nothing but flowers

David Byrne is featured in a short bicycling video at the New York Times's website. It's always comforting, although not necessary, when one's favourite artists share one's politics. I am proud to say that I have never operated a motor vehicle in my life, and I intend to keep it that way, even in Tampa where I am teaching this year. I'm also proud to have voted for more bike lanes (in surprisingly close votes) when I served on Community Board 6 in Brooklyn.

My students here in Tampa have noticed me biking around campus. Let's hope that some of them get the message and say no to the madness of enclosing themselves in those poison-emitting, muscle-wasting, anti-social pods known as cars. Better yet, let's hope that those of them staying in Tampa longer than I am will organize to demand more bicycle infrastructure from local government. The future is in their hands, or, in this case, their feet.

the book I read

I am such a bad blogger. I keep promising to do a certain thing, yet it remains to be done. In the meanwhile, David Byrne has a new book out called Bicycle Diaries. That should focus the mind. Let's all read it together. (No, I have not read it yet. I just couldn't resist using another DB song title as a headline.)

everything happens again

David Byrne has released a live EP from his current tour. Proceeds benefit Amnesty International. Buy it here. The live songs are great, but you knew I was going to say that.

Once more, here is my review of the tour.

remain in fear of songs about ghosts today

(Spoiler alert: if you plan to see David Byrne on his current tour, do not read this until after you see the show.)


Earlier tonight I saw David Byrne perform live for the nineteenth time, but this one was even more special than usual. The conceit behind his current tour is that he is playing the 'Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno'. With only two exceptions, that's exactly what he played: songs from More Songs about Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979), Remain in Light (1980), My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1980), and Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008).

Aside from the brand-new songs, tonight's program was the soundtrack of my life, music that I grew up playing and never stopped. A few of the songs, like 'Heaven' and 'Life during Wartime', I had seen DB perform live on previous tours, but most were lifelong favourites of mine that I never expected to hear live. For me, this was as great a concert as I can ever expect to see. The performance was tight, funky, swelling, and smart. One thing it was not was nostalgic. At times, the style of a song or the musicians' movements recalled Talking Heads' live shows of the early 1980's but always in a layered way that combined new ideas with the old.

The band had five pieces: DB on guitar, Paul Frazier on bass, Mauro Refosco on percussion, Graham Hawthorne on drums, and Mark Degli Antoni on keyboards. There were three backup singers: Redray Frazier, Kaïssa, and Jenni Muldaur. And three dancers: Lily Baldwin, Natalie Kuhn, and Steven Reker. Several of the songs were fully choreographed for the dancers and the band. The choreographers were Noémie Lafrance, Annie-B Parsons, and robbinschilds.

Before I get to the setlist, here is the breakdown of where the songs came from.

Talking Heads albums
More Songs about Buildings and Food: 1
Fear of Music: 4
Remain in Light: 5
Speaking in Tongues: 1*

Byrne & Eno albums
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: 1
Everything That Happens: 7

Byrne albums
The Catherine Wheel: 1*

The asterisks mark the non-Eno songs.


1. Strange Overtones (2008, DB & BE)

This is the catchiest song on the new album thanks to the infectious 'out of fashion' groove that runs through it. The one problem I have with the new album is that I don't agree with some of DB's choices as vocalist, as on this song whose verses he sings almost in a falsetto which suits neither his voice nor the song. Not tonight. Live, he sings the song in a lower, more typical register for him and it sounds great. All through the concert, the new songs, with one exception, hold up very well and outshine their recorded versions.

2. I Zimbra (1979, TH)

The dancers come onstage for the first time. They direct a lot of their attention to the backup singers who enact a scenario of being tempted or lured by the dancers. This is the one song where the choreography seems detached from the song rather than adding to it, but that could be because this is their first number and I did not pick up on the dance themes yet.

3. One Fine Day (2008, DB & BE)

SW and I saw DB perform this song last March at St. Ann's Warehouse with Norah Jones, Damien Rice, and two of the Scissor Sisters doing backup. Really. It's still a gentle-sounding song, although the lyrics could be read more melancholically than they first seem. At this point the crowd was still quite still and sizing up the new songs. That changed very quickly.

4. Help Me Somebody (1980, DB & BE)

This was funky genius on DB's part. The recorded version of this piece on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts consists of found vocals from a radio sermon by Reverend Paul Morton of New Orleans in 1980, over guitars, bass, congas, metal objects, and drums. Live, however, DB does the vocal parts spoken by the preacher, including the shouts. It's very cool. Is there a term for performing found sounds live?

