I know it's hardly the time to go on about getting to shows.

Hard for any performer to get on stage and do his stuff immediately after a catastrophe.

I know I'm so lucky to have made it to both shows (though last night was a stretch, a mix of no sleep, old age and tonsillitis ... I know, boo-hoo!)

But still.

WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL DAVID. I love this guy. He did a great job. To repeat a yell out from last night ... you're ACE, Davo. Davo was learning all the new words, like ace and daggy, but he thought he'd give the latter a miss

Proceeds of last night's show went to kids with cancer charity, Challenge. I didn't know before ... if you don't read the papers, watch TV or spend time online, that's what happens! Nice though.

Some reviews, some inaccuracies, some photos from Monday night on the Undercover site (Bryne?? )

Did I say before? I love this guy. GREAT performer, GREAT show, it was a REAL privilege to be there.

He closed the set with the title track of his latest work. So uplifting but strangely prophetic and teary too. You can listen to it and the other tracks here ...

http://www.davidbyrne.com/sound.php

My daughter loved him. She said she felt a very young member of the audience lol.





http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=7566




REVIEW: David Byrne, Hamer Hall Melbourne, February 9, 2009

by Paul Cashmere - February 10 2009
photo by Ros O'Gorman

David Bryne has brought his Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno show to Australia. The very title of the tour may have scared off the fringe fans but to the die-hards, you knew you were in for one great mix of old and new.

Brian Eno produced albums two through four for Talking Heads. During Byrne’s solo career, they collaborated on ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’ (1981), several tracks from ‘The Catherine Wheel’ (1981) and last year’s ‘Everything That Happens Will Happen Today’.

The tour set list serves up an equal balance of the old and the new and the new sits well.

The Eno Heads albums were ‘More Songs About Buildings and Food’ (1978), ‘Fear Of Music’ (1979) and ‘Remain In Light’ (1980). (Remember when acts used to release an album every year and actually generated a fan base? That is why todays bands don’t have fans but we still go to see David Byrne).

Rounding up songs from those TH albums meant Bryne had four of Talking Heads greatest achievements to source from. Hey were in the set: ‘Take Me To The River’, ‘Life During Wartime’, ‘Once In A Lifetime’ and ‘Crosseyed and Painless’.

In fact, there was a good selection from the Talking Heads formative years. They were the albums that built the band. ‘Remain In Light’ made them the legendary group they are known as today.

But a David Bryne show is not just about songs. Art school student Byrne gives as much attention to the visual as he does to the setlist. Everyone on stage was dressed in white, including Bryne, the band and the dancers.

Dancers? Ah, yes, this is New York art school circa early 70s Bryne is sourcing from. The dancers Steven Reker, Natalie Kuhn and Lily Baldwin were as much a part of this show as the band members. Bryne is also part of the well-choreographed performance darting around the members as they dart around him. But that has always been a Bryne show, even back in the Talking Heads days.

I cannot rave about this show enough but at the same time I would love to see a Talking Heads reunion.

The brand name David Bryne does not have the same currency as the brand name Talking Heads. The pay-off for the fans is that we get to see these songs in an intimate venue with the solo show. Talking Heads would command a big ticket price and big venues.

The last time David Bryne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz and Jerry Harrison performed together as Talking Heads was in 2002 for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Talking Heads officially broke up in 1991. Their last recording was ‘Sax and Violins’ for a best of album. The last studio album was ‘Naked’ (1988).

Talking Heads made eight albums; every one of them is a classic.

I doubt we will still a Talking Heads reunion soon, if ever, although they are always asked about it.


http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainmen...4028036754.html



Byrne dishes up a diverse, satisfying menu

February 11, 2009

DAVID BYRNE
Hamer Hall, February 9
Reviewer Andrew Murfett

AFTER a brief but demure announcement encouraging donations to the Red Cross bushfire appeal, David Byrne began his show on Monday with a small caveat.

"This is a set menu," he said firmly, as much to ward off pesky fans who would holler requests or those who more quietly held expectations of hearing a hit-laden set from Byrne's commercial peak with the band Talking Heads.

"Can I have the entree, then?" shouted one mischievous fan.

Monday's frequently thrilling and sometimes mystifying two-hour show was about Byrne's musical relationship with producer, Brian Eno. They recently released an album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, a belated sequel to their work together on 1983's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and three Talking Heads records.

So there was no Psycho Killer or Road to Nowhere, but a thorough and satisfying wander through Byrne's musically diverse career.

Opening with the first track from the new album, Strange Overtones, Byrne introduced a dynamic, spritely band comprising drums, percussion, keys, bass and three vocalists.

Like Byrne himself, anybody who appeared on stage was dressed in a slightly disconcerting all-white uniform.

The most bizarre element of the night was three lively and skilful interpretive dancers who appeared sporadically through the show. They added an occasionally distracting but ultimately positive visual element to the show.

They acted out lyrics and performed complicated dance routines that often involved Byrne himself, and he appeared energised by all of the activity around him on stage.

It was difficult not to notice that he has surrounded himself with a noticeably younger band of musicians and dancers. He sometimes came across as a lovable but eccentric music professor.

A spirited Life During Wartime late in the main set had the crowd on their feet; likewise for Once in a Lifetime and Take Me to the River.

Three encores perhaps leaned a little obscure, but this was an absorbing and entertaining musical menu.


http://www.talking-heads.nl/heaven/viewtop...p?f=4&t=224


Melbourne, Hamer Hall Feb 9th, review

Post

by Peterb on February 9th, 2009, 4:17 pm
Hullo,

Everything that happened, happened on stage.

The show was good. The set list was like all the other ones you've seen, including Born Under Punches towards the end. They didn't end with Burning Down The House; this was most likely because close to 100 people died over the weekend in the worst bushfires Australia has ever seen. The Red Cross were collecting donations in the foyer after the show, I gave $50.

There was a mix of old and young people in the crowd, but the vast majority were oldies. No one really danced until after we all gave a standing ovation after "I Feel My Stuff". Then everyone boogied through all the encores, Take Me To The River, Air, Great Curve etc etc. A dancing audience makes everything much cooler...I was wanting to jump up and boogie earlier on, but I think I would've been told to sit.

The sound was great, everything was nice and clear. David's voice was fantastic throughout the whole night. His guitar solos were excellent Belew-styled improvs in the RIL material and his use of the wammy bar is tasteful and distinct. The keyboard player made excellent contributions and replicated the original synth sounds of Fear of Music in particular.

I said hello to DB after the show, but there were so many people wanting CDs signed and photographs, there wasn't much time to chat to him. I did ask about Here Lies Love and he gave one of those giggles and said they're still working on it. Someone mentioned his online journal and he commented that he had "gotten behind" with it as he was "having too much fun on tour".

He's a good performer and a good guy in relation to the time he gives to fans after shows.

Any other Melbournites wanna post some comments?

Cheers

Peter (who feels strangely flat..actually)

[size="4"][/quote]David Byrne[/quote]

[color="#0000FF"][color="David Byrne is a true artist.[/size]

He certainly is.

This is one very physical CD that is worth owning for more than the great music. The artwork and the whole package is superb and so satisfying.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0...5003421,00.html


Brian Eno and David Byrne turn album into art

By Noel Mengel

February 11, 2009 11:00pm

THIS is the most compelling argument in favour of music as a physical product in quite a while.

For starters, if you only download this, how would you know the answer to questions such as: "What is the connecting point between Brian Eno, David Byrne and the Sex Pistols?"

The answer? You wouldn't, unless you read this review. Steady on, you don't think I'm going to answer that now, do you?

In the world where a lot of people who care about music live, those kind of details are important.

And if you downloaded this, you wouldn't have the lovingly designed cover art, a 24-page booklet with illustrations in the same photo-realistic style as the cover, lyrics and explanatory notes from Byrne and Eno. All this helps create the right mood for the listener to explore the music.

That same kind of attention to detail was there in Byrne's Australian tour and Brisbane show on Saturday (review of the gig below) – brilliant band, three extra singers, three dancers, excellent sound.

Of course, there was a huge weight of expectation hanging over Byrne and Eno's decision to work together again after a 25-year break. The albums they created, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear Of Music and Remain In Light with Talking Heads and the Byrne-Eno album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, were some of the most exciting and innovative recordings of that time, or since for that matter.

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Inertia) just had to be good.

And it is, while forging its own path rather than merely attempting to recreate former glories.

Byrne is right in sensing a "folk-electronic-gospel" feeling in the music Eno handed over for him to create melodies and lyrics.

The sonic details are instantly recognisable to anyone who has followed Eno's career, whether solo or as producer for U2, but there is something very spare and clean about these tunes too, an atmosphere that was brought out even more strongly in concert.

You can imagine people with acoustic guitars gathered by a campfire, or in a church, for that matter, singing songs like Home, Life Is Long and One Fine Day.

The more you play them, the more they get under the skin.

Songs like these balance with the lighter-than-air funk of Strange Overtones, the song which most sounds like it belongs on a Talking Heads album.

Then there's The River, a lush setting for the clean lines of Byrne's lyrics, which have the same kind of so-real-it's-surreal element they've always had.

There is so much music around now that a lot of it is disposable, but Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is something you actually want to have, a piece of art that engages the senses and the intellect.

And the Sex Pistols connection?

You would never guess it, but that's the Pistols' Steve Jones on guitar on several tracks.



http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0...5003421,00.html

Talking Heads' David Byrne celebrates Brian Eno influence

Article from: The Courier Mail, Brisbane



By Noel Mengel

February 08, 2009



FOR 30 years, David Byrne's challenge has been to get people dancing in a way that is not only entertaining but intellectually interesting.
By the end of this joyful two-hour set at the Brisbane Convention Centre on Saturday, February 7, you had to conclude that he had met the challenge and perfected the art.

He takes the stage with his band (drums, percussion, bass, keys, three singers) all clad in white.

Byrne is still very fit and lean, looking much the same as he did in Talking Heads, except his hair is now the colour of the outfits.

They were soon joined by three dancers and from there it was non-stop movement, a feast for the eyes and the senses.

Byrne's new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is a reunion with producer Brian Eno, who teamed with him to create three Talking Heads albums as well as 1983's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

This concert is a celebration of that music, from new material such as Strange Overtones, the funkiest track on the new album, to Talking Heads material such as Heaven - and the choicest cuts of the classic Remain In Light album.

Byrne and band, underpinned by the jaw-droppingly good bass grooves of Paul Frazier, even found a way to perform Help Me Somebody from Ghosts, originally constructed with voices taped from the radio.

The dancers are youthful and athletic, and while their choreographed routines were not always strictly in synch with the music - this is a live band, after all - they certainly added to the spectacle rather than distracted from it.

As fans of Talking Heads videos know, Byrne is quite a mover himself, and by the time of Once In a Lifetime and Life During Wartime the urge to dance was becoming irresistible.

Everyone was on their feet for the encore, which included a superb version of Al Green's Take Me to the River, a staple of the Talking Heads repertoire.

No Psycho Killer - that didn't fit the music-made-with-Eno theme - but everyone went into the night reminded that music made for dancing is a pleasure we all need more of.

Especially music as powerful as this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkxQHlSv0io

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxOPSY_3l4Q


A brief clip from the second Melbourne show (there are not likely to be any more from Hamer Hall!) I was waiting for the leapfrog this time and David buckled a bit!

A full length clip from the Brisbane show.

There are a lot up there from Singapore ... it's obviously easier there!

A nice local review ... better if you click on the link, but this is for lazy people! I can confirm that these photos are from Hamer Hall, Melbourne on Monday, February 9th ... I recognise someone's mits. He did SUCH a good job under horrible circumstances and his smile in the last photo says it all.


http://indolentdandy.net/fitzroyalty/2009/...-and-brian-eno/

David Byrne plays the songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno
David Byrne and his band, including 3 singers and 3 dancers, played an ecstatic concert last night at Hamer hall dressed all in white, with the singers dancing and the dancers singing. Byrne twisted and twirled while playing his Fender Stratocaster (occasionally switching to a Telecaster) as the dancers flew around him.


The highlights for me were ‘Poor boy’ and ‘I feel my stuff’ from his current album Everything that happens will happen today, which was composed with Brian Eno (the title song comprised the third and final encore), and Once in a lifetime, but it was all extraordinary, blending songs from the three Talking Heads albums produced by Eno with songs from the new album and from their previous collaboration, My life in the bush of ghosts.


When he last played in Melbourne in February 2005 he had mostly the same band but different singers and a string section. Before that I saw him play in Perth in early 2002. This show was possibly the best - it’s so difficult to compare, particularly because this show had a theme that excluded most of Byrne’s wonderful solo work and many of the best known Talking Heads songs.




The banter between songs was minimal but he appeared happy and energised and what he did say was charming in a slightly dorky genius way. During the final bow after the third encore the drummer was videoing the audience with his digital camera and we all had the feeling that we had witnessed something special.



Before the concert started it was announced that the Red Cross would be collecting donations for bushfire aid and many people gave generously as they came out of Hamer hall enamoured with the music and happy to be safe and healthy when many Victorians are suffering.

