In American Utopia Byrne is seeking connection: Connection among the music, connection within the songs in his catalogue, connection among his performers, connection with the audience, and connection among us citizens in the USA and connection between us and the rest of the world. Initially when I first heard about Byrne’s Broadway residency, I wondered: How is this a Broadway show and not a touring concert? Meaning: What is the drama? What is the story being told?ĭavid Byrne and cast of David Byrnes American Utopia Courtesy of HBO Byrne is the nerd hero who go where others fear to tread, the Asperger’s individual whose love of order and strange but precise movements, allows us all to join him on an inclusive journey of song, dance, and talk. It was an exuberant and memorable performance, which I was fortunate to attend, at which Byrne was joined on stage by San Francisco’s Extra Action Marching Band, for his encore, which was a cover of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.” In this expression of high spirits, Americana, and musical cross-pollination, the seeds of American Utopia were present.ĭavid Byrne’s American Utopia brings those same elements to a United States that has been increasingly torn apart. In 2005, David Byrne performed with Arcade Fire at the Hollywood Bowl, as the launch of KCRW’s World Festival. He also wrote some whimsical songs, as well as music for film, ballet, opera and even a project where a whole building was turned into a musical instrument. He founded a record label that brought attention to pockets of global music in South America and Africa. In the years following the breakup of Talking Heads, Byrne pursued several artistic directions. The Heads, as they were often called then, were the intelligent agents of music inclusivity bringing funk and danceability to their audience.īyrne’s early lyrics sometimes spoke to societal violence and anomie, such as their first hit “Psycho Killer,” and the later “Life During Wartime.” Nonetheless, there was an aspect of Byrne that was always searching for the transcendent, as was evidenced in their exuberant cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.” I was a dedicated Talking Heads band fan and saw them perform on New Year’s Eve 1976 and at Forest Hills in 19 (some of the best shows I’ve ever seen). In the years that followed, Talking Heads quickly progressed from a stripped down New Wave band to a larger and more global sound (working with Brian Eno, the father ambient music and a visual artist). Patti Smith coming from the world of poetry and art followed, and eventually R.E.M who would carry the banner into the late 80s and 90s. The first of these was The Velvet Underground who were managed by Andy Warhol, and within the loose parameters of this idea there came to be a number of New Wave and proto-punk bands including Television with Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and three students from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth who would form a band called Talking Heads (they would later be joined by Jerry Harrison). But once upon a time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was a grouping of bands that saw themselves as much art projects as rock bands. Art rock is not a term that is bandied about much anymore.
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