The definition of depressing in 2008, is Duran Duran onstage.

When Duran Duran released their breakthrough single, ‘Girls on Film’ and its attendant video oft credited with the rise of MTV (though this happened on its re-release two years later), I was 38 days old. Suffice to say, I do not have nostalgia for this band. That would set me apart from the 12,499 other people filling the Entertainment Centre, and partying just like it was 1983. Ah Durannies, as these die hard (and mostly female) fans were somewhat ignobly referred to. I would like to think that had I been born in their decade, I would not have been one of their number.

Pop music dates. Often, badly. It is ephemeral for a reason most of the time, but the 1980s in particular were especially unkind to the pop outfit who wants to now cash in on the reunion bandwagon, and the reason for this is the synthesizer. Like how when you watch Scarface, one of the main things (that and the mountain of blow) making it hard to take seriously 25 years after its release is Giorgio Morode’s synth-laden soundtrack. It’s just so cheesily distracting. A blight on an otherwise understated, historically accurate masterpiece.

What else was distracting was pondering how Simon Le Bon possibly poured himself into those impossibly tight black stovepipe jeans.

So, to the migraine. If I had paid money for this show, I would have demanded with murderous rage, a refund. The constant use of fit-inducing strobe lighting was meant to do what? Beat us into submission? Hide the ravages of age wrought upon the members of Duran Duran from our bleeding eyeballs? It was like being subjected to a ceaselessly flashing interrogation spotlight. Yes, you’re hungry like a wolf! I GET IT!

I realize this isn’t the point. It’s about reliving your youth. It just wasn’t my youth, though it’s interesting to see where Brandon Flowers ripped his stage show off from. Simon Le Bon’s voice sounds great, almost just as it did on record that quarter century ago, but he was completely without dynamism and looked essentially, stupid. Duran Duran are too old to be doing what they’re doing.

The Police (or you could choose your nostalgia recently from a myriad sources: KISS, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osboure, Smashing Pumpkins, The Jesus and Mary Chain – what decade is it, again?) conversely, have still got it, and moreover their output has stood time’s test. KISS, eternally however old you think they are behind their warpaint, can get easily away with the inherent theatre of their performance. But Duran Duran, especially in the second set where they stand behind their line of synths a la Kraftwerk (only not at all like Kraftwerk), only make it painfully aware that this day in 2008 is 25 years too late.

But this wouldn’t have mattered an inch to the people who are reliving the glory of their nightclubbing days of the 80s, clapping their hands and otherwise doing whatever Simon says (oh, nyuk nyuk) and imaging all manner of wacky New Romantic haricuts they once sported, and who is anyone to begrudge them that pleasure? The better cuts Duran Duran released (‘Ordinary World’, ‘Come Undone’, ‘Rio’, ‘Planet Earth’) are all gems in their own campy way. But between looking at the floor while trying to avoid suffering a seizure, and looking at Simon Le Bon’s embarrassing attempts at highkicks, it was all completely unnecessary.