Author: Paul Sinclair

SDE is in the US to see Duran Duran and Tears For Fears! (If you haven’t read Day Two, head here)

Our two days in New York were sadly over and today was what touring musicians call ‘travel days’ when they are on tour. Part two of this trip was about to begin – and, in truth, the main reason for it – going to Las Vegas to see Tears For Fears play at the FontaineBleau resort hotel!

As noted previously, there was a lot of construction going on in and around JFK and because of this some uncertainty over how long it would take to get to the airport via a cab, never mind having to pay another $85! So I finally made an effort to establish how the ‘AirTrain’ worked to JFK and it was rather straightforward in the end.

It just involved getting an local F train from Manhattan to ‘Jamaica’ in Queens. But you do a last minute switcheroo to an E train at ‘Forest Hills / 71 Av’ and get off at the ‘Sutphin Blvd – Archer Av – JFK Airport’ stop (so good they named it three times) which is where the connection to the AirTrain is (so called because it’s an elevated train, like airport shuttle services). It takes about 20 mins to get to JFK on the AirTrain (and costs $8.50). Now I know how to do it, I won’t be getting a cab from JFK ever again!

It would be the New York Marathon on the Sunday, so as we exited our hotel. the street was full of runners, presumably getting some last training in before the race proper. We later discovered there was a Las Vegas marathon on Sunday as well!

The flight was of course an internal, domestic flight (via Delta), but we had the longest queues for security at JFK today on the whole trip. It was going to take five and a half hours to get there, since Vegas is well over 2,000 miles away from New York and there would be a three hour time difference, to boot.

It was cool seeing the Manhattan Skyline (great a-ha song) from the plane as we made our way up to the cruising altitude and the Delta aircraft was quite nice in the Comfort+ cabin. The main criticism with Delta was what you might loosely call the ‘food’. For a flight of that length, and especially in the equivalent of premium economy, I was expecting something semi-decent. But there was no hot food at all and nothing cold that was in any way healthy. For the whole trip, we were being offered just nibbles: ‘chips’ (crisps), corn crunch-type snacks, gummy bears (this is a flight full of adults). Sugary, or salty, crap, basically. Rookie error, I guess, since Anne looked around and saw many people had brought their own, more healthy, snacks (sandwiches, fruit etc.).

To give them their due, the in-flight wi-fi was much cheaper than Virgin and, most importantly, actually worked, so I did a bit of work and later made use of the decent in-flight entertainment, rewatching Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia which I know very well, but it’s always a pleasure seeing Al Pacino and Robin Williams perform in that movie.

On our descent into Vegas we got great views of the Vermilion Sands (great Buggles song) of the Grand Canyon and then some of the strip.

I have been to Vegas once before, a long time ago (2000) and it’s a crazy city. The airport has fruit machines all over the place. We cabbed it to the Fontainebleau which I was pronouncing in French since that’s how it’s written, after all, but it seems most Americans call it ‘Fountain Blue’ and the cabbie gave me a slightly withering look, as if I was a schoolboy practising my French. It was a $29 flat fair from the airport which seemed okay, although we’d later discover that Uber is by far the cheapest way to get around Vegas. I later regretted not hiring a car, even though we were only going to be in town for two days, because we ended up spending a fortune on cabs. 

It’s hard to convey the scale of the Fontainebleau hotel. It’s ridiculously big. It cost $3.7 billion to develop, is 67 stories high and has 3,644 rooms. There were two shiny, brand new Aston Martins parked in one of the foyer areas (and liberally dotted around the inside of the hotel). On day four, when we left, we ‘found’ another area of the hotel that had about 15 vintage Aston Martins on display. A whole car museum, effectively, we had not come across. The hotel features its own shopping mall, 26 (count ‘em) restaurants, a conference centre, multiple bars, pools, spas and ‘wellness’ centres and of course a near 4,000 capacity theatre [the “Bleaulive Theater”] where Tears For Fears were playing! 

