John the Divine

The father of my unborn children is playing in Vancouver tonight. Ter asked me if I wanted to go—the timing was right to make it a fab birthday gift—but after the briefest hiccup when my heart rate spiked, I reluctantly declined.

Of course I’d love to see the band. They’re my all time good time band, and Nile Rodgers is opening for them, but I’ve reached the stage where the peripheral hassles of a concert in Vancouver exceed the joy of being there. Paying the ransom to get off the rock, finding a hotel at the height of gouging season, fighting big city traffic—ugh. The adventure is no longer fun.

Besides, last time the boys were in town, I almost got into a fistfight with the twit beside me. She and her string of stupid girlfriends kept tripping to the washroom during the show, resulting in an increased flailing that finally obscured so much of my sightline I had to elbow her out of the way. I won that one, but the residual remorse of being pushed that far has lingered. I didn’t regret the elbow. I regretted that it was necessary. And if any band is going to attract a gaggle of stupid girls, it’s Duran Duran.

So tonight, I’m running a concert DVD (not sure which one yet; I have most of them) while they play live across the strait. Tomorrow, I’ll pull the set list off the internet and burn a CD of it so I’ll have the recorded version—not live, but close enough—of the gig. In time, one hopes, some form of the tour will be released on DVD and I’ll add it to the collection. It’ll be worth having because one thing is certain: they will play songs from their most recent album, sprinkled among classics arranged in new ways. I’ve always said the cool thing about a Duran Duran concert is that you know what you’re going to get, just not how you’re going to get it.

During a recent interview with CBC Radio, John told the story of remarking to Nick Rhodes that none of the current Top Ten features a conventional bass, to which Rhodes drolly replied, “Let me introduce you to the (something or other) synthesizer.” The same sort of thing occurred in 2007, when they hired Timbaland and Nate Hill to produce Red Carpet Massacre—these guys are known for running bass samples through a synthesizer, so JT came to work on the first day and had to ask the question: “Hey, what am I going to do on this record?” Genius that he is, he figured it out. His instinct has made him one of the best players in the biz (no bias here!), so the bass on RCM does more than set the rhythm. It’s actually part of the melody.

He loves his bass guitars, but he has embraced the new technology and now plays a synth bass for a few tracks onstage. I know: I saw it myself in 2007, after I slammed the girl next door back into her seat.