Byrning The Candle At Both Ends...

I said to myself that there should be less David Byrne / Talking Heads stuff on this blog, but then he keeps releasing really good new stuff in obscure places and I feel a responsibility to provide a conduit for it. Okay, it's not as if he's really unknown and needs the help, but I can't help it. Blame him not me.

First up, is a duet with Brazilian genius Tom Zé on his new album Estudando A Bossa. Unfortunately this album is only available in Brazil, so you can either buy it on eBay, or steal it off the Internet:

Tom Zé -Outra Insensatez, Poe!

Secondly is his participation in the N.A.S.A. album. It's not too surprising to find him on the album, as it does feature half of the people who have ever released a record. In the world. This track also features Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge, Z-Trip, the Outhere Brothers, John Lennon, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Miles Davis, Chaka Demus and the Everton football squad of 1984.

N.A.S.A - Money

Download more from here.

Thirdly, he's on backing vocals on a new track by the Dirty Projectors. It's on the new Red Hot Aids charity album, which I would obviously beseech you to buy. But here's a taster:

Dirty Projectors and David Byrne - Knotty Pine

True Stories

"I'm 6'3", and maintain a very consistent panda bear shape." - Louis Fyne

True Stories, apart from being a splendid album, is also an even better film. Directed by David Byrne and released in 1986, it profiles a small Texas town called Virgil and the collection of oddballs who live there. It doesn't have a story as such, it just drifts along towards the town's Celebration of Special-ness, a pageant where the towns folk perform various acts of varying quality.

Byrne appears as the nameless narrator, introducing us to the characters, but never really intruding on their lives, apart from when he goes to dinner with the happily married couple who haven't spoken for 15 years. The closest we get to a narrative is through Louis Fyne (played by the always excellent John Goodman), and his quest for marriage. We also meet 'the cute woman', the preacher, the woman who doesn't leave her bed, the voodoo practicioner, and 'the lying woman'. These characters were inspired by stories that Byrne read in the National Enquirer, and other tabloids.

But despite, a fairly shallow level of characterisation, they don't feel like characatures or freaks, but rather they are likable misfits, with a story that needs telling. They are people too, godammit...

And of course, there are the songs, which are tremendous, and are, with the exception of Wild Wild Life, performed by the cast. Not all of the cast versions are available yet, but below you can find two of them.

Talking Heads - Papa Legba (Pops Staples Vocal Version)

Talking Heads - Radio Head (Tito Larriva Vocal Version)

Talking Heads - Wild Wild Life (Extended Mix)

Person Louis Fyne

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And according to Roger Ebert's review here, there are 50 sets of twins in this movie. If that's not a reason to watch the film, then I don't know what is.

Buy them the cd and dvd here.

July 18th is the the day of the troubadour.

Nudity and a musical building

You know I feel duty bound to report the latest activities of David Byrne, because they are always interesting, whether it's singing on trance songs or writing pop - operas about Imelda Marcos. So here are the two sides of Mr. Byrne in two videos I saw this week.

Firstly, he does guest vocals on the new Fatboy Slim project, the Brighton Port Authority. You can say what you want about Norman Cook, but you can't deny he knows his way around a pop tune, so the combination of the two of them, with Dizzee Rascal, is pretty irresistable. Nice cheeky video too.



Secondly, he has turned a building in New York into a giant musical instrument. Well, musical is debatable, but it seems pretty cool to me.



The 20th June is the day of resellers

Help The Aged

A few weeks I posted some new David Byrne collaborations, and David N commented that he was a good example of that strange cultural phenomenon that makes the young the most artistic and creative. Why is it that so many artists in many different arts become less vital, less exciting once they reach thirty? What happens to their brains? Do they become comfortable because of money? Do their expectations change? Are they tired of constantly challenging themselves? Does this make them lazy? So many questions.

I do feel that in the last few years the music industry has become less obsessed with youth, but only because they have realised that the grey consumer has disposable income and is a lot less likely to download illegally. It doesn't mean that 40, 50 somethings have become more creative, just that there is money to be made. I do think there are some exceptions though, and Byrne is one of them. I have loved his last two albums, and while they are obviously not as good as his early material with Talking Heads, that doesn't mean they are not tremendous. I will be writing about some of these exceptions in forthcoming posts, and would welcome your own nominations. To get the ball rolling: Tom Waits, Bjork, Caetano Veloso. What say you?

David Byrne - The Great Intoxication (live) (From the new album, Live From Austin TX)

Byrning Down The House

Somehow I ended up on the email list for Positiva records, something I am not entirely happy about, as you can imagine. So I was reading my latest batch of Paul Van Dyk news, when I caught sight of the words 'feat. David Byrne'. This caused an obvious cartoon style double take, and then an equally obvious pursuit of said track. A collaboration between the coolest man ever and the trance meister himself? It's gotta be heard right?

Paul Van Dyk - Fall With Me (feat. David Byrne)

So when you have a partnership between my favourite person in the world, and one of my least favourites, in terms of quality, I suppose you expect to get something in the middle. Which is where I would put this. Van Dyk raises his game and comes up with something, well, okay, and for Byrne, well, it's no Life During Wartime. But an average David Byrne song, sung by David Byrne, is better than 98% of music in the world, and God I love his voice, he really could sing anything and I'd be interested. Like trance, for example.

He also has a new collaboration with Baby Elephant, who are Prince Paul (a man who likes a collaboration also as much as Byrne himself) and Bernie Worrell, the legendary Funkadelic and Talking Heads percussionist. This track completes the Stop Making Sense reunion by also featuring vocals by Nona Hendryx, one of the vocalists on that tour. It has a real George Clinton feel about it, especially the intro, and as always, Byrnes vocals are great:

Baby Elephant - How Does The Brain Wave? (feat David Byrne)

Forró

In my final lesson before my Portuguese tests, my teacher decided to offer us an unusual form of revision. Instead of going over those conjugations one more time, she decided to show us how to dance to forró. This is one of the many types of traditional Brazilian popular music that exist independently from the pop mainstream, but manage to maintain equal levels of popularity. Personally, all the forró I have heard up to now has been just as mediocre as the stuff in the pop charts. Apart from this one:

Forró In The Dark feat. David Byrne - Asa Branca (download from here)

See the hat in action:

Forró In The Dark are based in New York, and have decided to take classic forró tunes and update them, with mixed results from what I have heard. The track with Bebel Gilberto is as dull as you would expect from a track with Bebel Gilberto. But the above track with David Byrne is, unsurprisingly, ace (read about it on his fantastic blog). This track with Miho Hatori (once of Cibo Matto) is also pretty cool:

Forró In The Dark feat Miho Hatori - Paraiba (download from here)

So now I know how to do the most basic forró dance (despite my my English embarrassment) and I passed my course. Result!