One of the several posters that I didn't know about. Very ironic that this was organised before the bushfires and that Melbourne was his first concert a day after them. This generous gesture has therefore received little or no publicity. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say when he finally gets the time to update his journal ... as he says, don't call it a blog. It's one of the best spots on the web ... he writes so well and is ALWAYS worth reading.

http://www.theartscentre.com.au/media/Even...lb%20poster.pdf

A radio interview that I haven't listened to (along with several million CI has done over the years!) I have got some links to a couple of really good video interviews from New Zealand somewhere, which I HAVE seen and which I'll post when I find them. I'll try and be selective, I've gathered a lot of random stuff about DB
http://blogs.abc.net.au/wa/2009/02/david-byrne-tal.html

David Byrne in New Zealand

I'm going to do this in a few sections!

Here's the first bit


http://mmeiser.com/blog/2009/02/david-byrn...on-tour-in.html

David Byrne takes his bike on tour in New Zealand
From Bicycle added to David Byrne tour party

"If you think you see David Byrne cycling around Wellington or Auckland this weekend you'll probably be right.

The former Talking Heads frontman is in the middle of a world tour and is taking in what sights he can between shows from his trusty bike.

The tour follows the release of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, an album created with producer-composer Brian Eno, who worked with Byrne on several albums including three by the Talking Heads."

How cool is that.

More:

He says he remembers taking some time out to visit Rotorua and walk the Tongariro Crossing here in 2005, but the touring machine this time around is more restrictive -- and expensive.

"I'm paying the salaries of 17 people. So I can say `let's do some sight-seeing', but for every day I sight-see I'm paying salaries for all those people just so I can visit the beach."

He also remembers early Talking Heads tours here, but admits his touring attitude has changed since then.

"Maybe I was just younger, but there was more partying at night after the shows and then just sleeping it off the next day. So I tended not to see as much."

"It's more civilised now," he says. "I travel with a bicycle, so I can get around various towns on my own."

He was pleasantly surprised to be able to get out and about on the footpaths of Tokyo during a recent tour stop-off there.

"If you do that in New York they yell at you, but it is accepted in Tokyo. You just have to weave in amongst the grandmothers and businessmen."

His affinity with cycling appears to have also rubbed off in other areas of his artistic self.

Byrne says he came up with some designs for bicycle racks which have a different take on the standard range.

He sent sketches to the local transport authority in New York city and they said they would put them up if he was prepared to pay to have them made.

He did so and they now offer New Yorkers a funky bicycle parking alternative.

He's not going to pursue it as a commercial venture, as doing so would soon send him broke, but art design is an ongoing passion.


first of the very nice TV interviews from New Zealand ... about 11 minutes worth!!

http://tvnz.co.nz/entertainment-news/a-cha...2-2485307/video


Further to David mentioning his bike riding, his foldaway bike that he carts around the world and his unique New York bike racks in the previous interview, here's a clip dedicated solely to that topic Love him ... at least he's not wearing lycra!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brCk1-AVvRk


The second REALLY good interview from New Zealand ... about 16 minutes and the bit of blurb that went it. Enjoy it, you're allowed to! Nice!


http://www.3news.co.nz/Full-interview-with...35/Default.aspx

http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Talking-head-...ArticleID=90910
Music legend David Byrne is in the country to play concerts in Wellington then Auckland.
A man who made his name with a band called Talking Heads, and who remains one of the most talented and creative music forces of our time.
Back in the mid-70s Byrne made an art-form out of being intense.
“I think I am happier with myself now, thank God,” he says.
“If that’s what it took to get me writing well so be it.”
Talking Heads evolved out of the New York underground to become a massive hit.
Great theatre, great songs, strange white-guy dancing and Byrne fearlessly odd.
“Despite whatever oddness, I like a pop song the way other people do and if I can occasionally write one that connects with a lot of people – well then we’re in the same boat,” he says.
Byrne still knows how to write a song to connect with his audience and on his new album – a collaboration with ground-breaking electronic music producer Brian Eno – he has never sounded in better voice.
This once jittery young man now sounds almost operatic.
“When I started I’d get out of breath. I was probably just so excited that I forgot to hold back at the beginning so I would have something left at the end.”
Byrne has always been hyperactive – he paints, he directs, he sings – the only thing he doesn’t do is rest.
“I’m kind of a desperation, workaholic I am afraid. I dive into work to avoid all those issues.”

Two reviews of the Wellington show on February 13. (It was February 13 2005 when I went to the last show, but it was a Sunday ... useless info of the day!)

From what David said in the video, the weather wasn't the best. It must have been raining and probably, being Wellington, blowing!

(just as an aside, the sound at both the Melbourne shows was superb throughout so it's a shame they took a while to sort things out in Wellington).
http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3589/artsb...a_lifetime.html

Twice in a lifetime
by Guy Somerset
David Byrne triumphantly revisits his collaborations with Brian Eno.
Succumbing to nostalgia (his own and his audience’s) is not without its perils for David Byrne. “Sing something we know,” yells a heckler part-way through Byrne’s tremendous two-hour concert in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre, miffed that he’s included so many songs from his new collaboration with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, rather than solely revisiting their earlier partnership on Talking Heads albums More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979) and Remain in Light (1980) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981).

As it happens, Byrne has just been playing a song from Fear of Music, albeit the lesser-known Heaven; with wonderful irony, lost on our heckler friend, it’s a song that contains the line “The band in heaven plays my favourite song, they play it once again, they play it all night long”, where heaven could very well be hell (“Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens” – a chorus comparable to the exquisitely rendered emptiness of Roxy Music’s “More than this there’s nothing”).

The favourite song of this audience isn’t hard to figure out, and it isn’t far off – but Byrne isn’t about to play it all night long. The songs from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today may sound sonically timid after the glories of Byrne and Eno’s past, but it remains a strong album by any other standard, and Byrne threads its contents throughout the concert.

Strange Overtones from the album proves a deceptively subdued opener – the sound flat, and Byrne and his four-strong band and three backing singers looking lost on a wide open stage. However, the fact everyone is dressed in white (matching Byrne’s hair) is one indication of the thought that has gone into the night, and that wide open stage is soon explained, and filled, by three dancers whose wittily choreographed interaction with Byrne and his singers on second number I Zimbra and thereafter – in one memorable instance sitting in office chairs – is a magical mainstay of the concert.

The sound falls flat twice more – on both occasions a result of the sophisticated album arrangements of Eno diffused in a live setting: on Help Me Somebody from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (with Byrne taking the ranting preacher role) and at the beginning of Crosseyed and Painless from Remain in Light.

Nonetheless, Crosseyed and Painless is the song that has the audience streaming forth from their seats down to the front of the stage, unable to hold their feet any longer as its uncertain start gives way to the ecstasy of a fully-fledged funk workout.

More of the audience emerges – and still more energetically – for that favourite song, Once in a Lifetime, written by Byrne as a young man imagining the mystifications of middle age and now embraced by an audience, like Byrne, middle-aged themselves, but joyous in the face of the lyric, joining in with relish the anguished cry: “My God, what have I done?” (The anguished cry is just one end of Byrne’s vocal range, which also encompasses nervy neurosis, swelling pop and the sweetest soul.)

Remain in Light provides many of the high points of the night, as it has for Byrne’s career: Houses in Motion, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On), The Great Divide.

But, along with Life During Wartime (climaxing in a dance, rather than guitar, solo) and Take Me to the River, there is an exceptional version of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today’s most expansively Enoesque soundscape, I Feel My Stuff (with its spectral piano opening building toward a wild wig-out), and the one that brings down the house is Burning Down the House, with band and dancers, male and female alike, in white tutus and Byrne giving a curtsy afterward.

If one were going to be pedantic, this is not an Eno collaboration, but from the self-produced, Alex Sadkin-engineered 1983 Talking Heads album, Speaking in Tongues. But who would be pedantic after a concert like this? Who would be anything other than grateful to have witnessed such a night? The only heckling at the end is for Byrne to sing something more.

DAVID BYRNE: THE SONGS OF DAVID BYRNE AND BRIAN ENO, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, February 13.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dominionpost/4847320a26666.html

David Byrne: Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno
Fresh and innovative - the same as it ever was
The Dominion Post | Saturday, 14 February 2009

David Byrne and Brian Eno first worked together on three of the early Talking Heads albums.
In 1981 the pair released the innovative My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a fusion of Afro- funk rhythms and spoken-word samples. Last year Eno created instrumentals and asked Byrne to provide lyrics for a new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which has prompted Byrne to create this celebration of the pair's musical ideas.
The whole band was dressed in white with Byrne, ever the performance artist-as-musician, dipping and bopping as his disco- funk guitar scratches accompanied what is surely one of rock's most unique voices.
Strange Overtones from the new album was an uplifting opening, though the sound was lacking. But there were cheers as Byrne cherry-picked from those classic Heads albums More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light. The nonsense poetry and African rhythms of I Zimbra saw the white-man funk flow and three dancers were introduced for the first of many sporadic, scene- stealing performances.
Midway through the set there was a change of gears, not so much from the band, which loped through Heaven and several tracks from Everything That Happens (the sound drastically improved after the first number); it was a case of the audience lifting its game, up from seats and flowing steadily to the front.
Iconic Talking Heads tracks (Crosseyed and Painless, Once In A Lifetime, Life During Wartime) pulsed and probed as backing singers and dancers moved across the stage to ensure there was never anything close to a dull moment. Help Me Somebody (from Bush of Ghosts) was positively electric and encores of Al Green's Take Me To The River as well as The Great Curve and Air kept the audience on its feet, toes tapping and hands clapping.
Burning Down the House was the feel-good encore, house lights on full to show everybody standing.
David Byrne's musical career across three decades has seen him constantly move forward, inventing rather than repeating; this performance was a showcase of that, also showing that, in many ways, the music he and Brian Eno have made together sits in its own near-timeless bubble; new songs merging with old, everything that happened sounding fresh.
David Byrne: Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno
Michael Fowler Centre, Friday.

Valentine's day NZ Blog. Click on the link for the photos ... worthwhile.

http://eyeofthefish.org/little-fishes-swim-upstream/

When I was younger, I sometimes thought it would be good to be a black woman, so that I could qualify as a backing singer for Talking Heads: they always seemed to have the best dancers / singers / ass-shakers in the business, and they could get so close to the Master Byrne himself. Perhaps that’s just me. I never viewed it as a comment on society that perhaps they were pigeon-holed into that role: I was just jealous that they had what I thought was the best job in the world.
That may come as some surprise to those who know me now, given that I still can’t sing, still can’t dance, and I’m still not a black woman.
Certainly, it all seems so applicable now as the 80s roll around again in the form of a wave of oncoming redundancies - the Same as it Ever Was… some things happen more than Once in a Lifetime. Evidently some of you still remember the days of More Songs about Buildings and Food as you all started tapping your heels to that, but really got up rocking to Stop Making Sense’s “Take me to the River” (did you know that was originally a Grateful Dead Al Green song? I didn’t. Just found that out. The wonders of the googlewebstarkive, our resident pedant…;-).
In the mean time, we’ll tell you what we would like too - we know that lots of the architects in town read this blog, because the computer stats tell us, and perhaps in the future if you’re all laid off you’ll have more time to do so, but in the mean time: do feel free to comment online. Its your blog as much as ours. No point being silent.
We’ll still blog about buildings, and architecture, and urban matters, but if there are fewer buildings going up, or down, we’ll perhaps prattle away about other matters. Suggestions always welcome. Just post them online. Or click on Contact. Philip’s got the key to the box. I’m sure he’ll reappear some day. The Fish is holding the fort till then.
But it’s Valentines Day today, and much as we know you love Architecture, I’m sure there is someone else you love even more.
If you’re an architect with a big ego, that may just be yourself.
If you’re someone else, I’m sure you’ll love one another.
If it’s you, then: Happy Valentine’s Day.
Love, the Fish.

another Valentine's day blog, very funny, click on the link for the comments ...
http://brunswick.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/byrne-in-a-tutu/

« Well, that’s that done.
We’ve all had days like this »
Byrne in a tutu!
I’ve been to some pretty good concerts… Radiohead touring OK Computer in 1998, with the whole of the ASB Stadium attempting to mosh to some of rock’s saddest songs, Beck at Wellington Town Hall in the ’90s, gurning throughout a magnificently spastic dance number, even Bowie singing in the rain at the Cake Tin in 2004. And then there is David Byrne singing ‘Burning Down The House’ in a tutu.
If I had to name my single favourite band I would have to say Talking Heads. I especially love their Brian Eno albums and the much-maligned True Stories. The only album of theirs I dislike is the over-florid Naked. I was naturally a sucker for this concert, which had one of the oldest and whitest audiences I’ve ever seen. You could tell who’d been a hipster in 1980 - they were now bald and wearing neat leather jackets. The show was a mixture of Talking Heads songs from their Eno-produced period, and most of the new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. As with the Bowie concert, the new tracks were politely received while people went nuts over the old stuff.
There was the usual quota of concert wankers, particularly the many guys within earshot who couldn’t get over how clever they were and wouldn’t shut up about Eno’s production values*, and the twat who shouted over Byrne’s stage patter… and the guy in the gallery across from me who kept up his own private drum solo for most of the show to the danger of the people in the adjoining seats. The sound was also bloody atrocious, especially for the first few songs (a technician kept darting across the stage to fiddle with the settings but he never balanced the all-obscuring bass) but there was an amazing moment when they started playing ‘Crosseyed and Painless’ and everyone under 40 rushed to the front and the stalls had to stand for the rest of the concert because the band was obscured by the ecstatic flailings of computer programmers. Hah!
I think the band were a bit taken aback by the roar of the audience, especially as the start was a bit slow, but Byrne was just very, very cool, and it was great to see a show where a lot of thought had gone into the appearance and construction. There were eleven people on stage, including three dancers, and everyone was in white, like the coolest tennis players ever. It wasn’t exactly spontaneous (I think they’ve had pretty much the same setlist since they started the tour) but it was a great show, and it’s a pity there was hardly anyone under thirty there.
On the way home I was A) hit by an egg from a car that tried to run me over while C) yelling abuse, to literally add insult to injury. I thought it was a stone or a fruit until I saw it splashed on the road, because I was completely unmarked - it had hit me in the arm at an angle and bounced off. So I wasn’t really angry at all. But really - who drives around Kelburn on a Thursday night throwing eggs? Losers.
Now I have to go clean my flatmate’s walls. Happy fucking Valentines’ Day.
*Brian Eno fans, the third most irritating fans in the world behind Tom Waits fans and Tori Amos fans. Unfortunately I’m all three.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/ne...jectid=10556996




Review: Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno at the ASB Theatre

9:41AM Monday Feb 16, 2009
By Matt Greenop
Some combinations of ingredients guarantee a perfect result - and the long-time David Byrne-Brian Eno combo is just that.

