Gordon Downie is a pretty astute observer of the artist-audience dynamic. He proved that with these lyrics from "Courage", a song that appeared on the Tragically Hip's 1992 album, Fully Completely: "Watch the band through a bunch of dancers/Quickly, follow the unknown with something more familiar/Quickly, something familiar".

Downie understood what it takes some acts decades to realize: people pony up for concert tickets to hear the hits, so you're pretty much obligated to deliver. "Courage", of course, is one of the Hip's most popular songs, and Downie will be forced to sing it for as long as the band exists; the irony of that is surely not lost on him.

This is a particularly important lesson for artists who haven't made the charts since Ronald Reagan was popping Jelly Bellies in the Oval Office. There's a good reason Cyndi Lauper called her road trip this year the True Colors Tour. The title of her 1986 hit will resonate with anyone who ever paired acid-washed Bugle Boys with a Max Headroom T-shirt, and had She's So Unusual as a permanent Sony Walkman fixture. In marked contrast to her years as an untouchable hit maker, Lauper's last studio album of originals was released only in Japan, where it peaked at number 120.

Duran Duran has fared somewhat better recently. The original metrosexuals had the benefit of some honest-to-god advance buzz for their latest effort, Red Carpet Massacre, which came out last week. That's due in no small part to DD's collaborations with the shit-hot likes of Nate "Danja" Hills, Tim "Timbaland" Mosley, and Justin "No Clever Nickname" Timberlake. Choosing to work with the current crop of musical trendsetters might seem like a calculated ploy to keep the band off the state-fair nostalgia circuit for another year or two, but there's no denying that the results which include the banging "Nite-Runner" and the hip-hop-flavoured "Skin Divers" sound perfectly contemporary, like something Lindsay Lohan might load into her iPod for her next stint at Wonderland Center.

Nonetheless, when the group hits the road next spring, it'll be the pastel-hued tones of "Rio" and "Is There Something I Should Know?" that the punters will be coming to hear. Duran Duran's strategy, as demonstrated in a string of high-profile album-launch gigs in New York earlier this month? Make 'em wait.

"That was one of the beauties of doing this residency, this Broadway run," bassist John Taylor told the Straight in a recent telephone interview. "We sort of built a three-act show, and the first act is just Red Carpet Massacre in its entirety, start to finish. Then we do sort of an electro set, with everybody at the keyboards it's sort of like a Duran Duran future-modern variation on the unplugged set. And then it's the old-school shit."

Ah, yes, "the old-school shit": the kazillion-sellers that keep Duran Duran's members in Armani suits and Dom Pérignon. You can hardly blame a band for wanting to play its new songs, though. After all, no one likes to feel as if they have nothing left to say, and there's something to be said for the energy unleashed by performers invigorated by fresh ideas. Hell, it sure beats seeing a crumbling Keith Richards sleepwalk through the opening riff of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", which he'll likely be compelled to play for all eternity, a red-hot pitchfork trained on the reprobate dad-huffer's backside lest he feel tempted to slip in a few bars of "Happy".

Taylor admitted that it can be mind-numbing to run through the same decades-old hits night after night on tour, but he said the key is to keep yourself interested. "You have to reinterpret this material that's been played over and over again, and somehow you've got to imbue it with something fresh, and do it in some way that hasn't been done before," he said. "Otherwise it's like hitting your head against a wall."

Sometimes, the bassist noted, inspiration strikes in unexpected places. His current favourite, for instance, is one of Duran Duran's oldest numbers, the 1981 single "Planet Earth": "We wrote that song, what, 27 years ago? And I'm loving that right now. It's like I found a new way of playing it and it feels so fresh and cool."

Mind you, the band doesn't necessarily have to be enthused for the audience to get its rocks off. "'Hungry Like the Wolf' we played last night for the first time in a few months and it was like, 'Oh my god, this is dog,'" Taylor said. "But the fucking crowd were loving it, you know? It's like this is our 'Satisfaction'. No matter how badly we play it, they still love it."

So, let's not begrudge bands their creative impulses. After all, stagnation is death. By the same token, if Duran Duran thinks it can leave the stage without playing "Girls on Film" next time it swings through Vancouver, the immaculately coiffed pop veterans might not make it out of town with their nuts intact.