This was the only day of the trip where I didn’t go record shopping. I tried. An early afternoon cab to Target near MGM Grand to try, yet again, to obtain the TFF exclusives, ended with a member of staff once again telling me they “don’t do music”, with a look that said “are you mad?” This was the equivalent of a Tesco local – a shrunk down Target that only had ‘essentials’ (we can argue about how essential the new TFF album is!).

The concierge had incorrectly assured me that it was the biggest Target in town, which turned out not to be true at all. We had a walk down the strip for a while and then headed back to the hotel for something to eat. In the ‘foodcourt’ area on level 2 we saw a Tears For Fears fan contingent and went and said hello to Kyrie and her friend (main image). Many of them were going to multiple shows but we were happy to wait until Saturday to see the band play.

A quick drink in the bar and then up for some well earned shut-eye. Our body clocks were taking a bit of a battering and there was more to come tomorrow, since the clocks go back an hour in Nevada! Our third time change in four days!

Stay tuned for Day 4 on SDE, tomorrow.

Day two in New York was the day! Duran Duran were playing their Halloween show in Madison Square Garden, because… you guessed it, was the 31 October! [read Day One here]

It was the last day in NYC, so lots to fit in and after a quick coffee-and-croissant combo at a nearby Pret A Manager, I was heading downtown for a 9.30am meeting a friend who works at Sony. I came armed with a few SDE blu-rays and he kindly gave me some vinyl including a few Sarah McLachlan albums (including a Barnes and Noble exclusive of Surfacing). I really like Sarah’s music, especially 1993’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, but she’s not really too well known in the UK. She’s actually just cancelled/postponed a 30th anniversary tour in celebration of that album, which is a shame. I also acquired the ruby vinyl 12-inch of George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ – one of many formats that was put out for that song’s 40th anniversary (read Caroline Sullivan’s SDE piece on that song).

Anyway, after a good meeting, I was off to West 18th Street to Academy Records, with a plan to meet up with Anne (Mrs S) later. Of course, I forgot record shops the world over never start business particularly early and indeed, upon arrival I saw that it was a 12 noon opening time. With an hour to kill I found myself in the ‘Old Navy’ at the end of the street having a browse (we don’t have them in the UK).

Here’s a sidebar that I’m fascinated by. I live in London and without wanting to generalise too much, it’s my personal experience that people that work in shops or in service industries have a tendency to be a bit surly, and/or not be there when you need them (i.e. shops are understaffed) and can often exhibit a general ‘I’m-getting-paid-minimum-wage-so-why-do-I-need-to-make-the-effort’ kind of attitude. Whereas in America and certainly in New York, every shop worker, server in cafe or restaurant has been delightfully friendly and helpful – professional – in what appears to me to be in a very sincere way. They seem to actually want to help you, you are welcomed you when you walk into the shop. Nothing is too much trouble, there’s always loads of staff and they’re not standing around talking to each other and ignoring you (a classic UK trait). Maybe as a society the US just respects table servers, shop workers more. It’s a job to be proud of and not something you grudgingly have to do because you can’t get a job anywhere else. I noticed the same thing in the Airport at JFK. The staff are uniformed “officers” afforded authority and respect. Going through security at Gatwick it often just feels like a random assortment of temporary staff. I digress, but without wanting to state the obvious, people being nice to you all the time is just very pleasant. Thank you, NYC!

Anyway, I went back to Academy and had a browse. It hasn’t really changed at all since the last SDE trip 9 years ago, which is not a bad thing, and it’s just great that the shop still exists, in midtown Manhattan. There wasn’t a whole lot I was interested in, unfortunately, but I picked up a couple of 12-inches (one of which was ‘Coming to America’ by The System). I did spot a copy of Wham!’s Fantastic with the artist in the US form of  ‘Wham! UK’. Half-tempted, but I didn’t bother. They had a Beatles in Mono 13CD box in the window for $200 which seems like a reasonable price (what a great box set).

