How Duran Duran is like James Bond

A few venues around here do movie/music combo bills -- a band plays followed by a screening of a thematically appropriate film. Cary's Booth Amphitheatre should do that for Wednesday's Duran Duran show, pairing the band with a James Bond flick, and not 1985's "A View To a Kill" (even though Duran Duran did that film's title song), but one of the 1960s-vintage Cold War classics starring Sean Connery.

Duran Duran, you see, is pop music's answer to James Bond -- British, stylish, slightly ridiculous and utterly committed to old-school roguish behavior. Substitute state-of-the-art-circa-1982 electronic instruments for Bond's Q-supplied gadgets, drop the whole mess into an exotic faraway place and, presto, you have Duran Duran's still-definitive videos for "Rio" and "Hungry Like the Wolf."

Those videos also riff on "Indiana Jones," "Apocalypse Now" and other movies. But the vibe is still pure Bond, with the band taking on the role of overdressed English dandies lookin' for love in subtropical places -- hopping islands on the trail of babes 'n' bombs, trying to catch the bad guys before they use the missing NATO nukes to blast Miami into that great gig in the sky.

Yeah, 1965's "Thunderball." That's what should close Wednesday's show.

Courtesy NEWS & OBSERVER