From Eno's days producing Talking Heads to Life in the Bush of Ghosts and the latest Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the pair's reckless, mad science approach to music is tough to beat.

Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno is a celebration of their work together, and with Byrne's tendency to "art up" shows, bringing the crowd far more than just music (think the giant-suited goodness of Stop Making Sense), things were boding well for the Valentine's Day show at Aotea Centre.

History has taught this reviewer that managing expectations before shows by rock elders like Byrne is a wise move - they were nearly always better "back in the day".

But this couldn't be further from the truth as Byrne, while a bit whiter on top, proved that he has lost none of his Heads-era cool and, if anything, produces even more energy on stage.

Known for blurring the line between music and theatre, he and his seven-piece band and trio of dancers, dressed completely in white against a black backdrop, launched into a two-hour set that rolled like a well-oiled machine.

Strange Overtones from the new album kicked the show off, giving many in the crowd their first taste of some of the fresh tracks, which were assembled by Byrne and Eno bouncing files between New York and London.

In Japan, said Byrne between songs, they have a living national treasure, and the New Zealand equivalent is Neil Finn.

Cue our local legend, to the unbridled delight of the packed house, as the pair shared verses on a stunningly rendered take of Heaven.

Track after track was delivered flawlessly, with the three dancers, including the enchanting Lily Baldwin, diving among the band and back-up singers, with slickly choreographed synchronicity and an endearing sense of recklessness helping to further amplify an already-electric atmosphere.

Delving into the hit bag saw some 20 songs - highlighted by a stunning rendition of Help Me Somebody from the seminal Eno co-op Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

But it was, predictably, the Talking Heads classics that really lit up the crowd - Once in a Lifetime's hooky chorus faithfully and enthusiastically aped by the spellbound audience.

As Byrne's effect-laden guitar built it to a crescendo, a dancer actually vaulted him mid-solo.

Take Me to the River got similar treatment, with Byrne's unique voice oozing with power and passion.

This commitment was echoed by every single person on stage, all obviously enjoying the hell out of what they do.

It made a refreshing change from the over-produced, under-delivered shows often toured this decade.

http://frenzforum.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7...71/m/1131010565

general chat about David's shows on Neil Finn's page ... worth reading. David did indeed introduce Neil on his Sessions at West 54th Street DVD ... it was before his hair went white and there is also a very young Liam on there, if I remember correctly. I haven't watched it in years ... must dig it out.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mDZ2ZF-Twfk/SZoz...d-neil-finn.jpg


photo above of David and Neil Finn who joined him to sing Heaven at the Aotea Centre, Auckland on February 14


blog it was taken from below ... please click on the link, some nice photos as well as the one above.


David Byrne rocks!
http://mandy-spot.blogspot.com/2009/02/dav...yrne-rocks.html


On Valentines Day we went to David Byrne in concert. The show was officially titled 'David Byrne performs Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno' which is a bit of a mouthful.

What a great show it was. JK declared it one of the best concerts he's been to in New Zealand. Not only was David in great voice, but the show was very lively, with crazy dancers whirling and wheeling around the stage.

Half way through Neil Finn came on for a duet on 'Heaven'. DB introduced him so "In Japan they have a thing called a Living National Treasure, here in NZ they have the 'bloke down the road', and here he is...".
Each song had a new aspect. One was performed with David and all the dancers sitting on office chairs wheeling themselves around the stage, another was sung with him and all the band running on the spot, a bit like one of the old Talking Heads videos.

For Burning Down The House (one of the several encores) everyone came back on wearing white tutus. This clip conveys the huge amount of energy and fun that was had by all the performers.


Again, PLEASE click on the link to the blog to see the photos and more youtube clips, beside the two below!!


Burning Down the House, which we didn't get in Melbourne for obvious reasons. So, I guess I'll never get to see DB in a tutu ... bummer!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJ4VFi7iOo


David with Neil singing Heaven, one of my favourite songs. Neil looks decidedly uncomfortable White definitely isn't his colour but at least he was spared the tutu





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9gVJeQcstE


The band, while I remember. I can't remember if it was the same keyboard player as 4 years ago, the others are the same.
David Byrne, Mauro Refosco, Graham Hawthorne, Paul Frazier, Mark Degli Antoni.

The singers ...
Jenni Muldaur, Redray Frazier, Kaissa Doumbe Moulongo.


I am assuming Paul Frazier and Redray Frazier are brothers? They look alike apart from the size, but I don't know for sure.

Jenni Muldaur is Maria Muldaur's daughter. I don't know if anyone here is old enough to remember Midnight at the Oasis? You're lucky if you're not! It quite upset me when the name reminded me of the song, which has to be one of the most irritating ever!


The dancers ...


Natalie Kuhn, Lily Baldwin, Steven Reker.


http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2008/09/09222008-ashevi.html


Alright, well I hope this sort of makes sense ... ha ha. I know it's long, I know he's now back playing in the US and the first great reviews are already up! Gawd, I wish I knew what fuel he runs on and whether it's commercially available ... I'd buy it!! I'm feeling quite a lot better now the antibiotics have kicked in though, after feeling lousy at the concerts and just hoping I didn't collapse ... I wish I'd been on them the week before the shows but I was too busy watching the awful weather and thinking that if it stayed that bloody hot then I wouldn't be going anyway. I got my cool change but didn't expect the fires, I was playing ostrich. Surreal, unreal, there isn't anything I can say.


Did I say before? I love this man and he has the best laugh!


As for a Talking Heads reunion, well I read somewhere a long time ago that David said that he'd done that already, so why would he want to do it again?

May he continue to come up with fresh ideas for many, many more years.


http://www.davidbyrne.com/

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/ (the latest instalment on Hong Kong was added a couple of days ago ... he's getting there!)

Shows don't just happen ... they have to be planned! I thought this was interesting.

http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/54686/



David Byrne Makes Sense Of His Tour

By Rebecca Milzoff
Published Feb 22, 2009





Illustration by Mark Nerys

Last spring, as David Byrne was finishing his first album with Brian Eno in 28 years, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, he came to a bittersweet realization: "It felt wonderful singing the songs, and I knew if I didn't tour, then the recording process would be the last time for quite a while that I'd enjoy performing them, except in the shower."

The tour, subtitled 'Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno,' evolved from a set of Everything songs into a production that features selections from all of the duo's collaborations (including the monumental My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and some Talking Heads songs).

"I realized I could tie the present to the past with the thematic thread of Brian's involvement," says Byrne, who noticed, for instance, that 'Poor Boy' (new) and 'Crosseyed and Painless' (old) were both structured around just one or two chords.

Sixty-nine performances in seven countries and only one wardrobe malfunction later ("The audience got so enthusiastic all of a sudden"), the show stops at Radio City this Friday and Saturday.

Byrne deconstructed the intricate production (including seven musicians, three dancers, choreography, and costumes) while on a ferry to New Zealand's Waiheke Island, ever-present bike at hand.

1. Mauro Refosco
Percussion and Guitar

The show is a true collaboration. "Mauro suggested that [a dancer] give the drummer his cutoff cue at the end of 'Life During Wartime.' A simple but brilliant idea."


2. Graham Hawthorne
Drums

Byrne has worked with the rhythm section for ten years. Hawthorne "also does programming and wine recommendations."


3. Mark Degliantoni
Keyboards

Former member of Soul Coughing with whom Byrne did some shows "back in the day."


4. Paul Frazier
Bass and Vocals

Another longtime associate of Byrne's, a "great singer" in addition to his instrumental talents. Co-founded the Funky Poets rap group in the nineties.


4. The Set

"It's really simple,generic even," with one strange component: four office chairs, used in one number. "I'd suggested that we do a dance in a chair, and I think the next day in rehearsal [choreographer] Annie-B showed me a rough version, I loved it! It was silly but somehow really moving at the same time."


5. The Dancers

"I thought to myself, No one would expect me to bring dancers! They'll think it must be pretentious or that corny MTV-video stuff everyone does. Dealing with those prior assumptions might be fun."

Byrne participated in the casting process, adamant that the dancers "should not look like typical dancers, you know, how you can always spot a dancer around Lincoln Center." He wasn't initially sure the concept would work, but now feels "it lifts the show to another level. Well, you'll see, it was a great relief. Whew."


6. The Choreography

Annie-B Parson, Noémie LaFrance, and Layla Childs and Sonya Robbins contributed. "The movement vocabulary isn't rooted in modern, jazz, or ballet: We've all seen a lot of that already."

Byrne offered ideas too. He was inspired by two Japanese films, The Taste of Tea and Funky Forest (both "have hilarious and unexpected dance sequences"), and by Sufjan Stevens's The BQE at BAM, which incorporated video and hula-hooping.


7. 'Dancerville'

Production manager Mark Edwards came up with this nickname for "watch out for moving bodies in this area."


8. Jenni Muldaur
Singer

Byrne's manager suggested Muldaur. "We have a lot of friends in common, which helps the conviviality on the road, a serious issue over a long tour."


9. Redray Frazier
Singer and Guitar

Brother of bass player Paul. "It's nepotism of the best sort, a lucky coincidence, really."


11. Kaïssa
Singer

Byrne met the Cameroonian singer at Paul Simon's recent bam retrospective, in which they both participated (Byrne at one point sang backup for Kaïssa). "We hit it off immediately."


The Costumes

"Lots of bands find [coordinated outfits] offensive, as if their individuality were being taken away, then they wear some version of an alt-rock or metal uniform. For this show, everyone wears white."

"There were some groans,'OMG, I'm going to have to lose weight,' "but white is practical (helps the lighting designer illuminate the cast) and meaningful ("The music is vaguely spiritual, as we know, white is what everyone wears in heaven").



(p.s. there is also a small photo if you want to click the link to see it. I noticed the photographer is a Danielle Spencer and thought for a minute it was Rusty Crowe's better half, but I don't think it is )

absolutely SPOT ON review from Vancouver ... what a great writer, puts our lot to shame

I SO wish I could do my shows again under the influence (of antibiotics )!!

DB is SO DAMN GOOD and don't I wish I could freeze it all forever!


It's hard to know which parts to highlight, but he is certainly ageing gracefully. My daughter is 24 and had never seen him. She thought he was wonderful and she's seen more gigs than I've had hot dinners!

That's how it's done, by always moving forward, not relying on cosmetics or fashion and only hanging on to the things that count ... the talent, the personality and the individuality.

Here endeth the first lesson ...



http://www.musicbox-online.com/dh/review/0...ne-concert.html

David Byrne in Concert: Same As We Wish It Was


Queen Elizabeth Theatre - Vancouver, BC

February 20, 2009

First Appeared in The Music Box, February 2009, Volume 16, #2

Written by Douglas Heselgrave

Wed February 25, 2009, 11:45 PM CST


Every few years, David Byrne alters his style in order to highlight a different side of his persona. Back in 1980, when the Talking Heads performed at the University of British Columbia’s War Memorial Gym, he looked like a stick-figure guitarist who couldn’t make eye contact with his audience as well as a lost science student who was possessed by some very disturbing visions. Songs like Psycho Killer and I Zimbra suggested a poor soul who desperately was in need of help. By the time that the Talking Heads returned to Vancouver in 1983, Byrne had morphed into a performance artist with a campy sense of paranoia. This incarnation of his personality was captured in Stop Making Sense — a film that still ranks as one of the best rock documentaries ever.