After a Shake Shack at Madison Square Park, Anne and I starting walking down towards ‘the village’ to pop in and see John Pita at Record Runner. It was roasting in New York (not far off 80 degrees) and I was carting around some copies of the Duran Duran Liberty and Arcadia So Red The Rose SDE booklets that I wanted to give to John to sell (his shop specialises in Duran, amongst others) as well as a few Danse Macabre blu-rays. But I also had my laptop (in case of SDE emergencies!), plus a bag of clothes I bought from Old Navy and all the vinyl I’d been given earlier in the day! In short, I was starting to feel very weighed down and hot and bothered! You make a decision to “just walk it” and 20 sweaty blocks later, you’re asking “why didn’t we take the subway?”. 

Anyway, I’d told John I’d pop in at some point during our two-day trip but hadn’t said exactly when. I think it was probably around 4.15pm when we arrived and I was slightly worried at first, because shutters were down, the door was locked and having lugged my ‘merch’ all the way down there, I was envisaging carting it back uptown to the hotel. But thankfully all was good and John was there. He was taking precautions because the Halloween Parade (great Lou Reed song) was only a few hours away. The shop is as good as ever and I recommend you check it out if you are in town. We chatted for a short while, discussing how great it is that Record Runner still endures but John was telling me that he has a new landlord, since someone has recently bought the building, and that’s of concern because of course rising rents is one of the reasons that so many record shops (such as Rebel Rebel and Bleecker Street Records) are no longer there and the character of Greenwich Village has been eroded. Worrying times. John gave me a T-shirt and we took a photo and bade farewell until next time. 

Anne and I had a pre-Duran Duran drinks lined up with my old friend Ray at 6pm, close to MSG, so we needed to hotfoot it back to the hotel, dump all the bags, freshen up and get down there in the space of 90 minutes. I still hadn’t bought any vinyl from a Target store, which I was keen to do since they not only have Tears For Fears‘ Songs For A Nervous Planet on exclusive coloured vinyl (“watermelon cream” aka pink), but they also have the CD with the extra track called ‘Landlocked’ (which I still haven’t heard!). I also had a few ‘requests’ from friends in the UK for various exclusives (Target don’t ship to the UK). So probably ill-advisedly I nipped down to the shop at 42nd Street (Times Square was rammed and there were so many people dressed up for Halloween it was slightly surreal) to try and get some records. However, on arrival I was told “we don’t sell music”. What?! Ugh. What a waste of time. 

After that it was another ‘dash’ (impossible due to the volume of people on the street) back to the hotel and then off to Mustang Harry’s – a midtown sports bar and restaurant – a few blocks south of Madison Square Garden (MSG), to meet Ray.

Going to MSG afterwards, to see the show was amazing. Having such a big arena right in the centre of the city is not something I could imagine any government, local council or mayor choosing to do, these days, but it must be fantastic if you’re a resident of NYC. No trekking ‘out of town’ to see your favourite band.

This was the penultimate show in a mini seven-date tour of North America and Duran Duran were amazing. It has to be said, the bar is set quite high if you’ve travelled 3,500 miles but thankfully they really delivered! It was clear that they’d spent a lot of time on making this show special for Halloween and it wasn’t something thrown together quickly. There were three dancers who appeared on stage in various outfits for virtually every song, doing specially choreographed routines (a few fairly risque), there were giant gargoyle-type figures, wandering on stage and through the crowd, and of course the band themselves were all dressed up, initially as ‘ghost’ sailors (shades of Pirates of the Caribbean). Simon looked great at the start of the show, actually, echoing his look in early era Duran with stripey shirt, big black coat, white jeans and sailor’s hat.

Best of all was a long two-hour plus set that delivered at every quarter. They performed 14 out of the 16 tracks on the new Deluxe Edition of Danse Macabre (they even played ‘Spooky’, a box set bonus track sung by the female backing singers!) but still had enough time for classics such as ‘A View to a Kill’, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’, ‘Planet Earth’, ‘Girls on Film’, ‘Rio’ and the like. In the past, I’ve complained about Duran insisting on keeping their cover of Grand Master Melle Mel’s ‘White Lines’ in the set, but I have to concede it went down amazingly well on Halloween, enhanced by superb stage design. Best of all, for this Arcadia fan, was a wonderful delivery of ‘Missing’ from So Red The Rose. Wow! They played it right after ‘Confession in the Afterlife’ from the Danse Macabre album, which sounds very Arcadia-like to these ears, so it was a brilliant sequence.

