'Scuse Me While I Turn 16

Back in the day, my best friend Renee and I were total Durannies. She loved Simon, and John Taylor (bass, for the uninitiated) was all mine. We watched the documentary Sing Blue Silver almost every day after school, usually with a bowl of buttered popcorn and orange juice over ice, daydreaming about how we would go see them and then, when we snuck backstage, Simon and John would fall madly in love with us and take us to Paris immediately. By sunset, after a whirlwind shopping spree, we'd be romantically perched atop the Eiffel Tower, never to return to rural Pennsylvania... unless Duran Duran played a show at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and begged us to go with them.

So, yeah. That didn't happen.

But, I did meet John Taylor once, at a record signing in San Francisco. By then I'd graduated from college and expanded my musical horizons, but my Duran Duran cassettes were still stacked next to Faith No More and New Order. John T. smiled at me and posed for pictures, just as nice as I always knew he would be. It was pretty great – mostly because Dave was there with me and said, "I think he liked you."

"New Moon on Monday" and "Rio" are still my favorite Duran Duran songs, and today, there's a new single on iTunes: "All You Need is Now."

Am I telling you this just to expose my massive inner dork? Nope. I'm telling you because the single is free. So if you're a secret Durannie, too, help yourself to the latest. You don't even have to tell anyone!

((

(I clearly am forever stuck in the '80s. The jacket I'm wearing to a holiday party tonight is not very much different than the one Simon is sporting in the pic above.)