Duran Duran “The Crystal Ship” bootleg, 2025/1993. Parachute Recording Company. Double live album recorded for live FM Broadcast at  Momentum Arena, Pretoria, South Africa on April 24th, 1993. It’s my birthday today and I usually have a stash of Duran vinyl I haven’t listened to or written about in my collection. This live LP is one of the more unusual ones that I picked up recently: the versions of the songs are radically different than almost any other live albums I’ve heard. “Planet Earth” has a whole string section and “Hungry Like the Wolf” has strings, too, plus an enthusiastic acoustic guitar and different backup vocals (which prompt Simon to most definitely go “off-script” for this classic track). “Ordinary World” is lush, elevated with that (fortunately less enthusiastic) acoustic guitar and Simon’s vocals are stellar (a note here that the photos on the LP covers are closer to 2023 than 1993 – Simon definitely did not look like that, nor was Dom playing guitar for them – 1993 was the Warren Cuccurullo era). Simon’s intro to “Come Undone” is hilarious – suggesting that instead of wearing one’s best, clean underwear just in case, he thinks it might be better to go without completely, then launches into a Cure-esque guitar intro (not Simon, that’s probably Warren); the song is slinky and suggestive. The intro to “The Chauffeur” is a total head-scratcher though: Simon talks about a guy in a car on hot day in July on Santa Monica Blvd in Los Angeles (while in South Africa? Ok?) before the song starts (it’s beautiful once it gets going though the spoken-word moment is a bit jarring). Of course I didn’t write the song but the dirty streets of LA are absolutely not what I envision for this song. The first LP ends with the bootleg’s namesake “The Crystal Ship” which is, of course, a Doors cover. “Girls on Film” is also really unusual – orchestral strings, lyrical embellishments like I’ve never heard, a bit of jazzy free form action: absolutely nothing like the original. “Notorious” is funky as always, but the instrumentation seemed off and a bit out of key (same with the backup vocals) and fortunately they didn’t mess with “Save a Prayer,” sticking pretty faithfully to the original (just a bit more finger-picking on the acoustic and a whisper of strings). On Side 4 there is one other cover: “Success” by Iggy Pop is really fun; but then “Wild Boys” is the most subdued version imaginable before they launch into the finale of “Rio” which is as glorious as it always is.

You can view the entire performance here: