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TV Mania

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TV Mania
Background information
Formed 1990s
Founders Nick Rhodes
Warren Cuccurullo
Genres Music production, song writing
Associated acts Duran Duran
Missing Persons
Nick Rhodes, Warren Cuccurullo related

TV Mania was a collaborative effort between Warren Cuccurullo and Nick Rhodes.

History[]

In the early to mid 1990s, Warren and Nick wrote and recorded over 60 songs that were not meant to be Duran Duran songs. They talked in interviews sometimes saying they were going to be worked into a Broadway show, sometimes saying they were going to be a trilogy of albums with the first one to be called Bored with Prozac and The Internet?, sometimes saying there were two different projects. At the same time, they started shopping around some of their songs to other groups and artists, including Blondie with "Studio 54". TV Mania was musically written and performed by Warren & Nick, and producer / multi-instrumentalist Anthony J. Resta with sound snippets from TV dropped in (as in Duran's "Hothead"), or guest vocalists, including themselves. Nick wrote most of the lyrics that were used. A few songs have appeared on Cuccurullo's website and in the 2004 movie Trollywood, directed by Madeleine Farley, who had been dating Rhodes for several years.

The music was very experimental, consisting in large part of found sound recorded from radio and television, in the style of musique concrète. Rhodes once described it as a “social junk culture triptych opera” with a loose storyline, and said he'd love to see it developed into a stage show.

Production of the Duran Duran albums Medazzaland and Pop Trash by Cuccurullo and Rhodes was also credited to "TV Mania". This was a departure from previous albums, where production was always credited to "Duran Duran" plus any outside producers; this reflected Duran Duran vocalist Simon Le Bon's decreasing involvement in the songwriting, recording, and mixing process at the time.

The project has been largely abandoned since Cuccurullo's dismissal from Duran Duran in 2001. In 2013, the album Bored with Prozac and The Internet? was released.

A selection of songs written by TV Mania[]

Some of the unused TV Mania material was reworked to become Duran music for Medazzaland and Pop Trash albums, and during The Ultra Chrome, Latex and Steel Tour in 1997, "Mirror Mirror" was used as the pre-show song for most of the shows as the lights dimmed and the band prepared to go onstage.

Before 2013, the only official release of TV Mania-related material is the single "Destination Unknown".

Production credits[]

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