"So, you're not going to go home and say this was the worst Duran Duran concert you've ever been to, right?"
Well, John. What to say. When you:

• start 15 minutes late and come out on stage to collectively inform the fans that they're now going to hear selected tracks from your new album and then leave the stage for 20 minutes while bad Timbaland/Justin Timberlake produced distorted something or other takes up the aural space while the stage stands empty, it ain't an auspicious start. You don't make fans pay for a listening party, and the "VIPs" in that front row (not me! really!) forked over $350 for that privilege. If you're not going to use the pre-show waiting time to play those tracks, if you're going to open the stage and tease us like that, you'd better stick around and do handstands or something. For the record, most bands like to play their new tracks out live first. (We got two of those later.)
• again, since that was windy: You needed a 15 minute delay to set up pre-recorded tracks?
• also to qualify: This is after a wait outside in line for approximately 2.5 hours on my part because everything was general admission, and another hour wait after the doors opened. So yes, I frickin' begrudge fifteen minutes.
• also have a singer who forgets the lyrics to one of your best-known songs ("Planet Earth!" a whole verse!), from your first album and then completely bolloxes up what could be an exciting all-Duran version of Power Station's "Some Like it Hot" (I think the only words he got right were the choruses; the rest was just Simon staring blankly at John and, in a great show of restraint, John not clubbing him with the bass)
• furthermore more or less sleepwalk your way through most of the rest of the set, with some fairly good exceptions, but with most arrangements directly cribbed from your "Astronaut" tour last year
• omit "Careless Memories"

I'm gonna have to say just this, John: If the shoe fits. If the shoe fits, baby.

(All of that whinging said, the fact is that bad Duran Duran is like bad ice cream. It's still ice cream. And I'll take bad over nothing. Bad is kind of amusing. This particular ice cream, though, tasted like an orange foot.)

****

In unrelated news, for reasons that have nothing to do with Duran Duran — alas — MSNBC wants me back again today. So if you've really got nothing better to do, I'll be on just before 2pm and right around 3pm. ET, again. If only they'd ask me how the concert went!