It was strange not to hear ‘Save a Prayer’ or ‘Ordinary World’ at a Duran Duran show, but somehow it didn’t matter. It sounds silly, but being a Brit in New York watching Duran Duran play added an unexpected feeling of pride. They are a great British band, after all. The crowd were joyfully embracing every song (to be fair, there was a bit of popping-to-the-bar/’rest rooms’ for ‘Spooky’, a song virtually no one knew and Simon doesn’t even sing), but that aside, it was pure love in the room and scanning the crowd I could see every walk of life.

Special mention must go to Simon Le Bon who I regularly remind everyone is the beating heart of Duran Duran. He sung beautifully and dressed brilliantly as well. Yes, at one point he wore what looked like a chandelier on his head for quite a few songs, but it passed without comment; there was no hamming it up. It was arty, slightly weird, a visual spectacle and fun all at the same time. Just like Duran Duran, in fact.

Day 3 of SDE in the USA will be published tomorrow, as we head off to Las Vegas for Tears For Fears.

I’m back in the USA for the first time since 2018 to see Duran Duran play Madison Square Garden and Tears For Fears play in Vegas!

As usual, with any trip to New York from the UK, it pays to get an early flight since the time difference gives you back most of the day if you get going promptly.

8.55 via Virgin Atlantic from Heathrow didn’t sound particularly early when I booked it, but of course by the time you’ve got there two hours before the flight and then built in travel time to Heathrow it is an early start –  5am to be precise! Ugh.

Heathrow was heaving, but thankfully everything was on schedule and we were on our way (Mrs Sinclair is accompanying me on this trip!). I always choose to fly Virgin for long haul to America. I did it way back in 1989 for my first trip to the USA and continue to do so today. They’re good. Decent selection of films and audio on the in-flight entertainment, including a some of classic albums, such as The Who’s Who’s Next (not in Dolby Atmos!) My only complaint – and this isn’t confined to Virgin – is why airlines still give you those crappy 1984-style Sony Walkman headphones to plug in, when most people are likely to have much better headphones or AirPods, or whatever, that could connect with bluetooth. Less wires, less hassle and better sound quality. I guess bluetooth might interfere with the plane’s electronic systems.

I say ‘only’ complaint. The onboard Wi-Fi, which I made the mistake of paying £20.99 for the whole flight was a total joke. For over 6 hours it offered the tantalising prospect of doing something as labour intensive as opening an email without actually delivering. Despite staff rebooting ’the system’ a few times it never improved. I understand that in flight wi-fi is, by its very nature, going to be a bit unreliable but they really do overpromise and underdeliver when it comes to getting online.

We landed at JFK around noon local time which was pleasingly well ahead of schedule and there were no queues for passport control (I’ve had some terrible waits there in the past). So far so good! 

It’s always a bit of a trek from JFK to Manhattan via classic yellow New York taxi – plan for at least 45 mins – but the system is efficient and well staffed outside the airport, and they have a ‘flat fee’ fair system, so there is no stressing about being ripped off. It’s gone up a bit, mind! Last time I was here (2017, I think) It was around $50 but is now approximately $85. Despite sitting in many cabs from JFK to NYC over the years I can never make head nor tail of ‘the route’. It’s a spaghetti junction of interstates, intersections, bridges, tunnels. I noted loads of construction going on, especially in the early phase of the journey near Flushing Meadows (where the US Open Tennis tournament is held in September).

We’re staying right in the heart of the city, near Times Square, which is only because we’re only here for two days and it’s near everything. Hotel/area of choice for me is normally Washington Square Park Hotel in ‘the village’. Much more chilled out and bohemian and I like the rock ’n’ roll history! Maybe next time!

After checking into our hotel, it was time to go an do some exploring. It’s unseasonable hot in New York right now, which I wasn’t expecting for late October. In fact, for Halloween itself they are talking about 79 degrees, which is crazy. So much for lugging my heavy leather jacket with fur-lined collar across the Atlantic, that’s staying in the suitcase. It really is shorts and T-shirt weather! 

