DURAN DURAN – "The Reflex"

TOTPWatch: Duran Duran performed The Reflex thrice on ‘Top Of The Pops’ (the Christmas show we’ll come to in the fullness of time);

26 April 1984. Also in the studio that week were; Sandie Shaw (and The instrumental Smiths), Belle & The Devotions, Echo The Bunnymen and The Flying Pickets. Simon Bates and Janice Long were the hosts.

17 May 1984. Also in the studio that week were; Break Machine, Denice Williams, Hazell Dean and Womack & Womack. Simon Bates and Peter Powell were the hosts.

#1 Amazingly, perhaps because more than any of these records it feels such a part of my boyhood, I had never once thought of “The Reflex” as a coke record until reading your post. Well, not consciously, all that stuff in the review about superhuman invulnerability etc. suggests some kind of awareness of what might have been going on here.

There’s a distinction to be made, you’re right, between records which give the undrugged an idea of what being on a drug is like and records which simply remind you being with someone on those drugs. We might pick that thread up in the mid-late 1990s.

This is another song I associate with the art class whose teacher loved Jim Steinman and whose students included a Boy George-by-proxy. Our teacher let us listen to the radio while we were working, provided it was THE-FM, the local equivalent of the not-yet-national JJJ. THE wasn’t as alternative as the Js, as it played regular chart tracks along with the indie stuff; actually, it’s more accurate to say that it played the alternative end of the regular charts, because the whole notion of indie/alternative was still well underground in Hobart in 1984.

So it was no surprise when the DJ cued up the 12″ mix of this one afternoon, a version that cranked up the song’s idiosyncrasies to the point of annoyance. The surprise came just as it was hitting its stride with an extended “the RE-FLE-FLE-FLE-FLE-FLE-FLE”, when I heard my first ever live-to-air “zzzzzzrp” of a needle being yanked off a record, and the DJ saying “That’s enough of that.”

I can never hear it now without wanting to do the same. That moment has similarly cut off any potential for assessing the track objectively, so it wouldn’t be fair to add my rating to the collective judgement here; I honestly don’t know what it would be. As Duran songs go, I enjoyed this more than their previous UK number one, and more than “Wild Boys” and other hits from their middle period, but just as they never had an Australian number one they were never really number one with me.

#8 – The 12″ had a position in my mind as a stand-in for everything that was terrible but also kind of great about 12-inches of the time, especially the seemingly random cut-and-repeat on individual phrases.

Now sadly it just sounds like a not especially good one (other Night Versions are much better.)

I only found out the title of this record a couple of years ago. I suppose ‘Reflex’ is easier to fit on a 7″ sleeve than ‘Why-Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay’.

It’s a good song though – definitely one of DD’s better ones. I mean, I still can’t remember how the verse goes but at least I don’t start singing something else halfway through the chorus.

Wow we’re up to here already! Although now that it is I think I’d rather be talking about the brilliant ‘Automatic’ oh well. I find it highly memorable at least, lines like “Ill cross that bridge when I find it, Another day to make my stand, ohhhhh” as much as anything else.

Just another for the ‘how much joy did it bring me as a kid? lots / how often do i want to listen to it now? never’ file. I made the fun mistake of singing this in a New York karaoke bar a few years back and that kind of killed it for me (and for everyone else witness I expect). What a compliment for Le Bon.

I thought we were in the same country!

This is what happens when the world cannot live as one 🙁

Oddly enough, I remember feeling at the time that this sounded a bit dated. I certainly would have guessed it was some time before Relax, although I dislike(d) it for many of the same reasons.

Feel fairly sure that none of the boys in my class in Mexico at the time (13/14 year olds) would have admitted to liking the Durans – that was strictly for girls (and blimey, did the girls at my school love DD). AC/DC would have probably be the boys’ choice with votes for Van Halen and Def Leppard, with my pretentious mates opting for Talking Heads. Our music teacher played us Sid Vicious’s My Way and Bob Marley’s Burning And Looting.

#16 – you see, Tom, Lennon was right!!

I quite enjoyed this one at the time, without going overboard – it was, to coin a phrase, meaty, beaty, big and bouncy (soz Pete Townshend for that). The video was definitely a departure from the travelogue and fantasy ones they had made their name with, and seeing an audience digging it was a good advert for the band (whether they could cut it on stage for real might be another matter – thinking of the famous bum note at Live Aid!) Speaking of the Le Bon pipes, I can never hear that line “everyTHING the reflex does…” without hearing Monty Python’s version of “Anything Goes” (“AnyTHING goes in, anyTHING goes out…”)

tom, i agree with your summarizing of this song as “a bunch of clattery effects”. it feels like a direct attempt to outdo Frankie, but their clumsy attempt to ape that martial drum drive is no match for Trevor Horn’s genuine dancey know-how. still, this seems to presage the “ringtone” style of writing which runs rampant in our current decade. a continuous stream of 3-second hooks in place of a song. maybe they were pioneers after all!