From the art-school observations of More Songs about Buildings and Food to the irony of True Stories to the high-life affectations of Naked, Byrne led the Talking Heads all over the musical map before pulling the plug on the band in 1991 to pursue a solo career. He has come to Vancouver many times since then, and with each show, he has embraced a different slate of styles that have ranged from the joyous, Brazilian-influenced music of Rei Momo to the agitated pop of Look into the Eyeball and Grown Backwards. On every occasion, Byrne has had his sight fixed on exploring new vistas in sound. In fact, until his recent sojourn, his live reinterpretations of old material — especially from the Talking Heads’ canon — have always reflected his current musical interests rather than those of his past.

Friday’s show in Vancouver was the latest stop on a tour that celebrates Byrne’s collaborations with Brian Eno, the renowned British producer and musician. While Byrne has never been one for nostalgia, his work with Eno includes three Talking Heads albums, the groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and last year’s Everything that Happens Will Happen Today. While their newest foray is reason enough to hit the road, the opportunity to revisit the classic songs he and Eno made together was obviously a prospect that was too appealing to resist. Indeed, Byrne was in a mood that was curatorial, if not entirely reverential, as he escorted the audience on a journey through his and Eno’s collected works. It was obvious from the first screeching notes of his guitar that he was having at least as much fun rediscovering the magic of his old material as his fans.

For many in the mostly over-40 crowd who crammed into an almost sold-out Queen Elizabeth Theatre on February 20, it was the most-loved version of David Byrne that greeted them. As he calmly strolled up to the microphone, dressed entirely in white, it was clear that this wasn’t David Byrne, the ethno-musicologist or CEO of his own label, paying a visit in order to educate his audience about polyrhythms This was David Byrne, the off-kilter rock star who, with his guitar turned up to 11, invited his fans to "live in the present and the distant past" and "bypass the Bush and Reagan years entirely." Then, he launched into Strange Overtones, the first single from Everything that Happens Will Happen Today.

By the time he reached I Zimbra, the second song of the night, it was even more apparent that Byrne had come to rock the house. On this tune, which first appeared on Fear of Music, he was joined on stage by Lily Baldwin, Steve Reker, and Natalie Kuhn — three dancers whose every move amplified the energy and fluidity of the music that was conjured by Byrne’s backing band. The trio formed a circle around him, like wind around the eye of a hurricane. As Byrne opened his eyes, after ripping into the first of the night’s many incendiary guitar solos, the professorial, genteel artist who had first greeted the audience was nowhere to be seen. In his place stood the demented figure of decades past, a kind of leering Pee Wee Herman with a dangerous new toy who seemed utterly incapable of standing still.

The dancers — the oldest of whom could not have been half of Byrne’s age — were obviously having the time of their lives as they fed off the energy created by the red-hot, industrial, funk-metal sounds that screeched out of the white-haired musician’s guitar.The members of the crowd, who looked as though they hadn’t had a good shakeout in a long time, gradually rose to their feet and started to wiggle for all they were worth. As the night progressed, the music continued to rise in pitch and frenzy. In the process, the initially shaky bones and self-conscious dancing of the audience gave way to the kind of slippery, freestyle moves that usually are seen only at a rave or a Southern Revival meeting.

To achieve his sound, Byrne jettisoned the huge-band ethos of the Stop Making Sense era. Instead, he opted for a stripped-down unit that featured drummer Graham Hawthorne, percussionist Mauro Refosco, bass player Paul Frazier, and keyboardist Mark Degli Antoni. The addition of three back-up singers (Kaissa, Redray Frazier, and Jenni Muldaur) — each of whom also were credible dancers, percussionists, and acoustic guitarists — allowed Byrne not only to recreate the soaring, eerie gospel sounds of Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, but also to play with the arrangements of the Talking Heads’ material. The performers added grace and dimension to songs like One Fine Day — an acoustic but slightly paranoid, gospel-tinged number from the new album — and Heaven, which in its reconfigured state finally achieved the live treatment that it long has deserved.

It was during Help Me Somebody, a track that originally appeared on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, however, that the backing vocalists really proved their mettle. On the song’s original incarnation, Eno and Byrne randomly sampled sounds from the radio and organized them into a musical collage that was disjointed, disturbing, and years ahead of its time. Citing copyright problems with sampling, Byrne mused, "Didn’t we used to call it ‘found music?’" Then, he attempted one of the most innovative solutions ever to a legal problem by having his entire entourage — 11 performers in all — recreate different aspects of the original track. To hear each voice sing a slightly different part, weaving to and fro without clashing, was simply breathtaking.

The real story of the night, though, was the re-emergence of David Byrne, the guitar hero. While he’s always had an intuitive sense of rhythm and groove that is second to none, it has been a long, long time since he has placed his guitar playing front and center, like he did on Friday night. Without a second guitarist and backed by a small band that could follow him anywhere, he clearly took great enjoyment from exploring the pyrotechnic possibilities embedded in his old music.

To this end, Byrne seemed to take special delight in revisiting selections from Remain in Light — the Talking Heads’ effort from 1980 that captured the group at the peak of its musical innovation. Listening to the album today, its angular, metallic funk still sounds far ahead of its time. Byrne played songs from the outing, delivering them with such intensity that it seemed as if they had been written yesterday. His screeching guitar solos would have sent Jimi Hendrix packing. Over the course of the night, he dipped deeply into Remain in Light’s material, treating the audience to updated versions of Houses in Motion, Born under Punches (The Heat Goes On), Cross-eyed and Painless, and Once in a Lifetime that were at least the equals of their studio counterparts as well as those featured in Stop Making Sense. With the most perversely gleeful look this side of a latter-day Neil Young, he ripped into solo after solo. Meanwhile, the dancers pulled out all of the stops as they literally played leapfrog over the hunkered-down guitarist. The Great Curve still remains the high point of all of Byrne’s recorded work, and the version he unleashed to bring the main set to its conclusion, was even more uplifting, complex, and "on the groove" than when the Talking Heads was at the top of its game.

For the most part, the material Byrne delivered from Everything that Happens Will Happen Today — such as I Feel My Stuff and Home — was received enthusiastically by the audience. Yet, as interesting as the new songs were, they couldn’t compete with the affectionate place the classics have in his fans’ hearts. So, when Byrne went even further back into his catalogue during the encores — with long funky workouts of Life During Wartime (which was as influenced by the Staple Singers’ version as it was by the Talking Heads’ original) and Take Me to the River — the audience came completely unhinged. It was, at this moment, hard to believe that a happier group of people was gathered anywhere else in the world.

By the time the band returned for its third set of encores, which began with a slinky, electronica-tinged version of Burning Down the House — the only song performed this evening that was not born from a collaboration with Eno — the crowd was in ecstasy. All of the aches and pains that would greet the aging masses in the morning were nonexistent. Everything was perfect, and everyone shimmied like, well, houses on fire.

On February 20, Byrne gave his audience something more than a terrific night of music. He showed his fans not only that real joy and creativity were within their grasp, but also that it is possible to age gracefully. When, two hours after taking the stage, he came back one final time to sing the title track to Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, all of the buzz and trouble of a long week’s work had long since faded away. As the singer, dripping and beaming, took his final bow, he sent the crowd out into the warm February night, and for at least a few minutes, the intimacy of shared memory and experience spilled onto the streets as strangers hugged each other and said, "When was the last time you saw such a good show?"

Not surprisingly, no one could remember.

The tour is all but finished (well, it is, haven't seen the comments on the second NY show yet) and there hasn't been one negative review ... trust me, I could copy them all but won't! If you missed it you missed a treat.

I am looking forward to Isaak next week, but have a lot of other stuff going on too so the reviews from me will be lacking. Be thankful for small mercies and enjoy all the other comments

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/culture/2...music-hall.html

David Byrne Wows Radio City Music Hall

by Michael Hogan February 28 2009




There’s always a trade-off when you go see a musical “legend” in concert. You know you’re going to hear some songs that you absolutely love, but how disappointing the artist playing them will sound depends on a number of factors­age, engagement with contemporary culture, years elapsed since last new album, quantity of drugs and booze consumed during heyday. Some guys lose their voices (Al Green on the Grammys, anyone?) and others lose their life force. I remember seeing Television a few years back and thinking that Tom Verlaine must have lived way harder back in the day than I’d realized. He looked eager to finish the show and get back to his IV drip.

David Byrne was born in 1952, so I’m not sure how it’s possible that he was the most vital, energetic person in attendance at his sold-out Radio City Music Hall concert last night. But he was. Dressed head-to-toe in pristine white, and alternating between a white Stratocaster and a red dreadnought, Byrne barely broke a sweat during a two-hour-plus set drawn from his various collaborations over the years with electronic-music visionary Brian Eno. (Byrne performs again at Radio City tonight.)

Byrne and Eno are both known for being pretty avant-garde, so what’s surprising was how accessible most of the music was. Not just the hits from Eno’s days producing the Talking Heads­“Take Me to the River” (an Al Green cover!), “Houses in Motion,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House”­but also the songs from their recent album together, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The title is vintage Byrne­a clever piece of nonsense that somehow hints at something really profound­and my favorite song from it, “One Fine Day,” was inspired by What Is the What, Dave Eggers’s 2006 book about one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

So here’s my theory on why Byrne is so youthful, and why his concert felt as contemporary and relevant as any Bowery Ballroom set by the latest blogosphere buzz band: the guy keeps up. He doesn’t sit around all day reminiscing with his fellow dessicated rock stars. He reads, he thinks, he sees art and film and music. And his creative portfolio is radically diversified. He paints, draws, blogs, directs, runs a record label, composes for film, composes for dance, designs funky bike racks, and god knows what else. Check out his Wikipedia page: it’s all over the place. (Judging from the clarity of his voice and his ability to jump around without losing his breath, Byrne also takes excellent care of his body.)

Neil Young, whom I caught at Madison Square Garden a few weeks back, is similar: he’s constantly making bizarre movies, and he’s invested an enormous amount of time and energy into his Linc-Volt project, whose goal is to turn an old Lincoln Continental into an electric hybrid that gets 100 to the gallon. Not every new album he makes is good, and not every new song he plays is the next “Powderfinger,” but he’s worth keeping up with because he never checks out. On life, that is. He checked out of the L.A. rock scene decades ago, returning only for the occasional gigantic C.S.N.Y. paycheck, and the move may have added 30 years to his career.

Byrne doesn’t live on a ranch, and he probably has a lot less money than Neil Young. He’s a New Yorker, through and through. But he has a very urban way of doing his own thing. If you see enough live music here, you’re bound to spot him in the audience: that shock of white hair is hard to miss. He’s always watching, absorbing, digesting what’s happening.

There’s a lesson for all of us here, but I don’t want to talk about that just now. What I want to talk about is my favorite moment of last night’s concert. The second encore ended with “Burning Down the House,” a Talking Heads hit from 1983. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, Byrne was wearing a white tutu. So was everyone else on stage: the band, the trio of dancers who had been entertaining us all night. All adhered to the all-white dress code, and all wore tutus.

The payoff came two-thirds of the way through the song. Moving in unison, Byrne and his backups swayed toward the right side of the stage, then turned and started moving in the opposite direction. Behind them, from the wings, came a huge group of dancers­mostly female but with a few males scattered in­all wearing tutus. Meanwhile, Byrne and his group were almost at the left side. Just before reaching the end of the stage, they turned back, and out came a new group of tutu’d dancers from that side, following them and falling in with the first group. Then all the dancers lined up and started doing Rockette kicks behind Byrne and his band, who were belting out the song’s climax.

It was something no group of chart-topping 25-year-olds could pull off. There was a generosity, a confidence, and a mature sense not only of style but of place and history that made it work. Byrne was playing with the idea of Radio City Music Hall, but also paying tribute to it.

After it was over, Byrne introduced his 30-something choreographer: Noémie Lafrance, who is probably best known for turning the McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg into a vast performance space back in 2005, before the pool’s short-lived tenure as a hipster music venue.

See what I mean? Tuned in. If it keeps David Byrne young, just think what it can do for you.

Tu tu Great!

I should have said that the US/Asia - Australasia/US part of the tour was finished ... still the UK and Europe to go, of course ... dates below, together with the exception to the rule, in the interests of not appearing biased, a negative review, from some sourpuss at the New York Times. I have the headlines sent to me every day ... I've cancelled Too bad, in David's home town. So, is he right and everyone else wrong?? What a party pooper, I wonder what it takes to make him happy? No, I don't, I couldn't give a shit ... I am just glad I don't know him and therefore will never have to suffer him at a dinner or anything else ... smartarse.

http://www.pollstar.com/resultsArtist.aspx...y=david%20byrne

Spectacle, Including a Singer in a Tutu
By JON PARELES
Published: March 1, 2009

The album David Byrne made last year with Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today” (Todo Mundo), revived a collaboration that created some of both men’s best music in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was ample reason for Mr. Byrne to build a tour around new and old “Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno,” which arrived at Radio City Music Hall on Friday.

