Listen Like It's 1989

Now that downloading is the way of the present and Britney Spears has got married again, it can be good sometimes to lean back in the nearest rocking chair, take a sip of good whiskey and remember the good old days of chart hits and the excesses of rock and roll. And trust me they were excessive.

Of course, you wouldn't want me to go into detail about any of it; after all, those of us who've survived have a pact that we don't delve too deeply into the ten or so years that most of us can't remember that well.

I only bring this up because a pattern in my life seems to have been established by Duran Duran - a band I didn't think a great deal of when they first surfaced, mainly because they weren't excessive. They were a little too polite… a little too carefully rehearsed and, ... er ... clean when they first appeared. And then most of them went off and got fatter and married and well, who can take any happily married rocker seriously and Simon le Bon is certainly a happily married man.

In the late eighties I bumped into Duran Duran again in Rio de Janeiro. I was the worse for wear and they weren't. And now, blow me down, they're at it again.

The kings of eighties' glam rock are back on the road, still doing "Girls On Film" and "Hungry Like the Wolf" and good for them. After all, a band's gotta make a living.

But they haven't moved on…. unlike another British chart topper from the eighties, in the States, as well as here in the UK.

Remember Rick Astley? I can't blame you if you look blank. But he had two number ones stateside. "Together Forever" and "Never Gonna Give You Up" and then he vanished. He hated the press attention and the limelight. So…. he walked away at the height of his career. Took his money and disappeared to become a reclusive composer and arranger.

But now he's back and how he's grown. I saw him the other night at Ronnie Scott's Jazz club in London, doing a showcase with a quartet, singing old standards and giving them the kind of treatment that would stop Robbie Williams dead in his tracks. Now, let me be honest, and wish you well if you're buying into the Duran Duran revival... but please don't miss out on the return of Rick Astley, who has grown from a heart throb into a considerable artist.

By Simon Bates