Mega-fan’s Puyallup fair exhibit creates Duran Duran ‘time warp’

A peek inside the storage unit filled floor-to-ceiling with Duran Duran memorabilia might leave some wondering if Andy “Durandy” Golub has come undone.

But that’s just the ordinary world for this mega-fan turned professional archivist, who’s now showing off some of his collection at the Washington State Fair.

The 44-year-old Bellevue resident said he started collecting when he was introduced to Duran Duran’s music at about 13 years old. He would obsessively check the temperature in his room where he stored his stuff.

“My mom should have seen that as a warning sign,” he said, laughing.

Durandy has gained a lot of attention for his ever-expanding collection. He has been on radio shows, compiled one book (“Beautiful Colors”) and is working on another, and collected everything one could imagine related to the English band that exploded onto the music scene in the 1980s.

The collection includes boxes of cassette tapes, archive books full of hundreds of promotional posters, roughly 13,000 articles, pins, photographs, tickets, a board game and too many other items to count. All have been carefully preserved and meticulously organized.

“It’s hard to track down these things that aren’t meant to last,” he said. “I’m dedicated to preserving things that would otherwise be lost in time.”

The state fair in Puyallup is featuring some of Durandy’s collection in the Hobby Hall through the end of the fair Sunday. It’s a pit stop for fans who plan to see Duran Duran perform at the fairgrounds Wednesday night.

Durandy will be in the grandstand audience, front and center. When fair officials surprised him on a local radio show with the tickets, he couldn’t contain himself.

“My molecules exploded all at once,” he said.

The state fair isn’t the most conventional Duran Duran arena. People usually wouldn’t associate their music with a petting farm, he quipped.

Still, Durandy said it will be a wonderful venue that adds to a long list of Puget Sound shows dating back before the band made it big.

Duran Duran’s new album “Paper Gods,” released earlier this month, played in the background Monday as Durandy sifted through decades of rare and mint-condition collectors items.

“It is like a time warp,” he said. “This isn’t just memorabilia. These are memories.”

The fair isn’t the first time Durandy has shared his love of Duran Duran with other fans. He’s held two local exhibitions, including one in Seattle in 2001 that took up three floors of a gallery.

“It was a beautiful premiere that turned all attending adults back into wistful teenagers by night’s end,” he recalled.

The band also appreciates his dedication. Durandy had a meet-and-greet with them at their 2005 show in Everett, one of about five or six times he’s met them over the decades. Durandy brought with him a commemorative poster designed specifically to mark their arrival. He said bass player John Taylor couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“The guys have reacted really well to my efforts,” he said.

They’ve shown that respect publicly, too. Duran Duran links to Durandy’s work on their Facebook page and website.

They even helped him propose to his fiancée at one of their previous Pacific Northwest shows. Singer Simon Le Bon also worked with a local radio station to record Durandy’s outgoing voicemail message.

But Durandy says his work is all about the band.

“I really try to make the band front and center,” he said. “You can better appreciate where the band is today if you know where they’ve been.”

He wants his collection to live beyond him, and its fate has yet to be determined. The items likely will end up with a foundation in the United Kingdom.

In the meantime, the collection has outgrown its storage space, so he’s scoping out areas on site to expand.

He quit his job at a law firm earlier this year to work full-time on the archive.

As long as Duran Duran is making music, there’s work to do.

“This is the soundtrack to our lives.”

This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Mega-fan’s Puyallup fair exhibit creates Duran Duran ‘time warp’."