Three decades ago Mr. Byrne, Mr. Eno and Mr. Byrne’s former band, Talking Heads, were thinking about mass media, African aesthetics, everyday surrealism, divinity and dance rhythms, among other things.

They came up with smart, strange songs that still echo through New York City avant-rock. Mr. Byrne’s career since the 1980s ­ Talking Heads officially broke up in 1991 ­ has dipped into enough cultures and collaborations to offer abundant new perspectives.

But something went badly wrong with “Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno.” What once was startling became cute.

It was a high-concept show. Mr. Byrne was the modest, chatty host.

The entire troupe was dressed in white, before a curtain that changed colors in vertical stripes. Choreographed dancers mingled with the musicians. Old, mostly funk-driven songs were interspersed with new ones that leaned toward three-chord country chorales, in a contrast that measured the distance between brash, sometimes nutty innovations and latter-day reflections.

The concert was a revue centered on Mr. Byrne, much as Talking Heads were in the 1983 tour filmed for “Stop Making Sense.” (Mr. Byrne didn’t mention Talking Heads onstage, referring to them only as “other people.”) Old songs like “Cross-Eyed and Painless” or “Once in a Lifetime” only summoned thoughts of how Mr. Byrne had gotten them far more right the first time.

The expanded Talking Heads band of the early 1980s gave the music clout and counterpoint. New, tepidly efficient arrangements, with Mr. Byrne as the lead and rhythm guitarist in a five-man band with three backup singers, stripped away much of the density, mystery and variety Mr. Eno brought to the album productions.

The spectacle that went with the music in the 1980s was whimsical and enigmatic, hinting at ritual as well as comedy. Mr. Byrne’s new troupe was closer to Broadway, with smiley, loose-limbed dancers skipping in and out of the band, often sharing moves with the musicians.

Gimmicky numbers with props ­ office chairs, electric guitars ­ were especially distracting.

The set held surprises like “My Big Hands,” from Mr. Byrne’s songs for the 1981 Twyla Tharp dance piece “The Catherine Wheel,” and “Help Me Somebody,” from Mr. Byrne and Mr. Eno’s 1981 album “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.” (Instead of the radio preacher sampled on the original track, Mr. Byrne declaimed the vocals.) For “Burning Down the House,” written by Talking Heads without Mr. Eno, the Radio City stage filled with dancers in tutus, including Mr. Byrne.

But far too much of the concert was just clever and neat. What the songs once had, beyond that, was an irrational, illuminating spark.

Perhaps DB is suffering selective amnesia because there is no mention of what happened between Singapore and Canada!! I'm disappointed, was looking forward to a bit on Australia/NZ but I guess he didn't have time. There's a nice piece on Vancouver just been added for any interested Canadians.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

I think these reviewers are, oftentimes, frustrated performers. They cannot do ... they can only criticize. So this reviewer didn't get it, right? We've read bad reviews of Chris, and take the critic to task! You can cancel your subscription, but you should tell off this critic also! I hope he bought his ticket!

I am sure he didn't buy his ticket and just used this as an excuse to bag someone he personally doesn't like. That's alright, he's allowed his opinion, but if he's being paid for a doing a review then he should be a bit more professional about it ... idiot. I couldn't be bothered contacting him. David has been around a long time and will survive this twit without losing any sleep about it.

Meanwhile ... (will resist the back at the comment!0

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-03-04/mus...s-in-the-light/

David Byrne Remains in the Light


A Talking Head indulges old neuroses and gorgeous new hymns at Radio City


By Rob Harvilla


Tuesday, March 3rd 2009 at 3:44pm



David Byrne is the most nonchalantly confident stupendously awkward person probably in all of history, but certainly in the history of those disciplines (rock music, conceptual art, bicycle activism, PowerPoint presentation, blogging) to which he is inclined and to which he is invaluable. That his beloved, long-bygone Talking Heads remain my Favorite Band Ever is probably a useful prism through which to view my elation Friday night as he saunters onstage at Radio City Music Hall, dressed­like his backing band, his backup singers, and, soon, his dancers­all in flowing, angelic white, and immediately starts just hardcore rambling.

Think of it as a sort of mumblecore soliloquy. He rambles about the last place they'd played ("lovely Calgary"). About the impetus for this new, far-reaching tour (to promote last year's sleepy, elegiac Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, his second co-starring collaboration with Brian Eno, i.e., "a producer I worked with back in the day"). About how far back in the day we're talking exactly (his first co-starring collaboration with Eno, who'd already produced several stupendous Talking Heads albums, was 1981's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; the intervening years between then and now are described as "a gap filled with a couple of things, but not very much"). About his stance on mid-concert amateur photography ("Feel free to do whatever you want, but don't shove the people in front of you out of the way so you can get a good shot"). Throughout the night, he adds his thoughts on tonight's venue ("This is a big place. Did you check out the restrooms?"), Bush of Ghost's then unheard-of emphasis on "found vocals" ("We didn't exactly find them­we had to go looking"), and the predatory nefariousness of Ticketmaster (the only instance this evening of loud, lusty, sustained audience booing). And between such ramblings, in melodically sweet, rhythmically vicious, naively gorgeous songs both old and very new, Byrne clutches his guitar and dances, rendering him more awkward and invaluable still.

He dances like a very uptight, prim, erudite, white-haired man dancing at a wedding­let's say, to "Love Shack"­his hips oscillating in perfect Hula Hoop form (which looks very odd sans Hula Hoop), his face placid to the point of paralysis as he barks out the "facts are simple and facts are straight" proto-rap at the center of "Crosseyed and Painless," one of several standing-O-inducing classic tunes tonight. Three lithe, exuberant dancers spend most of the show prancing about the stage seemingly at random, mischievously stealing the backing vocalists' mics; for the loping Everything track "Life Is Long," they spin slowly around in office chairs, catatonic. Byrne joins them, both in the chair-spinning and the cheerfully chaotic flow of movement generally. The dancers skip around and leap over him; at one point during "Houses in Motion," he trust-falls into their arms and is lifted back to a standing position as he lets out a robust, shell-shocked "Whooooaaaaa!!"

The basic element to the Byrne-Eno partnership, both within and without Talking Heads, is manic, hypnotic, intoxicating rhythm, here supplied by both a drummer (Graham Hawthorne) and a full-scale percussionist (Mauro Refosco), and further exacerbated by Soul Coughing vet Mark Degliantoni, whose torrents of keyboard squiggles and samples make him seem like he's just adjusting the volume and channel of a blaring television. All three tear hungrily into the bombastic Bush of Ghosts track "Help Me Somebody," with Byrne yelping all the sampled manic-preacher bits ("Talkin' funny and lookin' funny!"); the backup singers expertly navigate the overlapping word-salad chants that drive "The Great Curve" and croon in unison on the laid-back, near-"Margaritaville" shuffle of "Heaven." It takes awhile to get those two camps operating at full power in unison: The first Heads tune of the night, the jovially bewildering tribal chant "I Zimbra," comes off a bit too tentative, too precious, too music-boxy. But maybe 90 minutes later, "Burning Down the House" is completely hedonistic and uninhibited, both aurally and visually, as everyone is now for some reason wearing white tutus, including the avalanche of auxiliary backup dancers who crowd the stage and form a faux-Rockette kick line.

The old stuff from back in the day gets the most raucous crowd reaction, of course, which Byrne doesn't seem to mind. He's goofily apologetic about playing the Everything tracks; the fact that the record was playing over the PA for the hour before the show began suggested he might not even mess with it at all. But its slower, calmer, more pastoral feel ("electronic gospel," they call it) breaks things up nicely. "My Big Nurse" is a warped, apocalyptic country ballad, while "I Feel My Stuff" lurches from an eerie, haunted-house slither (the dancers all crowding into Byrne's spotlight, the rest of the stage bathed in shadow) to a bright, garish, go-go-dancing explosion. And for a violently demanded third encore, with plenty of yet-unplayed vintage jams at his disposal (what, no "Cities"?), Byrne instead opts to close out the night with "Everything That Happens," the new record's prettiest and most disarming moment, its chorus a familiar jumble of blithe gibberish and plainspoken poignance:


Everything that happens will happen today

And nothing has changed but

nothing's the same

And every tomorrow will be yesterday

And everything that happens

will happen today

Whether this statement is meant to be idealistic or funereal, whether this particular electronic-gospel verse is from Genesis or Revelations, goes unspecified, but the tune's beautiful melancholy is its own reward and its own message. I'd lean toward the former, though. Byrne will, by popular demand, still howl, "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!" on occasion, but Everything suggests someone far less manic, still very much disoriented by the world around him but much more at peace with that, his hips oscillating almost subconsciously, fully in thrall to the awkwardness of hope.

rharvilla@villagevoice.com

http://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/ear_...all_0302200903/

David Byrne performs at Radio City Music Hall

David Byrne performed songs that he collaborated on with Brian Eno at Radio City Music Hall this past Friday

Matt Kappel


On Friday night, David Byrne took the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. No one really knew what to expect when waiting for the former Talking Heads singer and guitarist to perform.

One thing we did know was that Byrne was playing songs that he collaborated on with songwriter and producer, Brian Eno. Unfortunately, Brian Eno hasn’t been present on the entire tour, thus leaving it up to Byrne and his hand picked band to carry on with the music.

Byrne and his band walked onto the stage around 8:15 pm, all adorned in white; even Byrne’s electric guitar was white. The stage was set against a black backdrop curtain. Byrne was welcomed with much enthusiasm from a sold out crowd. Byrne greeted everyone and told the crowd that times have changed.

Byrne also encouraged audience members to take as many pictures as they’d want, just so long as they were discrete. In a biting remark, he also apologized for fans that had to purchase tickets from Ticketsnow.com.

The performance opened up with a track from the new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, called “Strange Overtones.” Immediately after he backtracked an old Talking Heads called “I Zimbra.” Byrne immediately showed the crowd his ability to pick from various influences and put together music. Pulling from electronic music, soul, rock, funk and most importantly African rhythms, Byrne showed the crowd both his virtuosity and his eclecticism.

Each song had choreographed dance moves from separate dancers, who performed aside from the band throughout most of the evening. Byrne got in on the action by allowing dancers to jump over him, or slide through his legs. He even played the guitar while doing figure-eights around microphone stands backwards!

By creating a dance routine and light show for each song; Byrne put together a very conceptual show. It almost seemed that each song was it’s own individual act of a greater performance. It showed continuity, conceptualism and displayed all that is great in performance art.

The show pushed on with Byrne performing more new tracks from Everything that Happens will Happen Today as well as additional Talking Heads related material. The crowd, which was a mix of young and old, hippies, hipsters, and sophisticated music listeners, welcomed all that Byrne performed. The crowd lost control when “Crosseyed and Painless” was performed. This kicked off the second half the show and it became mostly a Talking Heads tribute concert. The crowd got rowdy, most people were finally standing and dancing. The balconies were literally shaking from the constant rhythmic movements of the crowd.

Byrne performed three encores, which proved to still not be enough for the crowd that was indulging in every moment. Byrne’s voice and the band’s sound were only amplified by a fantastic venue built for fantastic performances. Seeing David Byrne perform these songs with these dancers in such a conceptual manner was worth every penny spent!

Set List
Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody
Houses In Motion
My Big Nurse
My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)
Heaven
Poor Boy
Life Is Long
The River
Crosseyed and Painless
Born Under Punches
Once In A Lifetime
Life During Wartime
I Feel My Stuff
Enc. 1
Take Me To The River
The Great Curve
Enc. 2
Air
Burning Down The House
Enc. 3
Everything That Happens

Our Take: David Byrne performing the songs of Byrne and Eno is a concert that should not be missed. If you are a Talking Heads fan or fan of Byrne’s solo work this concert is a real treat. The venue was spectacular and a perfect fit for such performance art. The dance moves were meticulously choreographed and executed well. The light show offered a different backdrop for each song. Then there was the band. The band was unstoppable, performing fantastic renditions of all songs. Byrne’s voice was on point and so was his leadership abilities, taking the band and the audience through a great musical journey.

My favorite parts were all Talking Heads related songs, especially “Life During Wartime” and “Once in a Lifetime.” Songs from the new album that stuck out were “Strange Overtones” and “Help Me Somebody.” I really did fear for the structural integrity of the mezzanine seats as they literally shook during “Crosseyed and Painless,” “Life During Wartime” and “Take me to the River.

This is what David has to say about the grumpybum reviewer. DB has more class in his little finger than that twerp has in his whole being

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

click on the link to read the story behind the putting together of the New York City shows as well as see a home video of the high-kicking augmented line of tutu clad dancers!