5. Houses in Motion (1980, TH)

The first of many songs tonight from Remain in Light. What was a wailing synthesizer solo on the album is played by DB on guitar. He and the band totally nail it, and the crowd rises to its feet. They will remain there for nearly the rest of the show.

6. My Big Nurse (2008, DB & BE)

This is a great song that everyone should listen to. Bad things happen, good things happen, and after recounting them, the voice of the song says, 'I'm counting all the possibilities / For dancing on this lazy afternoon.' This is at least the fourth DB song with 'big' in the title, after 'My Big Hands (Fall through the Cracks)', 'Big Business', and 'Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)' although none of those were produced or co-written by Eno. Even so, keep it in mind. The song is played with three acoustic guitars added by Mauro the percussionist, one of the backup singers, and one of the dancers. The two other dancers move lazily, as the chorus instructs. The song sounds lovely and gentle live.

7. My Big Hands (Fall through the Cracks) (1981, DB)

I am very happy to hear this particular non-Eno song from The Catherine Wheel. Was it included just because it has the word 'big' in the title? That's a good enough reason for me. DB's vocals and the arrangement sound like they are based not on the 1981 recording but on Talking Heads' live version of the song from the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1982, which still circulates as a bootleg. Hearing the song in this alternative form is an unexpected delight.

8. Heaven (1979, TH)

This is a song SW and I have heard DB and even Jarvis Cocker do live before. In tonight's rendition, the keyboard sounds more like a piano to me that it has in any other version I know. Ah, someone should arrange this song with a piano in the lead or perhaps for piano only. That would totally reimagine the song.

9. Poor Boy (2008, DB & BE)

This dark song may be about a country that is about to reap what it has sown. My favourite line: 'They trust market forces. / It’s the only song they know.' Live, the percussion does a lot more work than on the album and DB busts out the tremolo arm in a very rocking guitar solo. In this arrangement, the song sounds like it came from the Remain in Light sessions.

10. Life Is Long (2008, DB & BE)

This new song is full of ambivalence about relationships: 'Chain me down, but I am still free.' The dancers perform in wheeled chairs. Live, it sounds a little flat and slow, which makes it the only new song that suffers in concert.

11. Crosseyed and Painless (1980, TH)

Another favourite from Remain in Light. I am ecstatic just to be hearing it live. They begin with the misleadingly easygoing prologue that one hears on the Stop Making Sense version of the song. Then it kicks into overdrive. This is one of the all-time great songs for backup singers. DB rocks it on guitar.

12. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) (1980, TH)

Another great song from Remain in Light. As with the previous song, the audience is emphatically into it and grateful. I judge from people's responses that they share my delight that these amazing songs are being played live again. The many live recordings of these songs, bootleg and otherwise, from the early 1980's are so tantalizing because Talking Heads were the best band in the world at the time and these songs beg to be played live. Finally!

13. Once in a Lifetime (1980, TH)

At this point I'm beside myself with joy. DB has played this song live before, most recently on his 2004 tour, but this band came ready to play songs from Remain in Light in all their funked-up glory and they do.

14. Life during Wartime (1979, TH)

One great song after another. I made a note to myself which I will have to clarify when I see the show again tomorrow night. I think there was an interesting electronic buzz-like sound on the fourth beat during the choruses. Whatever the case, it was good to hear a song from Fear of Music, which has been nelgected for over an hour. And what about More Songs about Buildings and Food? This was the point in the concert where I started to run through the many, many songs still not played that might be played. Anyone who attends a concert by someone whose career spans more than a decade enjoys doing this in the last third of a show. You know what I'm talking about.

15. I Feel My Stuff (2008, DB & BE)

I have yet to work out a reading of this troubling song from the new album. The opening verses of this song are the only time tonight when DB resorts to the higher vocal register heard on the album. Despite that, the live performance communicates the anxiety of the recording and then some.

--------------
Encore no. 1

16. Take Me to the River (1978, TH)

This is the only song of the night from More Songs. The backup singers got down low at one point, both vocally and physically. Why neglect this great album? Maybe because it's the Talking Heads/Eno album that emphasizes their art-school days over their funked-up sound. Just a guess. Favouring Remain in Light over More Songs gives one impression about DB's early years; programming the concert the other way would create another. And also, it is an Al Green song. Hmm.