After a half-hour decompress, went for a wander and came across the first record shop of the trip! I say record shop, it’s actually a place called Book Off which specialises in second hand games, manga books, DVDs and blu-rays but also happens to have quite an extensive CD section in the basement and a very good selection of Japanese vinyl (which are all $29, which I thought was a reasonable price). The CD section is massive but there’s not too much in the way of rarities, just loads of 80s and 90s CD albums. It’s takes some looking through and arguably they are a bit overpriced at $5-7 for a disc, but there is a discount CD section as well where you can find discs for $1.50 a pop. I spotted certain titles that I’d seen in the ‘main’ section also in the cheap section so it’s worth having a good look. There’s also a CD box set section which wasn’t bad and I immediately saw something that I knew I wanted. It was the US version of Elton John’s To Be Continued box set from the early 1990s, which not only has a totally different design to the UK/European box but it’s large format too. The track listing is identical but it’s a really good box and looking at the discs, you could tell they’ve never been played. It had that ‘as new’ vibe, despite being over 30 years old. Best of all it was well priced, I thought, at $39. Bought! 

I also picked up the US CD single of Madonna’s ‘I’ll Remember’ ($9), which I’d actually never seen before. From memory I thought it had some remixes not on the UK equivalent, but I’ll have to check. Not everything was cheap; in the Depeche Mode section there was a few CD singles which looked like they’d be pulled from those box sets and they wanted $48 a pop. That’s well over the top.

So far as vinyl went, I saw the Japanese-only Duran Duran compilation Tiger! Tiger! (With OBI) which I don’t own, and it seemed an appropriate enough purchase, given that I’m going to see the band at Madison Square Garden tomorrow. I also couldn’t resist a Japanese pressing of my favourite ABBA album, The Visitors.

After further wandering we next came upon a Barnes and Noble, the mammoth US bookseller that is somehow still going (think Borders if you are in the UK). They do exclusive vinyl editions and so always worth popping in. They had a copy of Tears For Fears’ new album Songs For A Nervous Planet on exclusive blue vinyl, although only the one, so no extra copies for friends in the UK – sorry! They had a ton of ‘old’ exclusives, some looking a bit tatty and in a $10 sale, so you have to wonder, to a degree, how in demand these rarities are.

Retail giant Target was going to be the best bet for vinyl and CD exclusives and the plan was to make sure I get to one during our 48 hour stop in NY. I know they’ve definitely got exclusives of the new Tears For Fears.

We carried on walking up fifth avenue and came across Trump Tower, which was a reminder that it’s the US election in a couple of days. Network TV channels and the billboards in Times Square are full of campaigning ads. In fact, David Gilmour is playing Madison Square Garden on the day of the election and then again on the days after. That’s going to be a bit weird.

I’ve been an Android user for quite a few years phone-wise, having previously owned iPhones. My teenage daughter pointed out that it was “stupid” me being so plugged into the Apple eco system (with MacBook Pros, iMacs, Apple TV, Apple Music and being a Final Cut Pro user) and not having an iPhone. Point well made, so the end destination was Apple’s spectacular ‘glass box’ store at the top end of fifth avenue where I would go over the the dark side and get a new iPhone. Job done. Some NY retail therapy never hurt anyone.

By now it was about 7pm local time, so 11pm or ‘bedtime’ in the UK. We’d been up for 18 hours. However it’s a rookie error to go to bed too early in New York on the day of arrival, however tired you may feel. You have to stay up and see out the day, to try and get your body clock settled.

After a day of snacking and airline food, it was nice to sit down to a proper meal (me: steak, Mrs S: salmon) and the balmy weather allowed us to have a late drink on a rooftop bar. 

We are very pleased to be here and looking forward to the ‘main event’ tomorrow, since I’m a Madison Square Garden ‘virgin’ (how nice to have a big arena right in the centre of the city). However, there’s that Target to find and I’m planning to go to Academy Records on 18th street and pop by Record Runner in the village and say hello to proprietor John Pita. I’ve also got a catch up with a friend who works for Sony in NY first thing and we’re meeting another friend for pre-Duran Duran drinks. Day 2 of the USA trip is coming soon!!