A Time for Dancing at David Byrne’s Arlington Performance

By Jeff Moehlis, Noozhawk Contributor | Published on 10.05.2008

According to the witty book, The Rock Snob’s Dictionary, by David Kamp and Steven Daly, Brian Eno is an “egghead producer and electronics whiz with appropriately futuristic name and aerodynamic pate.” Eno made celebrated solo art rock and ambient albums starting in the 1970s, plus groundbreaking contributions to the music of Roxy Music, Robert Fripp, David Bowie, U2 and The Talking Heads, among others.

It was Eno’s work with Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne that was celebrated in Byrne’s stellar concert Saturday night at the Arlington Theatre, billed as “The Music of David Byrne and Brian Eno.” And what a body of work to celebrate, from The Talking Heads’ Eno-produced primitivist Afro-funk from the albums More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light, to Eno and Byrne’s seminal ethno-sampling-over-electro-funk masterpiece My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, to their brand-new respectable folk-electronic-gospel album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

Well, to call Saturday’s show a concert is to undersell it. This was a Performance with a capital “P,” which included a two-women-one-man dance troupe whose playful choreography and interactions with the musicians provided a fascinating visual complement to the music played by Byrne on guitar and lead vocals backed by a drummer, percussionist, keyboardist,

bassist and three background singers. Strikingly, all performers wore matching white jumpsuits. Byrne was animated throughout, and seemed genuinely appreciative of the audience’s adoration.

The dancers made their first appearance for the second song of the night, “I Zimbra,” during which they held the microphone stands in various comical configurations for the background singers. In “Houses In Motion,” Byrne alternated facing left and right along with the dancers in a high-energy rendition that received an enthusiastic standing ovation from the crowd. Dancer Steven Reker even leapfrogged over Byrne during the bubbling “Once in a Lifetime.”

The audience also danced, but with revelrous abandon, especially during the more rhythmic Talking Heads songs. These included “Houses in Motion;” “Crosseyed and Painless;” “Life During Wartime,” which, ironically, claims there is “no time for dancing;” “Take Me To The River;” and, in a departure from performing songs to which Eno contributed, “Burning Down The House” from the album Speaking In Tongues.

The crowd was more subdued during the pleasant but less-familiar songs from Byrne and Eno’s new album, the bulk of which was performed. This album is currently only available as an online download or as streaming audio, but will soon also be released on CD. One treat was to hear the song that I surmise from the lyrics to be “Never Thought,” which is dominated by an E-Bow-sustained guitar run and that will apparently only be available as a bonus track on the Deluxe Edition of the new album. Amusingly, after the track “One Fine Day” off the new album, Byrne noted that the song’s phrase “everything can change one fine day” could come true on Election Day, Nov. 4. He didn’t specify what change he advocates — no doubt the talking heads on television are ably covering that discussion for now.

Although Byrne provided the necessary guitar textures and rhythms to drive the songs forward, I missed the more experimental guitar contributions made to the Talking Heads’ studio cuts by Adrian Belew on the songs on Remain in Light, and Robert Fripp on “I Zimbra.” Also missed were more tracks from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, whose only representative was “Help Me Somebody,” for which Byrne spoke the part of the preacher on the album track. Given the heavy sampling used on this album, it makes sense that it might be difficult to replicate the songs live. But one still wishes the band would “stop making sense” here, and figure out a way to pull it off.

But these gripes are minor. What a joy to listen, watch and dance to the music of David Byrne and Brian Eno!

Setlist
Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody
Houses In Motion
My Big Nurse

My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)
Heaven
Never Thought
The River
Crosseyed and Painless
Life is Long
Once in a Lifetime
Life During Wartime
I Feel My Stuff

Encore 1
Take Me To The River
The Great Curve

Encore 2
Home
Burning Down The House
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

— Noozhawk contributor Jeff Moehlis is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UCSB.

As told by David Lowery, September 10, 2009, El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, California

I apologize if you’ve heard this story before, but I sort of have to tell it because it takes place in Los Angeles.

A long time, I think it was maybe 1981 or something like that, some of us were in another band in Santa Cruz called Box O’ Laffs. One summer, the guitarist got a job working down in Pasadena. And at some point during the summer he began to phone us and tell us that he’d been hanging out with the percussionist from Talking Heads, and that we were going to get to open for The Talking Heads when they came to L.A. to play.

This seemed improbable to us as well. However, he kept calling and insisting that it actually was going to happen. Eventually the day approached when we were going to have to leave and drive down here and decide that we were going to play with The Talking Heads or not.

So we started driving down here. Meanwhile we’d been calling and, like, asking, “Well, how much do we get? You know, how come we’re not in the advertisements?” You know, we just had all these questions, whatever.

Anyway, we get to Pasadena about, I don’t know, about midnight or 1:00 in the morning, or whatever. And we go over to find where our guitarist is supposedly living, but he’s not actually living there, he’s living someplace else. I think it’s kind like of this offshoot of Highland Park. And we show up there. It’s not exactly a crack house, but you could say that it was like a crack home, or something like that. It was sort of nice.

But anyway, and he’s living there with the percussionist from The Talking Heads, who now has quotation marks around his name. So hoping against all hope, we start pestering this guy. “What time do we play?” “How come we’re not in the advertisements?” “How long do we get to play?” “How much do we get paid?” We’re going on like this, and the guy’s getting more and more frustrated with us as it goes along. And clearly, clearly we’re not getting it. And finally he says, “Man, I am not talking about that show. That show is the fake show. The real show is on a flying saucer above Los Angeles after that show.”

Four hundred miles in the back of a pick-up truck.

The thing was, he was absolutely right. We did play on a flying saucer with The Talking Heads above Los Angeles, and this is the song that tells the story.

[band proceeds to play "The Long Plastic Hallway" off the album New Roman Times]