his two friends. Enjoy and have fun! |
Some meditation in a real kimono, walks in the white snow, wonderful landscapes, typical food, and two very good friends... will all this bring some inspiration for some new Duran Duran lyrics?)
Hungry like the wolf: Simon Le Bon and his big fish.
Below good friends Simon, Nick and Noriko.
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March 4: Simon Le Bon joined his old friend Sylvio Anastacio and co-founder of Syn production Nick Wood at Saigo Yama Park in Tokyo to film a video for their version of “Save a Prayer” [enclosed in the 2002 “From the Heart” Starbucks compilation]. Below some pics taken by Noriko [Private Secretary to Nick Wood] at Aomori railway station. On the left Simon and Nick Wood at the Concorde Hotel in Tokyo where Mr Le Bon sang at the bar with Sylvio Anastacio their rendition of “Save a Prayer” |
