Arena is a live album by Duran Duran, originally released worldwide in 1984 and reissued with two bonus tracks in 2004.
To cap off the band's highly successful 1983/1984 "Sing Blue Silver" World Tour, EMI released a live album, which according to the sleeve was "Recorded Around The World 1984".
The album featured most of the band's big hits in a live environment, as well as some album tracks from Rio (1982) and Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983), and a new studio track "The Wild Boys", which was produced by Nile Rodgers, who had previously remixed the single "The Reflex", and had been a member of the disco/funk group Chic.
"The Wild Boys" single was issued with six separate covers - one featuring each individual band member and one of the band collectively.
At the time of release, critics were suspicious that the mix was too polished for a live album, as most of the audience was muted. The unique song arrangements and ad-libs like "Is anybody hungry?" indicated that this was indeed a live effort.
Other criticism arose from the omission of some of the band's biggest songs like "The Reflex", "Girls On Film" and "Rio". However, Arena still managed to peak at #6 in the UK (24 November) and #4 in the US (1 December).
The album was eventually re-issued 1 June 2004 and included two bonus tracks "Girls On Film" and "Rio". It had also been reissued in 1999 in the EU as a budget release by Dutch EMI affiliate Disky.
Arena would be the only full-length live Duran Duran release until the 2003 Encore Series of official bootleg recordings from shows in Japan and the West Coast of the USA.
Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(Duran_Duran_album)
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