In fact, everyone I know missed it. David Byrne last night, at the Opera House, was superb. He was performing The Songs Of David Byrne and Brian Eno. Now naturally this excited me enormously, being a total Brian Eno fanboy, and extremely fond of David Byrne too. In fact, I'd hypothesise that David Byrne has got more mentions on this blog than any other artist, probably because I was particularly into his solo stuff when I started it, in 2005.
So yeah, show last night, incredible. The music, naturally, was excellent, and gave me a stronger appreciation for the recent album,
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. But I can't deny that I was much more excited by the opportunity to see David Byrne performing so many classic Talking Heads pieces, and he really didn't disappoint, with over half the set being Talking Heads material.
The atmosphere, surprisingly, was also incredible. I say surprisingly because it was being performed at the Opera House Concert Hall... But nonetheless everything about it was right. I was very pleased to note that David Byrne still has that kind of nervous energy for which he's known, but there's also this overlay of suaveness which is... Kinda cool. In stark contrast to Leonard Cohen, his... banter... came across as underrehersed. Like a kind of guided ramble. He was also nicely conversant with the audience, whenever he could hear them over the solid wall of applause that filled the space between every song.
Of course, what really made the atmosphere was the audience. Now as I said, this was at the Opera House, and the average audience age was around 40 (I'm working my way down to my own age group). By the time David Byrne got to Life During Wartime, about a third of the audience was on their feet and dancing, and by the end we all were. This gave me the amusement of observing the guy next to me trying to desperately remember how to dance. Seriously, it was all pretty exciting.
Of course, what was greater than the dancing in the audience was... The dancing on the stage. Without a doubt, this was the best choreographed concert I've ever been to. The first song, Strange Overtones, was fairly straightforward. But the second song, I Zimbra, started with 3 dancers coming on to the stage and stealing the microphone stands from the backup singers. And moving them to random locations around the stage. Then dancing for a bit. Then they did it again. Meanwhile David Byrne was randomly pacing, backwards, around the stage. Yes, this is what I like to see from a David Byrne concert. By the end of the song, one of the backup singers was lying flat on her back, singing, while a dancer held the entire microphone stand to her mouth. Anyway, there was some kind of choreography for around 3/4s of the songs, and it really added to the experience.
Favourite Moments? Well, I Zimbra was great. Help Me Somebody was amazing; it's from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Byrne & Eno's 1981 album (masterpiece) which was very sample-heavy. That particular song features some preacher yelling things like "You need to take a good look at yourself and see if you're the kind of person God WANTS you to be!" They weren't using samples for this performance, so Byrne just yelled these things himself, and did so perfectly. I loved it.
Crosseyed & Painless, Life During Wartime and Once In A Lifetime were all particularly amazing. I was rather happy to see, during Once In A Lifetime, the dancers paying reference to the weird hand-arm-chop-thing that Byrne did in the original
video clip. Take Me To The River was great, but not as great as I might've hoped, for reasons that I no longer remember. The Great Curve completely blew me away; it was the first Talking Heads song that I really, really loved.
Perhaps the greatest moment, though, was during the second encore, when the lights went down, and some kind of prerecorded atmospheric music came on... And we could vaguely see everyone leave the stage (the all-white outfits made it a bit hard to hide)... Then they all came back on, the lights went up, and... They were all wearing tutus. Like, even the drummers. Then they burst into Burning Down The House, and this one blew absolutely everyone away. It was the greatest finale imaginable. Or it would've been, were it the finale. They actually played one more song, Everything That Happens. Which is a much slower, gentler piece. I have no idea why they opted for that to end with, but it was still kinda cool.
Biggest disappointments? Well most obviously there is the fact that the support act, The Church, pulled out. I'm no big fan, but I would've quite liked to have seen them. The Opera House replaced them with some random string quartet playing in the foyer, which didn't really excite me that much, so I spent the time wandering around the Botanical Gardens, trying to use my newish camera. So that was alright.
The only other slight disappointment was that they only played the one song from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. As I subtly and undetectably weaved into the thread of the above discussion, I think that album is a masterpiece, and, as I said, Help Me Somebody really impressed me. Now obviously a lot of the album would be unplayable without samples. Like, Qu'ran would be impossible, The Jezebel Spirit would not work at all... Mea Culpa would be awesome, but difficult... America Is Waiting would be worth a shot... Welllll, it was no grand loss.
Anyway, using my ultra-secret technique of Furiously Scribbing On My Ticket In The Dark, I managed to keep track of the setlist. In case anyone cares, here it is!:
Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody
Houses In Motion
My Big Nurse
My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks) (From the album The Catherine Wheel)
Heaven
Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
Poor Boy
Crosseyed And Painless
Life Is Long
Once In A Lifetime
Life During Wartime
First EncoreI Feel My Stuff
Take Me To The River
The Great Curve
Second EncoreAir
Burning Down The House
Third EncoreEverything That Happens
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