It’s basically the sound of Nile Rogers (he remixed the stodgy album version) getting his new Fairlight out of the box. And all the better for it …

Stuff that turned pretty boys into millionaires. Jealous? Not necessarily – just mighty frustrated. I didn’t get it then and, even with the benefit of 25 yrs of venom dilution and laughter lines, I still don’t. It brought nothing to the music table except e.coli.

Perpetuating a drug habit on the back of 12 year olds’ pocket money is hardly a new phenomenon. Wound me up a little to see the Duran bleach boys win the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the Brit Awards – whilst the likes of Ray Davies go without the briefest mention in despatches.

If Le Bon and his mates brand of pop music is escapism, then lock me up in Alcatraz with a rabid panther.

Their first number one was Planet Earth and it was Australia….the Reflex was mixed by Nile Rodgers, so hence the disco sound. Not my favourite DD song by a long shot….but I will now dutifullly give it a re-listen.

>>And the bit in the vid when the wave crashes through the video screen, drowning the front two rows of Duranies.

I thought that part was the biggest disappointment/laugh in the whole thing…a huge wave rises up and goes crashing down – cut to some fans having a bucket of water tossed at them from off-frame.

This song also reminds me of a friend who worked in a record shop at the time and loved importing DD merchandise from Japan. When he showed me the Duran Duran AA batteries, I figured the end couldn’t be too far away…

Their first #1 in the U.S. (for 2 weeks). Not my favorite at the time, but it’s aged better than “Wild Boys” or “Union of the Snake”.

This is and was atrocious. There was some speculation at the time that the alleged ‘song’ was about playing video-games, but its main social function seemed to be to show *just* how misplaced all quibbling about ‘Let’s Dance’ (e.g., as somewhat lumbering) the previous year had been, and how utterly great Thriller *still* sounded (first copies were wearing out by this point…).
3

Re #28, “Their first number one was Planet Earth and it was Australia” – I can’t see it here, or remember it being number one nationally – Wikipedia puts it at #8 in Australia, which sounds right. Their first top ten hit anywhere, but not their first number one.

“i sold the renoir…” another vote for who knew?yowsa! but it shows how far they’d come – there’s a smash hits interview from not *that* long before this where simon declares that what he wants to do with his money is buy lots of thornton’s continental! obv i loved the reflex at the time but i’m not too keen anymore. next to frankie sounding effortless massive, this all seems a bit lumbering and blustery. lyrics that get their defence in first by drawing attention to their own meaninglessness are also a bit of a pet hate, though the one that really gets my goat is macca’s “..puppydog tales in the house of lords – tell me darling, what does this mean?”.

In “The Young Ones” book, Rik’s favourite party trick apparently is to go “Look everybody, I’m a Duran Duran record”, and sit on the turntable, spin around and sing The Reflex very loud. Could anything be more 80s?!

I like the idea that the “why-aye-aye” bit is the Geordie remix!

Self-consciously meaningless lyrics – inside my head I’m getting Weird Al Yankovic’s “Smells Like Nirvana”: “What is this song all about? / Can’t figure any lyrics out … We’re so loud and incoherent / Boy this oughta bug your parents…”

Once again a very disappointing Number 1 (although a slight improvement on Is There Something I Should Know)IMO just about the whole of the first 2 albums (and all the Night Mixes/other non-album mixes from 81-82)being better than this or 99% of the stuff that followed.
FRom making classic Japan-influenced New Romantic dance pop to mullet headed going-for-the-rock-market within 12 months. This being at least a final vague stab at something more “modern”.

Like Matthew H @ #39, I heard this first in the original version. My sister was a massive DD fan, so she bought the Seven and the Ragged Tiger LP almost as soon as it came out. It was about the only track on the album I could stomach.

The remix is stupid and fun and I like to think people bought it because of that and not because they were actually wowed by all the stutter FX. I mean, I was pretty fond of 80s 12″ remixes at the time an’ all, but really…

#41 – yes, this is true. it is after all a fact that, when properly decoded, a good two thirds of nostradamus’ writings concern this issue.

There’s only so often you can revel in the neon glory of unmeaning before you start to need a different angle.

Speak for yourself!

Not as strained as Wild Boys on which a mercilessly upfront Le Bon vocal sounds rather like Bully from Bullseye attempting a falsetto: “iiiiiin one”.