September 2010

[Sweder]

My only mid-week plod occurred on Wednesday lunchtime. Neck-deep in a complex work tender I needed some headspace, or as I said at the time, a re-boot. One of my many distractions that day was a freshly-downloaded edition of an old favourite – Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. I hooked up my iPod and head for the hills.

Talking Heads was one of those bands spawned amidst the bubbling gene pool that was CBGB’s (referenced in the song ‘Life During Wartime’), the New York Underground venue that gave rise to The Ramones and Debbie Harry/ Blondie amongst others. Stop Making Sense is the soundtrack to the 1984 film of the same name, directed by Jonathan Demme. Demme would find fortune and fame seven years later with Jodie Foster/ Anthony Hopkins Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs. David Byrne, mercurial front man and the big brain within the Heads, said of Demme’s direction ‘it wasn’t what he did (that made the SMS movie so good), it was what he didn’t do.’

What he did in my view was to record a band at the height of its powers. The album is a collection of Talking Heads’ finest works. It’s hard for me to think about the tunes without association with the images from that concert/ film. The whole things kicks off with an odd rendition of their first hit, ‘Psycho Killer’, with Byrne walking onto a stage empty save for a lone microphone, carrying an acoustic guitar and an old-fashioned tape recorder. ‘I’ve got a tape I want to play you’ – and we’re off on a journey of magic and wonderment. As the songs build so does the band. Attractive and accomplished bass-player and vocalist Tina Weymouth joins him for ‘Heaven’ – ‘Everyone is trying, to get to the bar, the name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven’ – and so it goes until the full ensemble is gathered. The songs build in pace and complexity as stage hands slide drum risers and keyboard stations across the stage until we reach full steam ahead in a blur of wild, Lynchian lyrics delivered over high-energy samba/ salsa-rock.

The central figure is of course Byrne. His distressed vocals screech out over manic, wacka-wacka-wacka rhythm guitar as his associates offer a range of paradoxically soothing harmonies and descants. I favour the helter-skelter madness of the later tracks – ‘Making Flippy Floppy’, ‘What A Day That Was’ and ‘Once In A Lifetime’. Some of the song names don’t stay long in the memory, mostly because they don’t feature prominently in the lyrics. ‘Life During Wartime’ for example is best remembered for the chorus – ‘This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco.’ Such idiosyncrasies are Byrne’s stock in trade. If you love the band (as I do) you forgive him his indulgences.

The whole thing wraps with a cover of ‘Take Me To The River’ written in 1974 by Al Green and Mabon ‘Teenie’ Hodges. By the time we get to this I’m rocking along at a fair old pace. Turns out most of the tracks (from ‘Slippery People’ onwards) are excellent running tunes. Who knew? But of course I should have known. In the film, when not wobbling about in an outrageously oversized suit, Byrne lives up to his name, raising the temperature with a series of maniacal spasms topped off with a crazy sprint around the set as his (beautiful) backing singers maintain the 'Still Waiting' refrain on the sublime Crosseyed and Painless.

Indeed, what a gig that was.
There are a number of bands I never got to see live – Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy – but if I could go back and be at one live concert I think this would be it.

Track du jour: ‘Girlfriend Is Better’