{"id":18169,"date":"2013-04-05T11:40:21","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T15:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=18169"},"modified":"2013-04-05T12:01:04","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T16:01:04","slug":"rock-crime-the-cover-art-for-duran-durans-rio-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-crime-the-cover-art-for-duran-durans-rio-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Crime: The Cover Art for Duran Duran’s Rio<\/em> Album"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ugh!\"<\/a>

Ugh!<\/p><\/div>\n

If you’ve been following Rock Town Hall for even a couple of weeks you probably have an inkling of my severe distaste for the mainstream culture of the 1980s<\/a>. If you didn’t live through that era and find it “charming” or whatever, I feel slightly worse for the future of humankind. That’s OK, I’m used to feeling that way. What troubles me is how we got to this point considering how great my generation was and how much greater our parents’ and grandparents’ generations were. If we were so great, shouldn’t the youth of today be better?<\/p>\n

If you lived through that era and look back on it fondly, I am not-so-secretly jealous of you. I had a lot of youthful energy and love to give to the world at that time, and for all my exquisite taste I would have been happy to spread my energy and love on a mutually appreciative world, as you may have been able to do back then. Bravo, ’80s Mainstream Culture Beneficiaries!<\/p>\n

Many of my associations with the ’80s, then and now, were filtered through my not-always exclusive pursuits of rock ‘n roll and girls, as I was young enough to call them through most of the decade. I desired a mastery of both, yet constantly found myself falling short of the mark. Most of the roadblocks encountered were part of my genetic makeup and\/or self-erected. I think of all the poor decisions I made and inflexible stances I took owing to my born and bred stubbornness. I did have good taste, however, and I have no regrets about that. The mainstream culture of the 1980s threw its share of roadblocks at me. Perhaps no cultural artifact was a more daunting roadblock than a copy of Duran Duran<\/strong>‘s Rio<\/em> placed at the front of a stack of albums in a girl’s dorm room or apartment.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A roadblock in any format.<\/p><\/div>\n

Beside demonstrating a lack of exquisite taste and suggesting a need for me, should the girl and I begin dating, to exhibit more tolerance for her tastes in music than I felt capable of exhibiting, a copy of Duran Duran’s Rio<\/em> signified the girl’s probable identification with the new decade’s mainstream celebration of androgyny and pudgy English singers with bad hair. I sensed that any copy of Duran Duran’s Rio<\/em> was a sign that I would show up at this girl’s door some day and find her dancing\u00a0spasmodically\u00a0to “Hungry Like a Wolf” while sporting a new, unexpected (ie, unapproved) spiky, streaked hairdo and brightly colored high heels. The hippie-loving-yet-desiring-of-traditional-stand-by-your-man-values guy in me couldn’t help but feel this way. I am not exactly proud of sharing this. I was open to many things, but I wasn’t too open to any woman I was dating suddenly showing up like the trendiest character from a John Hughes movie.<\/p>\n

Despite the kindness, wisdom, and gentleness that has come with middle age, I maintain a core belief that the ’80s was a frigid period in terms of mainstream cultural signifiers. The Rio<\/em>\u00a0album cover heralded the arrival of ’80s Hair Salon Artwork in rock ‘n roll, a visual cue for the late-’80s\/early-’90s phenomenon of MTV and VH1-driven Fashion Rock. What follows in this Rock Crimes case against the album cover art for Duran Duran’s Rio<\/em> might make some of you extremely uncomfortable. Should you choose to stop reading now, the court will put you down for a GUILTY! verdict without further suffering. For those of you with the stomach to move deeper into my ’80s heart of darkness, step right this way.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"mane\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I once wrote about my sexual awakening, of sorts, in the chairs of a “unisex” hair salon in Northeast Philadelphia<\/a>. Back then, while the bearded, swishy, hard-partying guy who cut my hair shared nods-and-winks\u2013laden stories\u00a0with the bearded, swishy, hard-partying guy cutting a woman’s hair in the next chair, I was surrounded by ’70s Hair Salon Artwork: models with cascading Farrah Fawcett-Majors<\/strong> locks and shirts unbuttoned almost far enough to catch a peak of nipple. It was a glorious time to be a horny teenage boy.<\/p>\n

By the ’80s, Hair Salon Artwork changed. There were less soft, inviting photographs and more stark, harsh, often cartoonish images used to show off the era’s hairstyles. Think of the photography of Helmut Newton<\/a><\/strong>. Or that damn cartoonish model smiling at no one in particular from the Rio<\/em> album cover. There was no invitation to join these women, to be their soulmates in flowing locks and tight-yet-loosely buttoned clothing. The\u00a0models of ’80s Hair Salon Artwork challenged horny young males to enjoy them at the boys’ own risk, from an exclusively voyeuristic perspective. Not that I didn’t take on that challenge now and then, but it left me with a sense of guilt and shame that no warm Farrah-styled ’70s image ever left me. For shame, Rio<\/em> album cover and ’80s Hair Salon Artwork!<\/p>\n