17. The Great Curve (1980, TH)

Wow. A fifth song from Remain in Light. This is too good to be true. There are still three songs left on the album, but they probably would not work at this frenetic point in the concert. Paul Frazier's bass is more up front than was Tina's on the album. DB's guitar is loud and screeching. This is an ecstatic performance in the way that only funk and religion can produce, i.e. 'Of the nature of trance, catalepsy, mystical absorption, stupor, or frenzy'. (OED)

--------------
Encore no. 2

18. Air (1979, TH)

'Hit me in the face!' Another great song from Fear of Music. This song soared, particularly at the choruses when he draws out the word 'Air'. The guitar playing is tight and percussive [is that the word I want?], and then DB nails the solo as on the album.

19.Burning Down the House (1983, TH)

The lights were not down long, but the band now appears with white ballet tutus. Menacing, angry sounds are heard. I have no idea what song the band is heading into. My first thought was 'Swamp', so I was not totally off. Mid-song, about thirty young dancers in tutus joined the band onstage and everyone formed a kickline. Why? Presumably because this was Radio City, home of the Rockettes. That probably sounds silly, but everyone enjoyed it, including me. As great as the performance of the song was, I remember the dancers more. It was quite a sight.

--------------
Encore no. 3

20. Everything That Happens (2008, DB & BE)

The title track from the new album and a fitting finale. The song sounds beautiful and, again, DB sings it better live than on the record, with a lot more confidence and more emotional commitment. This is a song you have to sing like you mean it:

'I ride on a perfect freeway,
Many people on that road.
I heard the sound of someone laughing.
I saw my neighbors car explode.
Just up ahead,
Against the sky,
Quicker than you blink your eye.

Like 'My Big Nurse', the song acknowledges suffering and loss and then reminds us that there is more to this strange life:

'Oh my brother, I still wonder, are you alright?
And among the living, we are giving, all through the night.

[...]

Everything that happens will happen today,
And nothing has changed, but nothing’s the same.'

--------------

The concert's choreography was unlike anything I have seen at a concert of popular music. It was athletic and modern, for one thing. When I think of concerts where dancers interact with the band, I think of unfortunate clips I have seen on cable television of Janet Jackson or Britney Spears. That kind of pop-music dancing tends to be brain-dead, as if all anyone could think to do was re-enact the literal content of the lyrics. Here, the choreography was chasing ideas, not words. They were trying to embody the spirit of the songs in the present. There were a couple of clever moments where the moves mimicked the past, as when everyone on stage did that running-in-place motion seen in Stop Making Sense. Other than those few moments, this was a fresh reading of the music in dance form.

What a great concert. I can't wait to see it again tomorrow night.

if only

I'm reading yet another Jean-Michel Basquiat catalogue, as I usually am, a little bit each day. The one I'm working on right now is a stand-out volume that everyone who cares about Basquiat or the early 1980's must have. It's Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981: The Studio of the Street, edited by Jeffrey Deitch, Franklin Sirmans, and Nicola Vassell. What makes it special is that has substantial interviews from 2006 with Basquiat's old running mates: Glenn O'Brien, Fab 5 Freddy, and so on, even Suzanne Mallouk. Their recollections, particularly about the importance of music to JMB, are full of insights not found in other sources.

Just now I came across a tantalizing tidbit that I have to share. It's from Deitch's interview with Arto Lindsay.

Lindsay: There's another story which is pretty wild: You know the painting Famous Negro Athletes? He [JMB] tried to form a band, Famous Negro Athletes, which was going to be him, David Byrne and myself.

Deitch: Amazing!

Lindsay: We actually had a rehearsal, but it was just too cocaine-addled to get anywhere. I mean, we had the one rehearsal and all got so messed up that it was really difficult to communicate once we actually tried to play. That would have been a wild band...

Deitch: Great name for a band.

Lindsay: Yeah, great name for a band, and to not have all black guys in it was pretty brilliant.

Deitch: So that's something fresh. I never heard that before.

Lindsay: Well, I don't think anybody would remember that except for David, myself, and the person that lent Jean-Michel the loft where we rehearsed, or at least tried to rehearse.

I almost wish I had not read that. My two favourite cultural figures tried to form a band and no one recorded it?! I don't care how coked up they were; I want to hear that!

Here is a strange coincidence: I also read today for the first time of the Beatles' unreleased experiment of 1967, 'Carnival of Light', in the Guardian/Observer. At least that survives. We may actually get to hear it one day.

I'm assuming that the lost Byrne-Basquiat session occurred c. 1980-1981, the period of Remain in Light and Eno & Byrne. Basquiat pretty much stopped making music after that and concentrated on painting. But what if things had gone differently? What if they had tried again? What if Basquiat had survived the 80's and taken up music again and done an album with Byrne at some later date? True, it would not have been part of that brilliant, irreplaceable moment at the start of the 80's, but it would still have been something special.