03.02.09: NYC
C warned me that there was a not so complimentary review in the NY Times this morning, and advised me against reading it. I don’t read all the press and reviews we get, but as I do read that paper regularly, I would have inevitably stumbled upon it. Apparently the reviewer, Jon Pareles, loves the Bush Of Ghosts album and has some kind of nostalgia for those days. We all know music snobs who like to remind everyone that they heard so and so back when they were really good. This, however, is the same reviewer who leveled charges of “cultural imperialism” against Bush Of Ghosts in his Rolling Stone review back in the early 80’s. For years afterwards, almost every interviewer asked me to respond to his charge, and many press articles quoted it. It was like the joke about “When did you stop beating your wife?” — the charge was silly and ill-informed, but one was constantly put on the defensive, and even assumed to be guilty, simply by the question being raised. It was annoying, it lasted for years, and it hurt.

Given that track record, I guess 30 years from now he’ll figure out what this show was about.

I still haven’t read the review, and don’t intend to. While taking criticism on board can be constructive, it can also be detrimental to the creative process if it’s considered while that process is still under way. It undermines one’s enthusiasm and will — which is OK, beneficial even, but only after a tour (for example) is over. This review, by all reports, wasn’t helpful criticism anyway — it seemed to be one of those reviews that comes from some psychological issues the writer has — and therefore even a belated reading is not going to help us refine what we do.

02 March 2009 in Reviews, Tour/Show Reports | Permalink


This is another piece by the Village Voice reviewer, commenting on David's comments, plus another youtube clip of the tutu avalanche


http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archiv...d_byrne_fig.php

David Byrne Fights Nearly 30-Year-Old Charges of "Cultural Imperialism"
Posted by Rob

I admit, upon reading Jon Pareles' Times review of David Byrne's Radio City show Friday night, to being a bit self-conscious about my own take, whether it got a bit too fawning and fanboyish. (Any review employing the phrase "Favorite Band Ever" will probably trigger this fear.) I don't disagree with the meat of Pareles' objections to the show ("cute," "clever," "neat"), but simply don't view those words as pejoratives or surprises; from the Talking Heads' onset Byrne had a very strong twee detachment to him, the shape of Sufjans and Wes Andersons to come. If you think this is a Very Bad Thing -- and you blanche a bit at the Radio City bit where David and his dancers spin around on office chairs -- fair enough. Agree to disagree, etc.

Byrne himself, though, is way less agreeable about Pareles than I would've expected.

Thus does Byrne's latest journal entry mention the Times review, albeit in a I-heard-it-was-negative-I-won't-read-it way, as a way of revisiting Pareles' 1981 Rolling Stone review of the first Byrne/Eno record, the sample-dominated My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a review that, surprisingly, still stings Byrne plenty.



This, however, is the same reviewer who leveled charges of "cultural imperialism" against Bush Of Ghosts in his Rolling Stone review back in the early 80's. For years afterwards, almost every interviewer asked me to respond to his charge, and many press articles quoted it. It was like the joke about "When did you stop beating your wife?" -- the charge was silly and ill-informed, but one was constantly put on the defensive, and even assumed to be guilty, simply by the question being raised. It was annoying, it lasted for years, and it hurt.
Given that track record, I guess 30 years from now he'll figure out what this show was about.



Not much by normal Internet-vitriol standards, no, but this is as harsh as Byrne generally gets. (As his hilariously zen Colbert interview Monday night proves, he is among the mellowest of dudes.) In the post-Girl Talk era, it is fascinating to read a 1981 take on the record -- indeed, Pareles seems very bothered by preachers, exorcists etc. having words they presumably take seriously being hijacked for Byrne/Eno's cute/neat/clever ends. He finishes off his (three-and-a-half-star, by the way) assessment by envisioning the source material's revenge:



My Life in the Bush of Ghosts does make me wonder, though, how Byrne or Eno would react if Dunya Yusin spliced together a little of "Animals" and a bit of "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch," then added her idea of a suitable backup. Does this global village have two-way traffic?

The answer, of course, is that Byrne and Eno would've probably loved it, and that kind of thing now happens all the time.

I meant to post this before but forgot to put it in.

Please watch ... it's GREAT fun.

http://www.jossip.com/start-making-sense-20090303/

I loved this (mis-quoted by me!) comment from Colbert to Byrne.

"I've heard you interviewed before, so here's a warning, put a sock in it, jabber jaw ... this is my time".

When the interview finishes two little squares will come up ... click on The Colbert Report David Byrne Part 2, the top little square.

The song will come up in a bigger square.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-r...vid-byrne-pt--2

Gee, that was highly technical stuff!


I had never heard of Stephen Colbert before, let alone seen him. I don't think we get him in Australia. I like him, he's got a nice twinkle in his eyes and tongue planted in cheek, which is always a good thing. He looks nothing like him at all but he reminded me a bit of Kevin Spacey

Just musing, no evidence, please be clear!

I can't really believe David Byrne didn't mention the Aussie/NZ leg of his tour in his journal because he didn't have the time ... that just doesn't ring true. He did some really nice write ups in 2005. Michael Chugg was the promoter then ...

This time it was Andrew McManus.

I didn't know about the charity concert at Hamer Hall. Alright, I hadn't been keeping up with the news but I hear about most things before most people I know.

The first I knew about it was when I picked up my ticket for the second show on February 10th, at Hamer Hall, the night of the first concert. on February 9th.

I thought the ticket prices had been halved because the tickets weren't selling well, till I read on my ticket NOT The Songs of Byrne and Eno, but David Byrne Concert for Challenge (I've probably got the exact wording wrong, but that's the gist). I thought (until I read up about it the next day) that the proceeds must be going to the Bushfire relief.

Then, next day, I found out that the charity concert had been organised a few weeks before (sorry, don't know exactly). I didn't know till then what Challenge was (Kids with Cancer). My ignorance, but you just cannot donate to all charities.

Point is, I SHOULD have known. My email should have been bombarded with information, both from Andrew McManus and Ticketmaster, urging me to buy tickets to support a most worth cause and telling me to pass the message on to everyone I knew.

I heard nothing, zero, zip.

I'm very glad my last minute decision to try and get to the second show meant my money did some good ... it certainly did no good to our bank balance, so I'm extra glad.

Maybe people criticised David for not contributing to the fire relief. I don't know ... his Melbourne concert was a day later and he had already committed to the Challenge kids cancer charity.

Who, besides me, has heard about that? What exactly did the promoter do to make the public aware?

Not much that I know about.

I don't know whether or not DB's dealings with McManus have anything to do with him not doing an Australian/New Zealand write up. It certainly had nothing to do with the reviews ... they were all amazing.

It's just very, very odd and I guess I'll never know.

Yes, we do get him on The Comedy Channel, and he may or may not have been on SBS once upon a time!?

I have NO idea how Mr. McManus has gotten so far, so fast, in the music world. Five years ago nobody had even heard of this man at all. I did some research on him a while ago, and according to his website he was once the manager of the Divinyls. But, according to the dates, this would have been towards the end of their career - not when they were really successful, in the early days of the 80's. He was also the manager of a live venue and this is where he claims he 'cut his teeth' on the music biz. Well, he may THINK he knows it all, but he clearly doesn't. For one, his public relations skills stink to high heaven. As far as I can tell, his number one priority seems to be to promote HIMSELF and to make us much money has he can to line his own pockets. He appears in the social columns more often than Gudinski, Chugg, Jacobsen, Coppel and co. altogether. (I won't even mention Wheatley - he has his own reasons for not being in the social pages very much these days. )

While I'm sure McManus has probably worked hard over the years to get to where he is in such a short time, I also think he's extremely good at squeezing as much money out of people (i.e. us, the poor sucker punters) as he can get, and I think this is how come he's skyrocketed up to the top of the promoter tree. And yet, he treats the ticket-buying public like shit. But, why should he give a damn about going out of his way to keep the public updated about what's happening when he's already got their money in the bank from ticket sales that happened months ago?? That fiasco with the 'free' digital downloads was disgraceful. If you advertise a FREE digital download with EVERY ticket purchased, that's exactly what you should deliver. You don't inflate the ticket price to cover the 'free' price, and you DON'T go back on your word about only offering the 'free' download with every single PURCHASE, instead of every single TICKET. If they meant that from the beginning, then they should have made it clear FROM THE BEGINNING. But like I said, his communication with his customers sucks. It's almost non-existant. I will NEVER forget the cavalier way in which they moved that Casino show back in 2006 at the very last minute, transferring it from probably the best venue in the entire country (the intimate Palms Room) to that great bloody aircraft hanger - the Palladium Room - at Crown. I'll never get to see Isaak play in such a great venue ever again - that's it for me as far as I'm concerned. I can't afford to shell out $150+ for concert tickets anymore, no matter where it's held. Things go wrong at the last minute, fair enough, but at least give us a REAL explanation, instead of spouting the same old 'unforseeable circumstances' crap. Well, WHAT bloody 'unforseeable circumstances'?? Why not tell us the truth for once? Don't we deserve to know? After all, it's OUR money that's enabling the whole thing to take place in the first place.

As far as David Byrne is concerned (good write-ups, stuff, I skimmed - trust me.) my guess is that it was HIS idea to do the charity thing, not McManus at all. I'm sure David (from the little I know of him - I've got a Talking Heads album somewhere, the True Stories one, I think....) is a humanitarian who insisted on the charity show. I doubt very much whether McManus would care that deeply. As I think I said before here, he was most notable in his absence from the REAL concert promoters in this country's efforts to put Sound Relief together. Even jailbird Glenn Wheatley contributed to the Channel 9 telethon a few weeks ago, so what the hell did McManus contribute? I hope I'm proved wrong by this and maybe he's already made, or is planning some kind of contribution that we just haven't heard about yet, but time will tell, I guess. In the meantime, there's nothing else to indicate to me, as far as I'm concerned, that this guy isn't just another slick, snake oil salesman who is out to line his own pockets as fast as he can.

Well, I just proved I don't watch TV!

Thought you might like to learn a little more about David Byrne, Cheryl ... I dare you not to laugh, don't watch these while you're eating or drinking, you might choke


These two are classic ... funny as


http://www.iamfauxpas.com/blog/index.php/2...rviews-himself/


As they said in Rolling Stone, just replace the two characters with Joaquin Phoenix and David Letterman, if you want to update it



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzC2a0znVsc


Funny, there seems to be a problem with the buffering when you click on the links here, I have no idea why, of course!

But if you go to YouTube and type in David Byrne Space Ghost and David Byrne interview and watch them direct they're fine. Who knows?!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/4...tay-hungry.html


David Byrne: stay hungry



David Byrne’s voracious creative appetite has seen him turn a building into a musical instrument, design a series of bicycle racks and write a disco opera about Imelda Marcos. Now he is revisiting his early Talking Heads period, but always with an ear open for something new.



By Richard Grant
Last Updated: 5:55PM GMT 16 Mar 2009


David Byrne: 'Byrne is a workaholic renaissance man living in the future who makes everybody else look lazy and out of touch'

There is a muffled cry from within the hotel suite and then a startled, barefoot, shirtless David Byrne opens the door with his white hair standing on end. 'Oh,' he says. 'Wow. I was at this museum and wow, um, well, maybe if you don't mind, I guess we could talk while I pack.' The suite is a jumble of big armoured suitcases, piles of dry-cleaned clothes, camera and computer equipment, stacks of CDs, hats and shoes, a folding bicycle with a travel case.

Byrne is five months into an 11-month world tour and the bicycle is a key component of his portable lifestyle, allowing him to escape the touring musician's trap of hotel-venue-bar-hotel and explore the parks, museums, art galleries and CD shops of whatever city he happens to be in. Today, it is Seattle and he has just cycled back from an exhibition of antique court miniatures from Rajasthan. 'Very cosmic stuff,' he says, pulling on a grey collared sweater and failing to notice that it is inside-out. 'Feet with silver rivers coming out of them and wrapping around the multitudes. Very nice and very hard to know what they all mean.'

He is touring because he loves to tour and perform live, and a convenient excuse to get back on the road has presented itself. Byrne released an album last autumn called Everything That Happens Will Happen Today and it is his first collaboration with Brian Eno since 1981, when they opened up a new genre of music with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. A sound collage of spiky funk rhythms, weird electronic noises and recorded snippets of American radio preachers, Arabic singers and chanters, an exorcist and other 'found vocals', as Byrne and Eno called them at the time, Bush of Ghosts helped usher in the era of sampling and loops.

Except for a few blurts, clicks and hisses, the new album sounds nothing like its historic predecessor. Byrne sings his own lyrics this time, in a voice that sounds surprisingly tender and heartfelt compared with the neurotic, slightly strangulated style that made him famous with Talking Heads. And Eno, who produced three albums for Talking Heads (More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light), pioneered electronic ambient music and has lately been producing mega­hits for Coldplay, has come up with a fairly conventional set of catchy pop arrangements.

'We're calling it electronic folk gospel,' Byrne says, transferring immaculately pressed short-sleeved shirts from a broken suitcase to a new one. Underneath the shirts, he finds a pair of clear plastic sandals and holds them up. 'We were in Singapore so I've got all this hot weather stuff,' he says. 'Sandals, sun block… won't be needing these any more. Still, no sense throwing them away.' He tries to get back to the point he was making but it is not quite available to him now, so he stares out of the window, holding the sandals, waiting patiently for his thoughts to arrange themselves and the words to return, looking like a man who has gone through this process many thousands of times and grown comfortable with it.

