WEEKEND REVIEWS : Pop : A Strange Mix at the Forum

Nostalgia is certainly one way of dealing with New Year’s Eve, so Duran Duran arrived at the Forum Friday night with an abundance of the stuff, launching the show with sets by Adam Ant and, gasp! , the ‘70s crotch-grabbing camp of the Village People.

This strange mixing of the decades was a fitting close to a year that saw the rebirth of ‘70s cool and kitsch in music and fashion. Duran Duran hasn’t yet given up on the present, and is enjoying some renewed popularity with its recent “Duran Duran” album. But it was to the hyper-beat of 1981’s “Girls on Film” that the band counted down the year’s final seconds.

The band Rolling Stone once dubbed “the Fab Five” has never stretched creatively far beyond the handful of light but crafty pop singles of its ‘80s heyday. And if some of the non-hits performed at the Forum were shapeless, Duran Duran’s best new material of smooth romantic rhythms at least showed the band ready to remake itself into a kind of Bryan Ferry act for teens.

The rest of the night’s lineup was no less energetic in abbreviated sets. After a sluggish start, Adam Ant and his band (which included longtime guitarist Marco Pirroni) were most inspired during the edgy pop cult hits “Goody Two-Shoes” and “Antmusic.”

And singing to a throbbing prerecorded R&B; pulse, the Village People remain as they were when last heard at the end of the disco era: an oddly endearing “macho” glee club, straight out of goofball night at Chippendale’s. They reminisced about Donny & Marie, “The Brady Bunch,” 8-track tapes and “Charlie’s Angels.” It was nostalgia for things many in the young crowd probably hardly remembered or never knew at all.