When last we left Duran Duran, Simon, John, Nick and Roger were skulking away from the public view, playing down a disastrous album and sitting out on any tours for 2009. But things change, my friends. Always do.

Duran Duran won rave reviews for a series of shows last week in California, where the boys went back to the old hits, playing hits from the early albums, deep album cuts from the middle of their career and largely ignoring the disasters of Red Carpet Massacre.

"The band is one of those groups that actually sound better live than they do on the albums," the San Jose Mercury News said in its review of DD's show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. "Part of it, of course, is that it's very hard to re-create through a home stereo system what John Taylor's bass lines feel like when they drive into your abdomen with all the force he can generate through his tall stack of Peavy bass cabinets. And part of it is just the excitement of seeing all these guys really working to play the music, which is very precise, very well rehearsed."

In San Francisco, "Duran Duran - featuring four of its original members plus three backing players - thundered through nearly two hours of hits and could have easily filled two more," the Chronicle reported. "There were some deep album cuts, B-sides and much-dreaded newer tracks along the way, but mainly it was an all-guns-blazing tribute to more than 30 years of giving the charts a much-needed dose of slap-bass, sex and tight white trousers."

Meanwhile, the Mirror newspaper in the U.K. said the band was back to their old "Wild Boys" selves during a show at the Lovebox Weekender - where they demanded five separate dressing rooms ... "because their families came along with them."

"Simon Le Bon arrived on stage shouting: 'What's my name you cockney motherf******' at the crowd," the Mirror reports. Explaining the outburst, Simon told reporters, "I've been trying to get down with the kids, and I think it's going pretty well. I'm having the best time."

Meanwhile, word has it the new album will be out in early 2010. Let's hope the recent shows are a sign that the boys are finally back. (You thought I'd say "hungry like the wolf" again, right? How no-no-notoriously bad would that cliche have been?)