extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
Talking Heads-Burning Down The House-Stop
Making Sense
Of all the
co-incidences this year whilst writing this book, the fact that Al Green
immediately preceded Talking Heads is one that is purely co-incidental, but not
wholly believable. If I was reading a book that had such a link, I’d view it as
more than a bit suspicious (especially because this track is off the “Stop
Making Sense” album), and simply because
this Talking Heads album ends with a cover of one of Al Green’s most famous
songs, “Take Me To The River”. That would give plenty of opportunities to
compare and contrast Al Green to Talking Heads, and speculate as to why rock
bands cover soul classics and generally make it all a bit embarrassing. But
that wouldn’t have been the case for Talking Heads on their version of Green’s
classic because, for once, the rock band made a pretty decent fist of it. In
fact, I’d be hard pushed to say which version I prefer. Sometimes it’s Al’s and
sometimes it’s Talking Heads. That’s an indication of how well I think that
this cover works-there’s nothing really to distinguish between the two. It’s
not that they simply sound the same; there would be no point in that.
But that’s
really enough of Al Green. I should be writing about this track, and if not
this track explicitly, then at least the album from which it is taken.
“Stop Making
Sense” is a brilliant album, and even if you’ve never seen the film from which
it is the soundtrack of, then it still makes perfect sense. If, like me, you
are not an especially big Talking Heads fan, it’s possibly the best place to
start (or end). It is probably the only Talking Heads album you would ever need
to listen to, and it would suffice as a perfect encapsulation for the band to
the extent that it’s far better than any of their greatest hits compilations.
For me, it speaks more of what they were really all about rather than any of their
other records, either the compilations, or any of their studio recordings.
Most filmed
concerts tend to be a little bit boring. There’s only so much you can do when
you’ve pointed a camera at a stage and
filmed the results. A couple of songs are ok, but any more than that and it all
goes a bit flat. However, “Stop Making Sense” (the film) is a little bit
different and I think that’s because it has a distinct narrative flow to it. It
starts with David Byrne shuffling into stage armed just with a beat box and an
acoustic guitar. He tells the crowd that he wants to play them something and
then leans down and presses the pay button on the beatbox. The drum track for
“Pyschokiller” starts and he sings the song just with a simple strum of the
guitar. Song by song, more of the band come on stage, one, two of them at a time,
building something up in an orchestral, almost symphonic way, that most
ordinary concert films don’t have. I’m unsure of how much that this was down to
the band or the director (Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs etc)), but it
was an inspired way of doing things.
As far as this
version of “Burning Down the House” goes, it’s impossible to hear it without
breaking into a little dance of joy.
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