psycho fashion

I read with delight and anticipation the following author blurb at the end of David Byrne's survival guide to the music industry in the January issue of Wired:

'David Byrne is currently collaborating with Fatboy Slim and Brian Eno. Separately.'

The first collaboration is 'Here Lies Love', Byrne's song cycle about Imelda Marcos, 'with musical contributions from Fatboy Slim (Norman Cook)', as Byrne's blog describes it. (See my entry for February 7, 2007.)

It's the mysterious Eno project that's got me all excited. The last time David Byrne and Brian Eno worked together, the result was four of my all-time favourite albums: Talking Heads' More Songs about Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light, and Eno & Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Think of the last one as Steve Reich meets Fela Kuti via Grandmaster Flash, and you'll get the idea.

That era, 1977 to 1981, was a special time in music and the arts generally. I like to think of it as the culmination of the 1960's, or, if you prefer, their last hurrah. It was a period of cultural experimentation, political skepticism, and young people being fabulous, but without the assassinations, nightly reports of war dead, and Richard Nixon. I can think of no better evidence than TV Party, Glenn O'Brien's love-in après la lettre on Manhattan public access cable.

Just think about all the fantastically weird/angry/trippy music that came out between 1977 and 1981 on both sides of the Atlantic by Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Chic, The Clash, Parliament-Funkadelic, Blondie, Joe Jackson, et al. Disco reached its peak and became the raw material for rappers and DJ's. And, perhaps for the last time, there was cheap real estate in NYC.

Besides the US and the UK, the other country that belongs in this conversation was Germany, where the excesses of youth, cf. Baader-Meinhof, took on a more extreme quality. It's Berlin, the walled city of the Cold War, that calls our attention back to Brian Eno and his collaborations, for it was there that David Bowie, at his most vampiric and drug-addled, retreated for his great strung-out trilogy with Eno: Low, Heroes, and Lodger. From the electronic melancholia of Low to the persona of the helpless egomaniacal DJ on Lodger, Bowie fed off the body of ideas in circulation at the time and gave them the tinge of the undead.

But here's the thing that I've always wondered, and the simultaenous Eno connection makes it all the more bizarre: why have David Byrne and David Bowie never collaborated? I've never even seen them photographed together. Think of all they have in common:
-They both recorded at least three albums each with Brian Eno between 1977 and 1981.
-They both live in New York and are devoted to contemporary art.
-They're both known for showing up at concerts all over the city to keep up with what the new bands are doing. (See also their live appearances with the Arcade Fire.)

How can two people in the same line of work walk the same streets, frequent the same galleries and concert halls, and collaborate with the same partners (Eno, Philip Glass, Adrian Belew) yet never appear together? Is one the super-powered alter ego of the other? (Hmm. Which would be which?)

So I got to thinking last week: what form could a Bowie-Byrne collaboration take? They could write and record a song together, but one song would not be enough to satisfy anyone. At the other end, an entire album of co-written duets doesn't strike me as a good idea either. Neither one is known for sharing the stage for long.

And then the idea came to me for something in between that would put the two of them in musical and creative conversation with each other but would be more imaginative than an album of duets—a four-song EP according to the following rules:

1. A new song co-written and performed by the two of them.
2. A Bowie song covered by Byrne.
3. A Byrne song covered by Bowie.
4. A joint cover of a song written by someone else that they both love and have never recorded.

I have suggestions for 2 and 3. Aside from Guster, Bowie and Byrne may be the only musicians who have recorded songs that include the lyrics 'Fa fa fa fa fa...' Think about it: David Bowie singing 'Psycho Killer' and David Byrne singing 'Fashion'!

'There's a brand new dance
But I don't know it's name,
That people from bad homes
Do again and again.
It's big and it's bland
Full tension and fear.
They do it over there
But we don't do it here.'

The declarative quality of these lyrics from Bowie's 'Fashion' sound like they were written by Byrne in the 70's but with the paranoid undertones brought to the fore.

'Ce que j'ai fait, ce soir-là
Ce qu'elle a dit, ce soir-là
Réalisant mon espoir,
Je me lance vers la gloire ... OK
We are vain and we are blind.
I hate people when they're not polite.'

Can't you just hear Bowie's jaded, disinterested sophisticate persona sing-saying these lines from 'Psycho Killer'?

Stranger things have happened than blog entries making their way to their intended targets and dreams coming true. In the meanwhile, while we wait for my magic wand to arrive from Ebay, what song do readers think they should cover together? The only rule is that it cannot be something that either has already recorded.

What do you think, reader? Now that my blog hiatus is over, show the love by posting a comment with your song title and explanation.


[Note: The first comment in the thread has somehow disappeared and now Dan's comment about late Bowie cannot be understood properly. The missing first comment was a provocation from a reader who said that Bowie was 'shot', whatever that means.]