So my efforts to walk through the ’80s with a perpetual (and optimistic) hard-on were thwarted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Rio<\/em> album cover signified the end of the warm, inviting album cover art I’d cum of age to as a yon’ teen. Even soft<\/a>, inviting<\/a>, non-threatening<\/a> Olivia Newton-John<\/strong><\/a> got physical<\/a>. I could at least imaging taking to the former<\/a>. The latter<\/a>, tuned up for a possible post-entertainment industry career as a pharmaceutical sales rep,\u00a0made it clear I should keep my distance.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Soft-on!\"<\/a>

Soft-on!<\/p><\/div>\n

So my efforts to walk through the ’80s with a perpetual (and optimistic) hard-on were thwarted. Is that reason enough to lock up the album cover for Duran Duran’s Rio<\/em>? I say, yes, but perhaps you need a more compelling, musically relevant reason.<\/p>\n

I saw this headline today on someone’s Facebook feed. This is what I’m talking about:<\/p>\n

Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love, Kim Gordon, and Ariel Pink Model for Saint Laurent<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know many of you love Kim Gordon and worship her as an archetype of female-fronted punk rock cool, but when is enough enough? Let’s say she is cool (and although I’ve never worshiped at the Alter of Kim she is way cooler than the 3 idiots also signed onto this fashion campaign): if she were really cool wouldn’t she have better stuff to do with her rock superpowers than to associate with the 3 idiots also signed onto this fashion campaign?<\/p>\n

Rock ‘n roll has always coexisted with the world of fashion, but rock ‘n roll was a little cooler; it promised (or at least imagined) a little more substance. As MTV and VH1 blurred the line between these worlds, rock ‘n rollers found it easier to simply sell out to modeling agencies and extend their shelf lives in ways artists of earlier generations could never imagine.<\/p>\n

Courtney Fucking Love! What has she done of merit the last 10 years? Has she even OD’d or fallen out of a halter top in public?<\/p>\n

Marilyn Fucking Manson! Did he ever matter? What can he possibly represent that is valid after all these years of not having done anything of merit? Andrew W.K.<\/strong>\u00a0has given the world more, plus he’s actually good looking enough to be worth photographing. Does anyone get a hard-on over Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love?<\/p>\n

I can’t comment on Ariel Pink. He looks like he’d be working in a file room if he wasn’t good at sampling other people’s records, or whatever the fuck he does. I can’t imagine getting stiff over him either. Watch the carbs and treasure that bleached mophead while you’ve got it, my friend. A hard rains-a-gonna-fall.<\/p>\n

What does the fashion world get out of pretending that unattractive people are worth salivating over? I’m not suggesting, mind you, that I’m god’s gift to rock ‘n roll or sexual fantasies, only that I want my rock ‘n roll and sexual fantasies to be meaningful and perhaps just slightly out of reach\u2014not completely out of reach, like the cartoon woman on the Rio<\/em> album cover. (Shoot, who would that woman be if she did come to life, Sean Young<\/a><\/strong>? She turned out to be a deserving booby prize for the sexual fantasies of young men in the 1980s, no?)<\/p>\n

It’s that just-out-of-reach quality that keeps us striving, isn’t it? We need greatness. We need people in the arts to be so great that they not only make us feel alive and that life is worth living, but that it may never be as good as we desire. Otherwise we’re setting ourselves up for a lifetime of watching MTV’s Rockin’ Fashion Awards and Excuse for a Garbage Reunion<\/em>, or whatever they call that event. This lame rock-fashion marriage seems to me part of a grand conspiracy to lower our expectations for both our ideals of rock ‘n roll and beauty so that we can, as a nation, continue to get fatter, uglier, and have worse taste in music.<\/p>\n

Getting back to my issues with those real and hypothetical girls (and again, I’m using the term I had the right to use when I was only a couple of years removed from being a “boy”) from the ’80s with the copy of Rio<\/em> at the front of their album stack, I feared that their owning that album expressed not only taste in music I would be forced to endure if we ever felt a deeper connection on levels it might be argued were more important than music, but an identification with the self-absorbed, unattainable, mercurial behaviors suggested by that salon art-worthy drawing of the carefree, smiling proto-Sean Young. That type of girl already broke my heart\u2014and I had to suffer through her playing that album in my presence before things got worse!<\/p>\n