High school was a time for friends and music and concerts. I still feel the ramifications of standing too close to a speaker in a closed building listening to The Stray Cats. Now that was an experience and an amazing memory.

There was Berlin, the Thompson Twins and others, but none more important to my life as the five Brits known (and still known) as Duran Duran. Named for Doctor Duran in Barbarella. With their hair and their makeup, their synth pop. The three unrelated Taylors, Nick Rhodes, and Simon LeBon creating music that was danceable and singable, but also moving and inspirational, a creative catalyst for my writing and exploring what was barely in my mind’s eye, but that wanted to come out in ways.

My friends and I would go to the park, climb up on the big stage at the amphitheatre. They would play their air instruments, and I would take their pictures using my air camera.

Click, whirr is the sound a camera makes, and I was the paparazzi following them on tour.

We were 100 Club, and we opened for Duran Duran. We wrote creative fiction, not song fic, maybe closer to fan fiction. Mine was a murder mystery – Murder at the Odeon. and it was my second moment of fandom and writing colliding.

Duran Duran also contributed to our creativity with their videos – The Chauffer, Night Boat. Their videos told stories that encouraged us to tell our own stories.

My current text notification is Late Bar, one of my favorite songs from them, conjuring up holes in walls, drinking, and mystey. It influenced a poem I wrote for the yearbook called Spies, which in turn encouraged a new Dungeons and Dragons game that was called Top Secret that was role playing for secret agents and government spies.

Their Hungry Like the Wolf was very much like Indiana Jones and New Moon on Monday reminded me of those undercover agents sneaking around foreign lands.

Thirty odd years later and I still listen to them. They remind me of high school, and college but they also fill me with new bouts of creativity and writing inspiration.