Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes descended upon East Village Radio in New York City last night, where a crowd of approximately 700 people packed the sidewalks for a chance to press their noses against the glass of the storefront radio booth. The two members of Duran Duran were there to promote the release of their new album, All You Need Is Now, and spent a couple of hours chatting with Mark Ronson during his Authentic Shit internet radio show.

Questions were submitted via twitter, they played music, and generally acted silly.

Highlights:

• Favorite songs from the new record:
  Nick – Blame the Machines
  Simon -Girl Panic! “because girls make me panic in a good way”
• When will you start touring again?
  Nick said, “Yes, definitely next year, probably I suppose starting sometime in early February. Nothing solid yet, but I imagine it will include the United States.”  Nick also says that he hopes that some dates will include Mark Ronson and the Business, Intl., and later in the show mentioned that they would probably be coming out to California sometime early next year.
• Do you feel like you used to get a bad rap from the critics?
  Simon – “It varies from album to album, but so far this one seems to be getting alarmingly good reviews.”
  Nick – “Some of the rock press perhaps prefer more traditional music than ours, people perhaps who wear jeans and t-shirts people that sing about America, and i have no problem with that. I can see how it’s a little bit of a difference to what we do.”
  Simon – “We can’t wait for (the critics ) to make us happy. we know we’ve made a good album.”
• Simon re-wrote the lyrics for Blame the Machines five or six times.
  Mark – “A lot of lyrical depth was put into this album.”
  Simon – “it’s very different to the way we did the last album , there was a hell of a lot attention placed on the lyrics, and a lot of that has to do with you (Mark). A lot of times you would say it’s just not good enough for this song, it needs this kind of lyric or that kind of lyric or it needs to be more honest or whatever it was, and it made it quite difficult but… in the long run I’m really please it turned out like that, because in the long run I think it will really last.”
• Who sings the female sat nav vocals on Blame the Machines?
  Simon – It’s not Kylie, it’s our favorite English newscaster Nina Hossain from ITV (who also did the vocals at the end of The Man Who Stole a Leopard)…. I wanted to get that kind of sexy but authoritative thing that women seem to have over men, you know what I mean? the way she delivered the voice of the sat nav, you cannot go against what she says.”
• How do you feel about the album leaks?
  Nick – “It’s good to let people hear a little bit of things. I don’t really like people hearing the entire album before it comes out, I think it’s a shame when people leak things like that when they have them, that’s hugely irresponsible.”

• Read more…

Mark Ronson, producer of Duran Duran’s soon-to-be-released album All You Need Is Now, world-premiered a “sizeable chunk” of a track called Being Followed tonight on East Village Radio. Thanks, Mark!

Click the title of this post to leave your comment about how insanely awesome this song is.

Thanks to uber-talented Marcel Agterhuis for the clip.

Twitter reports say Mark Ronson “is killing it. Hacky roof has been blown off.”

Updates and photos posted as they come in…

Mark Ronson and the Business INTL live in London

Mark Ronson and the Business INTL covered Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough”…

Duran Duran have just hit the stage with Planet Earth. “People are going mental!”

Heading in to Girls on Film with some help from Spank Rock…

Boy George is on now with Somebody to Love Me…

Report: “Duran fucking duran and boy fucking george possibly the best gig ever fucking epic!” Also, “Brilliant brilliant gig! @iammarkronson completely deserved standing ovation! Surreal yet brilliant!!”

Mark Ronson and Duran Duran at Swordfish Records

Before taking the stage at Birmingham’s HMV Institute, Mark Ronson and Duran Duran made an appearance at Swordfish Records to the delight of a huge crowd of very patient fans. In typical style, Duran Duran were a bit late but all members of the band were present and in a great mood.

The band was there in support of a series of record store “takeovers” by Mark Ronson and the Business Intl, where the limited edition disk of “The Sound of Plastic” featuring Nick Rhodes will be exclusively sold.

Video interview with Mark Ronson and Duran Duran at Swordfish Records

I’ll be updating this post as more reports and photos come in.

Ronson is on now!

Set list! Looks like Duran Duran will be up for Record Collection (Simon), Planet Earth, and Girls on Film.

Simon is onstage now… reportedly flirting with MNDR.

Aaaaand it’s over. Adjectives used by those who attended the show included: amazing, unbelievable, and quality!

From the record signing…

Mark Ronson, a.k.a. The Great White Hope, spoke with CNN about his experience working with Duran Duran on the new album. In the video, Mark tells about having to edit out his own fandom in order to push the band to be the absolute best that they can be. Mark also provided a new song title, “All You Need Is Now,” which he says is one of his favorite Duran songs of all time.