Celebrity VIP Lounge (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Actress Scarlett Johannson is 25. Actor Robert Vaughn (”The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) is 77. Actor Michael Callan is 74. Comedian-director Terry Gilliam (Monty Python) is 69. Actor Tom Conti is 68. Singer Jesse Colin Young (The Youngbloods) is 68. Guitarist-actor Little Steven (The E Street Band, “The Sopranos”) is 59. Bassist Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads [...]
A Brief Encounter (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
Some songs just provide comfort, this one is a song that caresses and takes you over. It has appeared previously on here but deserves another outing. David Byrne-genius!
33 1/3 (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
It's always gratifying to get a book enthusiastically endorsed by an expert in the field, in advance of its publication. But it's not every day that we get such a lovely blurb from the subject of the book in question . Here's what David Byrne has to say about Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from the Talking Heads to the Present , by Sytze Steenstra... “If I ever need to remind...
Audio Journal (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith So where were we? Ah yes. The last album I wrote about two weeks ago was Love Is Hell by Ryan Adams . This album has remained on relatively constant play during my week off, but has been joined by other Adams albums, namely 2003’s Rock N’ Roll (purchased on a late evening shopping spree at Sister Ray on Soho’s Berwick Street) and Gold (2001)....
Chicagoist (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
I'm stepping away from the Chicagoist "we" for a moment, because there's no way I can possibly be objective about True Stories . It's my favorite movie. When I was about 13 we used to rent movies from King Soopers, the local supermarket. Jammed between the greeting cards and the candy aisle were two red metal shelves which held empty VHS cover boxes. While Mom did the shopping I would browse...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
Interviews With Talking Heads Jerry Harrison & Chris Frantz This year being the 25th anniversary of the release of the Talking Heads' concert classic...
Stoning the Devil (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Though this is at a tangent to the new positivity I’ve been espousing: we all know the Culture Police. We find them standing behind us in movie lines, serving us coffee, plunking themselves down in the front row at readings. These guys and girls know everything, or think they do. The most important thing they know is this: what we should like and what we should not . The old “what’s...
Bicycles and Icicles (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
I can’t really explain why, but I somehow like knowing that David Byrne—like many of us—has spent years traveling with bikes and sneaking them into hotel rooms to assemble them with hex wrenches. It’s one of t hose covert experiences that bike geeks have in common, regardless of wealth or fame. And like the rest of us, Byrne knows that traveling by bicycle is far more enjoyable...
The Corner (Free subscription) | 10/28/2009
President Obama--well he has the beautiful house, and he has the beautiful wife, so he asks himself "how do I work this?" Seemingly ready to draw from the 1995 Clinton playbook, apparently the administration has rewarded big-dollar fundraisers with fun times at the White House . Which is no more dignified this time around. Sometimes, the green-eyeshade contentions of campaign and ethics geeks...
Spinner.com (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
Filed under: News , Book Club , Canada David Byrne 's just-ended tour, dubbed 'Cities, Bicycles and the Future of Getting Around,' was a little different than his usual road trips. Byrne left his guitar behind and instead was an actual talking head promoting his new book 'The Bicycle Diaries.' In his too-brief lecture at Toronto's International Festival of Authors on Saturday, Byrne ran through topics...
DCist (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
Last Tide When Afrobeat marvels Nomo came to DC9 two months ago, not many people had heard of their opener, Last Tide , and certainly nobody there expected a sound that drifted so far from jazzy horns and African percussion. Last Tide's atmospherics lay somewhere between shoegaze-inspired haze and dark new wave synths. This is especially noticeable when keyboardist Libby Dorot takes the vocals, recalling...
Torontoist (Free subscription) | 10/24/2009
Every morning during the International Festival of Authors we'll be previewing the day's events and making our picks for the ones that seem most promising. David Byrne on two wheels. Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist. Today's Events 1 p.m. — Round Table: Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around (Fleck Dance Theatre) 1 p.m. — Round Table: Writing Scotland's Past (Lakeside...
Globe and Mail (Free subscription) | 10/23/2009
The former Talking Heads front man says life is more beautiful from the seat of a bike. It's a message he has been spreading while promoting his book Bicycle Diaries
John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
Arcade Fire has made the 1983 Talking Heads tune This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) a favourite in concerts; here's why. (And here's a link back to a post from this winter of David Byrne doing the song solo ... with similar percussive arrangement, no less.)
Ballad of a Tin Man (Free subscription) | 10/18/2009
Talking Heads - Remain in Light (1980) Talking Heads made a rather overt transition over the course of a few albums in the late 1970s-80 from a quirky, sparse, post-punk sound to a thick, funky, polyrhythmic, groove-infused trance mode. The masterpiece that resulted is Remain in Light , a disc that unfailingly carries the latter set of adjectives in all reviews. Every song on the album (with the possible...
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