{"id":1637,"date":"2008-09-04T23:42:12","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T03:42:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-10T16:18:50","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T16:18:50","slug":"david-byrne-phone-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/david-byrne-phone-home\/","title":{"rendered":"David Byrne, Phone Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dE-mxVxFXLg?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nYou may recall <strong>David Byrne<\/strong>: Leader of <strong>Talking Heads<\/strong>. Intimate collaborator with the visionaries from <strong>Brian Eno<\/strong> to <strong>Twyla Tharp<\/strong> to <strong>Robert Wilson<\/strong>. (Would rock fans in the early &#8217;80s have even known that the latter two existed if not for their collaborations with Byrne?) Curator of cool Brazillian and other music on his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.luakabop.com\/david_byrne\/cmp\/info.html\" target=\"_blank\">Luaka Bop label<\/a>. If the name and face are still fuzzy, the following clip will likely ring a bell.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tbuei9AIq9U?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Whatever happened to that guy? I heard he&#8217;s put out some solo albums over the years. There was a good song from one of those albums in that movie with Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, and Scarlett Johansson. One day I almost bought the album that contained that song, but I sampled the rest of the songs and they didn&#8217;t come close to matching the generally strong album cuts on Talking Heads&#8217; highly underrated swan song, <em>Naked<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Talking Heads, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/RubyDear.mp3\" title=\"\">&#8220;Ruby Dear&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Recently I was surprised and excited to learn that Byrne and Eno had collaborated on a new album, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.everythingthathappens.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Everything That Happens Will Happen Today<\/a><\/em>. Visions of <em>My Life in the Bush of Ghosts<\/em> danced in my head! You can stream the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.everythingthathappens.com\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, but I wanted more. I was pretty sure this would be worth owning. Before I even listened to the stream I acquired the whole album.<\/p>\n<p><strong>David Byrne &amp; Brian Eno, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/01_Home.mp3\">&#8220;Home&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The opening track, &#8220;Home&#8221;, was nothing to write home about. It sounded like a warmed-over track from Eno and John Cale&#8217;s mildly underrated collaboration, <em>Wrong Way Up<\/em>. This is not to criticize the Cale-Eno collaboration, because it&#8217;s pretty good, especially the songs Cale sings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Eno &amp; John Cale, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/CrimeInTheDesert.mp3\" title=\"\">&#8220;Crime in the Desert&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The new Byrne and Eno album had to get better, but even the best tracks sounded no better than one of the few tolerable songs from Talking Heads&#8217; all-around worst album, <em>Speaking in Tongues<\/em>. Beside &#8220;Burning Down the House&#8221; that album was a heaping bowl of plain spaghetti! What&#8217;s the point? <\/p>\n<p>After 2 dozen spins of this new Byrne and Eno record, here&#8217;s my relative favorite song from <em>Everything That Happens Will Happen Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>David Byrne &amp; Brian Eno, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/05_LifeIsLong.mp3\">&#8220;Life Is Long&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Pass the salt, please.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the deal with David Byrne? Is this what he&#8217;s reduced to?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Gea9SYUdJeY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t this why God created <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vantieghem.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">David Van Tieghem<\/a><\/strong>? (And if God&#8217;s got a few spare minutes, can he design a better Website for the technically and innovative proficient percussionist than the one he&#8217;s presently got?)<\/p>\n<p>What I find fascinating about solo David Byrne, and what I was trying to hint at in a recent thread on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/08\/21\/who-are-you\">visionary band leaders ill-equipped to go solo<\/a>, is his inability to find his voice as a solo artist after having among the most distinctive artistic voices (in the broader sense) of his time when leading Talking Heads. <\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BQnqNJeQoQ8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nByrne&#8217;s first forays as a solo artist&#8211;or intimate collaborator, not including <em>Remain in Light<\/em>, which by many accounts is a Byrne-Eno collaboration more than a Talking Heads record, were promising. We all know about <em>My Life in the Bush of Ghosts<\/em>, Byrne&#8217;s first official collaboration with Eno. <em>The Catherine Wheel<\/em>, music he composed for a Twyla Tharp dance (or whatever&#8211;that whole world remains a mystery to me), is stronger than most if not all of the Talking Heads records following <em>Remain in Light<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p><strong>David Byrne (<em>The Catherine Wheel<\/em>), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/His_Wife_Refused.mp3\">&#8220;His Wife Refused&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He also did the music for a Robert Wilson play, <em>the CIVIL warS<\/em>. The music Byrne composed was released as <em>The Knee Plays<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>David Byrne (<em>The Knee Plays<\/em>), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Social_Studies.mp3\">&#8220;Social Studies&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These collaborations were from the early &#8217;80s, an exciting time, when it seemed that mainstream and experimental artists were coming together on a weekly basis. Paul Simon launched mainstream collaborations with the likes of <strong>Phillip Glass<\/strong> as well as South African musicians and <strong>Chevy Chase<\/strong>. <strong>Laurie Anderson<\/strong> had a hit single. <strong>The Clash<\/strong> collaborated with graffiti artists and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/02\/06\/poets_who_rock\">Allen Ginsburg<\/a><\/strong>. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/03\/20\/the_untouchables_starring_peter_gabriel\">Peter Gabriel<\/a><\/strong> collaborated with just about everyone but the USC Marching Band. One of the leading lights in this period of cross-pollination was Byrne. <\/p>\n<p>After Byrne had some time to regroup from his years in Talking Heads, I expected him to emerge in some new or interesting form, probably bridging the historical gap between Bowie and <strong>Beck<\/strong>. Surely he&#8217;d have soaked in his Brazillian stuff, hip-hop, new technology, and the films of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2007\/10\/20\/news_flash_wes_anderson\">Wes Anderson<\/a><\/strong>, then blasted into the 21st century to soak in the adulation due to him for helping to set the tone of modern-day popular art alongside resurgent early &#8217;80s visionaries like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2007\/05\/06\/inland_empire_lynch_takes_communion\">David Lynch<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2007\/07\/31\/downloads_to_spare_try_the_ethiopiques_s\">Jim Jarmusch<\/a>. Instead, we&#8217;re occasionally treated to performances like this:<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ANKzffJu_EE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Maybe I shouldn&#8217;t have wished for all that postmodern synthesis.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Byrne is the &#8217;80s version of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/05\/01\/interview_tom_kitts_ray_davies_not_like_\"><strong>Ray Davies<\/strong><\/a>, a band leader with a very focused, particular point of view that, once honed to a point, was complete. Yeah, I know we all like a post-Great Period Kinks song or two &#8211; and someone&#8217;s bound to like one of those albums that the rest of us don&#8217;t &#8211; but where was Ray Davies to go? Would anyone have cared if Ray Davies made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/09\/04\/is-john-lennon-s-lemgplastic-ono-bandl-e\">grand statements on God, Love, Yoko, and John Sinclair<\/a>? Once out of the Big Suit, where did David Byrne fit in? Is there any going back to that young guy playing &#8220;Warning Sign&#8221;?<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ppvNNotJPe0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Has his post-Talking Heads career been an extended, subtle cry for help, like the post-<strong>Silence of the Lambs<\/strong> films of Jodie Foster? David Byrne, phone home.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bzmZXYKmTt0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may recall David Byrne: Leader of Talking Heads. Intimate collaborator with the visionaries from Brian Eno to Twyla Tharp to Robert Wilson. (Would rock fans in the early &#8217;80s have even known that the latter two existed if not for their collaborations with Byrne?) Curator of cool Brazillian and other music on his Luaka <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/david-byrne-phone-home\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[18,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}