'But yeah,' he continues. 'After I got Brian's tracks, I kept them for a long time because I was probably a little afraid of how to begin, not because I didn't like the tracks, but because I thought, Oh, there's going to be expectations. People are going to think it will be Bush of Ghosts 2 or Remain in Light 2. Or they're going to expect the same sense of surprise that those records gave them at the time, and I didn't want to compete with that.'

From the broken suitcase he pulls out a green apron with a cartoon of a fat, slavering chef on the front. 'I've got lots of souvenirs!' he exclaims. 'They were giving these aprons away free in Wellington if you spent more than $10 at this pharmacy and I thought, I need a cooking apron, and look at the label, this one is 100 per cent polyester!'

He laughs heartily, exposing perfect white teeth. 'But yeah, eventually, having listened to a few of Brian's tracks, over and over again, I said, "Brian, this is the vibe I'm getting. The chords and the chord changes you're using are giving me a kind of gospel feel." And of course at the same time it was very electronic sounding. I said I would write words to go in that direction and that's pretty much how it happened.'

There is still a peculiar, slightly absent quality about David Byrne, but he seems a lot more comfortable in his skin than he used to be in the Talking Heads days, at the height of his fame, when interviews would sometimes send him into a twitching, writhing, tongue-tied agony. He is 56 now and he has aged well. The passing years have been kind to his face and his body and given him a grace and dignity that he wears lightly and un­affectedly.

He divorced his costume designer wife Adelle Lutz in 2004 – they have a 19-year-old daughter, Malu – and his current girlfriend is the artist Cindy Sherman, who, as Byrne puts it, 'takes photos of herself that you would never recognise as her'. She has been on tour with him, with her own folding bicycle, but she flew off to Berlin yesterday to open her latest exhibition there. 'We've been together a couple years now,' he says. 'That's pretty good, knock on wood.'

He still has a tremendous, omnivorous appetite for the latest thing in music, art, books, film, culture, technology, and his own creative energy seems like a marvel from an outside perspective, although he sees it as something steady, plodding and reliable. 'I never get stuck or run out of ideas, but I don't always hit the peaks. But I also know that if I sat and waited for a great inspiration to come, I might be waiting for a long time. You have to be active, to get the ball when it comes, in the game, it's flying, it's not – somebody made a metaphor something like that.' He pauses and waits. 'So yeah, keep busy, just keep doing it and every once in a while I say, "OK, that might last. That's a keeper." '

At present, he is collaborating with young, experimental groups such as Dirty Projectors and Arcade Fire. He has kept a finger on the pulse of the dance music scene and is now working with the New York band Brazilian Girls, the superstar DJ collective NASA, and producing a 22-song disco opera about Imelda Marcos with Norman Cook. 'Oh, Imelda loved disco,' he explains. 'She spent a lot of time going to the clubs in New York and she actually converted a floor of her house into a kind of nightclub with the mirror ball and everything, so it seemed like a good way to get into her story. The songs are all written but we've got 22 different singers so it's taking a while to finish.'

Then there are his film soundtrack albums, his photography (14 books published so far), his writing, the record label he founded and a more or less constant stream of art projects. Most recently he transformed a disused building in Manhattan into a musical instrument, attaching hammers to the pipes and girders, fitting compressed-air hoses in the plumbing, and wiring it all into the keyboard of an old pump organ and inviting the public to 'play the building'; in August, to his great excitement, he will be doing the same thing to the Roundhouse in London. He has also found the time to design a series of conceptual bicycle racks for the New York City Department of Transportation, one in the shape of a dollar sign for Wall Street, another like a high-heeled shoe outside the Bergdorf Goodman department store, and so on.

Ross Godfrey of the band Morcheeba, who worked as a co-producer on one of Byrne's solo albums, describes him as 'a renaissance man living in the future who is a bloody workaholic and makes everybody else look lazy and out of touch. He is a much-needed figure in the tumultuous times we live in. He lives his art and he has been a guiding light in the music industry for many people keen to move on from the now-dead model of business.'

Byrne, whose words come out a lot more crisply on the page than in person, and is a lot more pragmatic and astute than one might expect, wrote a very influential article for Wired magazine last year about the various business strategies available to musicians in the era of free downloading. In general, he is optimistic about the future of music and musicians, although not the future of big record companies.

'People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask,' he says. 'They might never get to the point where they're a serious threat to Coldplay, let's say, but in most cases that's not their ambition anyway. The difference now, with the production and distribution costs being so minimal, is that you can survive on the small scale, whereas before you needed to get up into the big leagues to survive.'

He packs up his camera and folds his laptop shut. He puts on a pair of socks. He zips up one of his suitcases and then remembers to double-check the bathroom. He pads in there and, sure enough, finds two items in the shower. He finishes packing, checks his watch and then sits down facing me with both feet flat on the floor and his body in perfect symmetry, absolutely motionless except for the restless, evasive, lustrous brown eyes.

David Byrne's artistic sensibility – the perpetually bemused outsider, quirky and faux-naive, 'making the ordinary dramatic and the dramatic ordinary', as he once said – has obviously been influenced and reinforced by his 30 years in the art and music scene of downtown Manhattan, where he still lives, but he traces its genesis back to his childhood. He was born in Dumbarton, Scotland (a point of pride, like his British passport), and came to America with his parents at the age of two. Growing up in the Baltimore suburbs, listening to his parents pointing out the strange and different ways in which Americans did things, and often having to translate his parents' thick Scottish accents so that other people could understand them, he not only felt like an outsider but found it impossible to take seriously the concept of 'normal life'.

It comes as no surprise to learn that he grew into a loner who sought refuge in pop music and became obsessed with it. Social interaction was so difficult and frightening for him as a young man that he wonders if he had borderline Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism, and whether he cured it by performing music. He formed Talking Heads in 1975, having dropped out of art school in Rhode Island and reconnected with two of his art school friends in New York City.

With Tina Weymouth on bass, Chris Frantz on drums and a scrawny, geeky, bug-eyed Byrne on guitar and vocals, wearing sensible shirts and narrow ties amid all the leather and chains, the band made its name at CBGBs, a now-defunct downtown Manhattan club that also produced the Ramones and Blondie. A fourth Talking Head, Jerry Harrison, later joined from the band Modern Lovers, and the label art-rock became affixed to the group. They had more of a dance groove than their new-wave contemporaries and Byrne was writing and singing clever, ironic, angst-ridden lyrics.

'I really had a lot of trouble functioning socially at that time,' Byrne says. 'But I could blurt out my ideas and my feelings on stage, as well as just being up there saying, "Look at me, listen to me, I've got something to say. I'm somebody and I've got something and this is the only way I can talk to you. We can't really have a conversation, I'm afraid." ' He laughs at the memory and says it took many years but eventually the fear of social encounters just started to go away.

'I'd like to credit therapy or some of that sort of stuff, which I did for a little bit, but it was probably time more than anything else. And luckily for me, being a performer and a creative person whose work was kind of accepted, it meant that people would come up to me – girls and other people – because they were interested in what I was doing. It was still terrifying but that part of breaking the ice was in some cases taken care of. Phew, yeah. Although after a while you realise that you don't only want to talk to people who are fans, that it might not necessarily be a good idea.'

Talking Heads had a long, fine run, leaving behind eight studio albums, two live albums and Jonathan Demme's concert film Stop Making Sense, which immortalised Byrne as a palsied white man dancing as if trapped in a preposterously big suit. He wore it, he says, with a typically disingenuous piece of logic, because he wanted his head to look small. In 1991, at Byrne's insistence, Talking Heads split up amid bitter acrimony. Tina Weymouth in particular had some very harsh things to say about him and she said them loudly and publicly, that he was 'controlling', 'incapable of returning friendship', 'a vampire' and even 'a murderer'. He looks back at it now as a bad divorce that happened nearly 20 years ago.

He has now made eight solo albums and toured behind them all, but only recently has he become enthused about playing Talking Heads songs again. 'Enough time has passed now,' he says. 'And on this tour it's the Eno connection. I realised we weren't going to be able to just play the new stuff, so we tie in some old stuff from Bush of Ghosts and from the three Talking Heads records that Eno produced. It always puzzles me because you wouldn't go to see a playwright's work and expect to hear the best bits from all his plays. But when you go to see a pop songwriter's work, that's what you expect. But it's fine. We've really been enjoying ourselves and that's why we're making it such a long tour. We just agreed to do a date in Istanbul.'

With his suitcases packed and his sweater still inside-out, Byrne puts on a deerstalker hat, a hooded woollen coat and a pair of black-and-white golf shoes with the spikes removed. 'They're just comfortable shoes, sorta stylish I guess. If you like, you can walk over to the venue with me.'

He has sold out the 2,500-seat symphony hall and on the way there Byrne talks excitedly about Brazil, where he took his first real holiday in a very long time and stayed with his friend the singer Caetano Veloso, and bought nearly 100 new CDs. Through Luaka Bop, the record label he founded in the late 1980s but no longer runs, Byrne has done more than anyone to introduce the rest of the world to the great Brazilian auteurs such as Veloso, Tom Ze and Os Mutantes. His latest enthusiasm is Japanese folk music as reinterpreted and absorbed by its rock and pop musicians, and he went on another enormous shopping spree for CDs in Tokyo, uploading his favourites to his website, davidbyrne.com, and then packing them all in a crate and shipping them home.

Jim White, an alt-country singer on Luaka Bop who has toured extensively with Byrne, says, 'I've never met anyone who loves music as much as him. Every town we'd come to he'd get on his bike and ride to the record store, ask what was interesting that he couldn't hear anywhere else, buy dozens of obscure CDs, and listen to every one of them on the tour bus.'

When we get to the Symphony Hall, a security guard directs us down through various stairways, lifts and corridors to the dressing-rooms, where many pairs of white shoes are lined up neatly; in Byrne's room there is a piano, three lemons and the biggest root of ginger I have ever seen. Colds and flu are a constant menace to touring musicians and Byrne swears by his homemade ginger and lemon tea as a preventative.

The last time he toured he had a six-piece string section. This time he has three dancers, three backing singers, a drummer, keyboardist, a percussion prodigy and a wickedly funky bass player who used to play with Chaka Khan and Nile Rodgers. There is no support act and when they take the stage, all dressed in white, with Byrne front and centre at the microphone, the audience sets up an ecstatic roar of applause that goes on for a full five minutes.

'Wow,' Byrne says as it finally starts to subside. 'I'm going home now. I got what I came for.' Then, and it is noticeable how much more fluent, confident and chatty he is in front of 2,500 strangers, he lays out what he calls 'the menu' for the evening's entertainment – a sampling of all the work that he and Brian Eno have done over the years. He counts off the introduction and the band kicks in to Strange Overtones, a self-deprecating pop-funk song about writing a song. 'This groove is out of fashion,' he sings. 'These beats are 20 years old.'

Two hours later, after a joyful, radiant, applause-drenched performance, and a fourth and final encore for which Byrne and all the dancers and musicians wore frilly white tutus, the drinks are flowing backstage and everyone looks flushed and giddy. Byrne, with people all around him, camera flashes going off and a hand-rolled cigarette tucked behind his ear to smoke later, is laughing and grinning like a man on top of the world.

He sits down with a fresh beer, and a radio DJ is asking him about the psychedelic African music he has collected and released on Luaka Bop, and someone else is asking about the documentary he made about the chicken-sacrificing Candomblé religion in Brazil, and then I ask him about a little thing I noticed in the sleevenotes to the new album, a reference to a book called What Is the What?, the fictionalised biography of a former child refugee from Sudan by Byrne's friend Dave Eggers.

'Oh, I was thinking about that book all the time while I was making this record,' Byrne says. 'Valentino, the Sudanese guy, goes through all kinds of unrelenting horrors, but he's eternally hopeful and even cheerful, in a way that defies all logic, and I wanted to get some of that spirit of resilience in the music. In the end that's what humans – and animals too, I guess – are all about. They go on, despite everything.'

Later, most of the dancers and musicians reconvene at a place with no name, no windows and a pink door. Behind the door is a man with a walkie-talkie and some stairs and a corridor and another door that opens into a nightclub set up to look like an old speakeasy. On stage are three men dressed in 1930s suits, singing 1930s songs in close harmony and accompanying themselves with ukulele, stand-up bass and drums. Byrne, back in his deerstalker and golf shoes, is standing at the bar with a pint of ale and a big smile on his face, moving his head and shoulders to the clickety-clack rhythm and singing along with the words. People are trying to get a word with him about this and that, and I try, too, but he just laughs and grins and says, 'These guys are great!' and then goes back inside the music.

David Byrne's British tour starts on March 27 (tickets: livenation.co.uk) He headlines the Ether 09 festival at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on April 12 and 13 (southbankcentre.co.uk)

I forgot about those huge jackets he used to wear.....one of the most enduring memories from the 80's surely - oversized shoulder pads, lol. Byrne is actually a family name (Mum's maiden name) so perhaps David and our family are related, in some very distant fashion?? (If his ancestors hail from Country Wicklow in Ireland, we may be onto something!)

