once a Duranie...

It only took 20 years, but I finally got up close to the stage for a Duran Duran show. Simon!!!!!!!! The band headlined at the 2-day Voodoo Music Fest in New Orleans last weekend, along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Saturday, when the Chili Peppers played, City Park was filled with a lot of teenagers and 20somethings, and my friends and I felt old. Sunday, it appeared all the 30somethings came out (along with their strollers), and we didn't seem so out of place.

We all crammed in front of the stage (sans strollers) waiting for the reappearance of the Fab Five, whose made-up faces and blowdried hair had covered our bedroom walls as teenagers. Although the guys of Duran Duran have aged (I guess we all have, but I'm in denial - I digress...) they put on a high energy show packed with loads of hits from the 80s and some great ballads. Full grown women were squealing and shrieking every time Simon walked down the catwalk, and men who wouldn't admit to listening to Duran Duran back in the 80s were singing the lyrics at the top of their lungs. One guy behind me kept shouting, "I love being 34!"

We had an anachronistic moment when someone started crowdsurfing. Hello, that hadn't been invented when Duran Duran was on the charts... Plus there was pot smoke wafting through the crowd, which is another thing that doesn't really go with Duran Duran. I would think of them more as a coke band, don't you think?

Anyway, the point is we all had an amazing time bopping down memory lane, going back to the time when "Save a Prayer" could make you cry, and the last time before 2006 leggings were in. We relished in our 30somethingness.