A Day In The Life: Lockdown Challenge 2
The second Cherry Lipstick Lockdown Challenge! After finding and playing all 7” Duran Duran singles, next up was this – all 14 albums in one day. Easy? It always seems so, but the journey is the thing, and the (potential) fun in doing it.
There was the matter of the running order to sort out. Going in sequence was ruled out not least because it would end with Paper Gods and no one needs that after 13 hours. There was a sequencing to put them in some sort of logical order (a morning album, a post-lunch album, a late-night album etc) which, if memory services, started with All You Need Is Now and ended with Notorious. But what happened was requests were taken on Twitter throughout the day as the live-tweeting progressed.
And so, on April 30th 2020, at 08:05 GMT, Cherry Lipstick started the challenge with the immediate request for me to listen to Red Carpet Massacre. No doubt intended as some sort of torment, actually it was no bad thing. The first half stands up very well, especially compared to Astronaut and Paper Gods. Also, I had it in full on my phone and so stay in bed. I also was quickly tweeted by @bbamok who told me she was heading off to bed and seemed to want me to do it all again for the US market in 8 hours time.
About 50 minutes later I cracked on with part of the original plan and the 21st Century by going for All You Need Is Now. As with the 7” singles, each album also came with its own memory. I bought AYNIN in Flagstaff, Arizona in March 2011 in the middle of my ‘lost Duran decade’ (2006-2016) and so completely missed the i-tunes release. My view hasn’t changed much – the middle of the album sags and then blasts to the finish from Other People’s Lives.
Liberty was a request from @csjenkins68 in Australia who was also heading off to bed at the other end of the day. By now I was downstairs having breakfast and playing the first CD of the day. This CD was bought in Canterbury, Kent on a break from fruit picking along with Stone Roses debut CD and Prince’s Graffiti Bridge.
From the other end of the 90s came no. 4 – Medazzaland, and a chance to examine that strange album cover. Why the scribbled half-lines from Drowning Man, I Don’t Want Your Love and Buried In The Sand?
The 80s got their first outing with Notorious (again on CD, couldn’t find the LP), followed by the very long Thank You (54:26!), before Big Thing (as the first LP of the day) took me up to half time at 14:15 GMT.
Phew – if you thought this was going to be easy, think again. It takes a lot of determination to keep at it!
At 14:46 GMT we were back with the third of the Holy Trinity: Seven and the Ragged Tiger (LP signed by Nick!). Not a bad post-lunch sunny afternoon album – and Seventh Stranger flowed very nicely into Paper Gods, which was a good pre-tea afternoon album.
It also enabled me to tweet a pic / caption I’d been cautious about posting back when Cherry Lipstick started for fear of a reaction in this new social media world I found myself in. It passed with little comment, so here it is again:
"They're staring out in underwear from your computer screen"
17:00 GMT cup of tea in hand, it was Wedding Album time, 63 minutes of mostly ”they’re back” quality. (Favourite album review from ’93: “even blind squirrels find nuts”).
With 3 albums to go (DD, Rio and Astronaut) I took a break and ended up on a Zoom call with Cherry Lipstick regulars Ruth and Chris. What a lovely way to end a long day!
I’m sure you can work out the order of the final three. Astronaut was up first, and chatted away while I talked to the guys. During this album, @csjensen68 woke up and tweeted “Just woke up and saw you’re still at it!”
Then followed the debut album on LP, and a realisation I was staring at the inspiration for the ‘Cherry Lipstick’ name. (I needed a name for this ‘Duranzine’ I’d made, and so looked for inspiration in lyrics. I started with the debut album and its first song. A few lines down there was ‘lipstick cherry’. I stopped looking after that. Maybe there are better names out there, but 30 years later, it seems to be doing OK).
AND SO IT ALL ENDS WITH RIO. Of course. 14 hours, 45 minutes (time 22:53 GMT) and I was exhausted, and not a little proud.