I'm not going to copy and paste because there are graphs and stuff that I never have and never will be able to get my head around!

It's not new ... I've come across it several times, but it is REALLY worth reading (as is everything else he comes up with). This man is not your average pop star, to put it mildly!


http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/m...currentPage=all

David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists ­ and Megastars

By David Byrne 12.18.07

Still the great reviews keep rolling in. So many of them it's unbelievable .... I SO envy people yet to see the show

I wish I had felt better, that the build up to the shows hadn't been so disgustingly hot and horrible and that the devastating fires hadn't welcomed David and company back to Melbourne. And we didn't get Burning Down the House complete with tutus ...

If you didn't catch him in the UK (like several people I know who shall remain nameless silly sausages!) then that leg is over ... he is back in Europe just now and has added more dates in the US. He must be fit!!


http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/gig-41...mp;blockStart=0

Ether 09: David Byrne

Once in a lifetime live music from David Byrne
By John Aizlewood, Evening Standard 14.04.09


Evening Standard rating John Aizlewood's rating *****
Evening Standard rating Reader rating *****



Burning down the house: a tutu-clad David Byrne is wholly reborn as a live act, blending sound and vision to produce a breathless show
David Byrne

All white on the night: Byrne, his band and three dancers were dressed like a Fifties cricket team

(click on the link to see yet more photos )

In the 21 years since Naked, the final Talking Heads album, leader David Byrne’s solo career has chugged along pleasantly enough, but no more.

Perhaps it’s his new relationship with the groundbreaking American photographer Cindy Sherman or perhaps it’s the realisation that at 56 he still has much to prove, but suddenly Byrne is bursting through boundaries once again.

Last year’s collaboration with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today and his lovely soundtrack to the US television programme Big Love suggested a creative stirring, but even those fine albums failed to serve notice that as a live act Byrne is wholly and fabulously reborn.

Last night, the second of Byrne’s two for the Southbank’s Ether festival which runs until 24 April, was a two-hour cornucopia of delight covering Byrne’s two albums with Eno, Talking Heads staples and My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks) from his 1981 collaboration with choreographer Twyla Tharp. Yet it was more than catalogue cherry-picking.

From the moment the Scottish-born New Yorker emerged with his four-man band and three backing singers, there was magic afoot.

Like some Fifties cricket team, the entire ensemble were clad from head to toe in white — the colour of Byrne’s hair and his braces — and they were often joined by three white-wearing dancers, choreographed in the faux-natural style (the one that requires intensive rehearsal to look off-the-cuff) of Fatboy Slim’s Praise You video.

When they weren’t jiving with the backing singers or grappling with each other like tactile ninjas, the dervish dancers leapfrogged over Byrne during a jaw-droppingly spectacular version of Talking Heads’s Once In A Lifetime; they caught him as he dropped — still singing — during Houses In Motion and they joined him on swivelling office chairs for Life Is Long.

In lesser hands, with weaker music the dancers would have hijacked the show. Instead, sound and vision enhanced each other and when the dancers took a breather nobody’s attention wandered. In fact, the crowd adored it and Crosseyed And Painless was so irresistibly funky that it invoked a mass, spontaneous charge to the front which startled and delighted Byrne, although surely it happens every night he plays.

And for the third encore, a special treat when Eno himself — dressed in white of course — added backing vocals to the heartbreaking lullaby Everything That Happens. Live music really doesn’t get any better than this. Breathlessly brilliant.


Reader reviews (3)

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Tremendous gig - both on the ears and the eyes. Even with a 4 piece band plus percussionist the groove was reminiscent of those early 80s extended band gigs you still thankfully find on YouTube these days. From the manic sermon of Once in a Lifetime to the co-ordinated treadmill running of Life During Wartime it could have been 25 years ago.

It was great to see that music can still be art, which is as important now as it was then.

- Si James, London, UK

Do yourselves a favor and get a copy DVD/VHS of the 1986 David Byrne movie "True Stories". After seeing it, and listening to the great numbers written by David, and performed by the late , great Talking Heads, you will want to jump on a Virgin Atlantic flight, and join David down in mythical Virgil Texas, and live a "Wild, Wild Life".

- John Bowles(Ex Pat Englishman), White Plains, New York,USA.

Couldn't agree more on this review. We shared the same feelings as Mister Aizlewood enjoying as much as him the featured Byrne show last month in Antwerp. The Antwerp crowd even got a fourth encore. Byrne and company performed as if it was their first and last gig. Indeed : brilliant. Best concert and concept in years.

- Jo Van Crombruggen, Brussels, Belgium

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

worth reading

I hope the very interesting lady on this board who was going to this show, made it! She knows who she is ... it sounds super and there are some really good photos with the first review!

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around_town/the_...e-Audience.html

David Byrne Awes Greek Theatre Audience

By STAN ADLER

Updated 9:27 PM PDT, Tue, Jun 30, 2009


After being greeted by cheers and applause, David Byrne stepped up to the mic at the Greek Theatre on Friday night and quipped that they might even be doing some Greek tragedies­appropriately, he noted, mentioning Euripides and quickly informing the crowd that it wouldn’t be his pants.

David Byrne Grooves the Greek
View Slideshow

Photos: Berkeley was the final U.S. stop on David Byrne's "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" tour before heading to Europe in July.

For Byrne fans, this was the right introduction­a touch of the erudite and a little bit goofy.

He started it all off with a song from his new album ("Everything that Happens Will Happen Today") called “Strange Overtones.” It’s a ballad that soars, proudly proclaiming: “This groove is out of fashion/These beats are 20 years old.”

If there was any doubt as to the coolness of where you were, it was immediately dismissed upon realizing that whatever happened would be happening tonight at the Greek.

Byrne stood with perfect posture in his all-white attire and, with occasional hops, skips, and measured dance steps, led an ensemble of seven musicians and three dancers through new songs interspersed with Talking Heads standards.

Byrne has called his music “folk electronic gospel”­and he delivered a rock sermon that had everyone in the audience from the pit to the top of the lawn testifying in a foot chugging reverie, shaking their heads with sweet awe and shimmying in and out of their seats.

“Heaven”­like a lot of the earlier material­didn’t include the dancers, and seemed better that way. The three clownish Felliniesque dancers added a sense of theater even though their routines sometimes seemed closer to calisthenics.

Byrne shed his white blazer to belt out a beseeching, gut wrenching, and desperate version of “Born Under Punches” and then finished up with "Once in a Lifetime", "Life During Wartime" and "Feel My Stuff."

Predictably, the Greek reverberated with chants and cheers for encores. Three followed, with “Take Me to the River” looking like the greatest exit number any band could ask for until Byrne said, “Wait, there’s more.”

Then the Bay Area's very own Extra Action Marching Band came marching down from the top of the amphitheater, winding its way through the crowd with silver pompoms, flags, muscled men and curvy women in sexy costumes with tubas, horns, drums, and full parade regalia swarming onto a fully lit stage.

Extra Action joined Byrne for a completely choreographed 40-person "Road to Nowhere" which was magical, and then for a tense and threatening (tingling) version of “Burning Down the House” while hundreds of white balloons floated down onto the stage and into the pit to everyone's delight.

And this is the perverse genius of Byrne, who can go to the wall with his existential tales and quotidian tragedies and have you smiling and bursting into laughter.

Performers and audience alike kicked and popped balloons, David Byrne stood in the middle of it all looking like the ring master of one of the greatest shows on earth.

For the last encore the marching band stayed back stage while Byrne sang "Everything that Happens" the title track off his new album with Brian Eno ("Everything That Happens Will Happen Today").

It's one of those sweet songs, until you listen to the words and feel the strangely reassuring ominous side of a modern rock master. At that point in the concert, you knew everything had happened.


A person who was moving toward the exit said: “It was a good party.” That seemed to say it all.

Stan Adler was last seen chasing a white balloon across UC Berkeley campus singing Everything that Happens at the top of his lungs.


Friday Night: David Byrne at the Greek Theatre

By Meredith Brody in Last Night
Saturday, Jun. 27 2009 @ 7:07PM

David Byrne, the cerebral, witty art rocker who has explored many areas of music and performance since his beginnings as part of the Talking Heads in the 70s, entranced a capacity crowd at Berkeley's Greek Theatre with a show entitled Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno. Eno and Byrne first collaborated on the Talking Head's second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, in 1978, and continued through two more Talking Heads albums and the 1981 Byrne/Eno album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. After thirty years, they rejoined to make Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

Byrne, all in white, to match his now-white hair, joined onstage by four musicians, three singers, and (eventually) three dancers, also all in white, greeted a crowd already amped and amused by a lively set from globally-inspired musical gypsies DeVotchKa. Referencing the stately setting, he said "We'll be doing some Greek tragedies -- Euripides," almost but not quite quoting the vaudeville stalwart "Euripides? Eumenides!" by continuing "No, not my pants...We're going to do some Brian Eno stuff, and other things that he and I did back in the day -- and break the rule book and do some other stuff, too."

Whereupon the group launched into a seamless celebration, beginning with Strange Overtones from the new album, and continuing through fourteen more songs, including much of Everything that Happens, but also many more. Shifting lights in primary colors and Byrne's playful interaction with the dancers (choreographed in arty-yet-artless, rather gymnastic modern-dance style by Noemie Lafrance, Annie-B Parson, and robbinschilds), as well as a constant re-configuring of the musicians, kept things more than fresh.

After a version of the Talking Heads' Houses in Motion, the audience cheered for so long it stopped the show, making Byrne giggle "Oh my goodness, thank you, wow" before launching into My Big Nurse, sounding almost country-western (in a show that also featured gospel, Afro-Cuban, and techno/ambient influences.)

Byrne writes lyrics that sound simple but that are at the same time not just allusive and poetic but aphoristic. In a setting that sometimes seemed partially obscured by blue clouds of marijuana smoke, eventually the state of bliss and connectedness with an artist in which he seemed to be speaking directly to you was achieved. The people standing in the enormous fluid mosh pit that is the ground floor of the Greek were constantly moving; many sitting down on the huge stone stairs that form the ampitheathre were rapt with attention, silently mouthing the lyrics along with Byrne.

By the time Byrne launched into the Heads' Once in a Lifetime (during which a dancer leapt over his head), seguing into Life during Wartime, the lines "this ain't no party, this ain't no disco," were belied by the fact that most of the crowd were on their feet. They calmed a bit while Byrne sang the plaintive I Feel My Stuff ("I think I waited too long..."), which was the last song before the inevitable encores.

He introduced his musicians -- Mark Degli Antoni on keyboards, Paul Frazier on bass, Mauro Refrosco on percussion, Graham Hawthorne on drums -- before launching into Take Me to the River. For a moment, I thought the first big notes were the intro to Beat It, in honor of Michael Jackson, who had died just the day before. After the following song, I Know Sometimes a Man is Wrong, again the applause seemed endless.

"There's more," Byrne said, and indeed there was: in an amazing coup de theatre, the Extra Action Marching Band began descending from just below the ring of towering eucalyptus trees towards the stage down the center of the Greek. Already in a Dionysian frenzy, there were four girls in black wigs with bangs, shaking their silver pompoms and everything else, in skintight tiny white dresses with arm fringe; two gogo boys in tall black shakos and fringed tighty-whities, and two more waving silver flags; and an explosion of brass-playing and drum-toting musicians, too many to count while in the inexorable propulsive grip of We're on the Road to Nowhere, which turned into Burning Down the House. The suddenly wildly sexual stage show was even more startling and effective because of the rather sexless, more childlike dancing that had gone on before, as someone observed (okay, it was Vendela Vida, credit where credit is due). I had never heard of the Bay Area-based alternative marching band before (whom, it turned out, had collaborated with him before), and now I wanted to see one of their own shows.

Soothed by a simple acoustic version of Everything that Happens ("from the milk of human kindness, from the breast we all partake, hungry for a social contact"), the crowd floated out. We overheard, more than once, "This was the best concert I ever went to." It was certainly one of our favorites.

Critical bias: I was lucky enough to go backstage afterwards with a friend for a magical party, lit by huge glowing Chinese lanterns, and got to chat for a bit with a similarly glowing (but not-at-all huge) David Byrne, who looked surprisingly slender after his outsized performance onstage. Since the tour started last September and is scheduled to continue through August, I asked him if I was mistaken in thinking that tonight's crowd, which had stopped the show twice, had been especially demonstrative. "No, " he said, "it was an amazing evening. Tonight the audience was the star!" I didn't think so, but it was nice to hear that he'd also had a good time.

I know I keep mentioning DB's journal ... the old saying that if you throw enough mud at a wall some of it will stick, comes to mind.

This is ALWAYS worth reading.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

Lots of new, interesting reading about touring and the latest installation in London and the book and the charity auction on ebay, getting round the world on tour busses (yes, even egg heads have mental blanks with spelling!!)

Check out his cycling gear and click on the link under the photo!

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

I will get around to reading it!

Cute ensemble - is that the Byrne tartan?