That's the stupid, useless thing about dying young: the work that never gets made. What would Basquiat have painted, Keats have written, MLK and RFK have achieved? All we can do is be glad we're still here, redouble our efforts to do something ourselves, and, about the things that never were, ask, heart-breakingly, what if?

still true

Longtime readers of my blog may recall that I have in the past requested, of no one in particular, that Sounds from True Stories, David Byrne's only album never released on cd, be reissued. (This is the motion picture score, as opposed to Talking Heads' True Stories album.) Last night I asked the man himself.

The occasion was a screening of True Stories (1986) as part of a film series at BAM called 'The Cinematography of Ed Lachman'. Lachman and Byrne appeared in person and spoke with the audience for about forty minutes. They said quite a lot that will be of interest to fans of the film.

Byrne brought several books of photography with him and held up some of the images for the audience to see. The photographers whose work he identified as the film's visual sources were William Eggleston (whose photos appear in the True Stories book), Chauncey Hare, Stephen Shore (Uncommon Places), Joel Sternfeld, Lewis Baltz, and Larry Fink. As in Byrne's own photographs of corporate signs and office settings, what fascinated him were the images of mundane places and suburban developments, not to mock them but to marvel at them.

He also said that the film originally ended with the death and funeral of the Cute Woman but that this proved to be a downer of an ending. It sounds to me like a special edition dvd is in order.

Screenplay-wise, seeing the film for the first time since its original release, I found myself recalling another 80's film which, while probably not an influence on Byrne at the time, was constructed from similar written sources: Pedro Almodóvar's Laberinto de pasiones (1982). Like True Stories, Almodóvar's screenplay, with its tales of artificial insemination, nymphomania, and the former royal family of Iran, was constructed in large part from the tabloid press.

Lachman talked a lot about the framing of the film and how he tried to photograph it the way an amateur or a resident of the town of Virgil, Texas would. Before the screening and before Byrne's arrival, Lachman also said, rightly I think, that Byrne was way ahead of the curve in articulating how the shopping mall had replaced the village green as the gathering place for the social life of many towns.

Hearing the songs, I was struck by another early insight of Byrne's. Last year, while blogging about the Carnegie Hall performance of his song cycle about Imelda Marcos, I praised his new song about martial law in the Philippines, 'Order 1081'. It takes a person of great sympathetic imagination to be able to depict in song people's welcoming of martial law (unless, of course, one is a fascist, but that would be a different kind of song altogether). When John Goodman sang 'People Like Us' in the movie, I was struck, not necessarily by a new revelation about the song, but by a connection between the Marcos-themed song about martial law and the lyrics of 'People Like Us':

'We don't want freedom.
We don't want justice.
We just want someone to love,
Someone to love.'

As early as 'People Like Us' in 1986, Byrne had written a song that tried to reckon with people's apparent preference for emotional security over abstractions like rights and freedoms. This is a valuable insight for those of us who care about human rights and wonder why we often seem so few in number.

Getting back to what I asked during the Q&A, I posed two questions. The first was why he had not made more fictional films. He replied that he had pitched other ideas but that Hollywood had shrugged at them and asked him instead for True Stories 2. My second question was about the missing album. His answer: that the album is tied up at Warner and would require all kinds of permissions to be obtained and whatnot. Someone in the audience (not me) shouted, 'Start a petition!' but Byrne did not seem too interested in the prospect of reissuing the album.

That's too bad. I have the album on cassette, and parts of it are as clear an intellectual and æsthetic statement, in musical form, of Byrne's ideas in the mid-80's as anything else he did at the time. Hopefully this will not be the last word on Sounds from True Stories.

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.]

wish granted

In my entry for February 3, 2007, I publicly asked David Byrne to issue his 1985 album Music for the Knee Plays on cd. I don't know him personally and I doubt he reads my blog, but, nevertheless, according to his blog, the album will be re-issued this coming October with bonus material. That is excellent news.

Coincidence or not, I am going to try this trick one more time: hey, David, would you also reissue your only other album never released on cd, Sounds from True Stories (1986)? (If not, could you make me an mp3 disc with the songs? Lauren P. has my address. I would be very grateful.)

It never hurts to ask.

David Byrne, day three: and she was

On Saturday, for the third of his four concerts at Carnegie Hall, David Byrne performed his new song cycle Here Lies Love. The subject: the life of Imelda Marcos.

Because I have the pleasure of teaching at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, I get to force the next generation of actors and filmmakers to listen to my fortune-cookie wisdom about the arts. One thing I tell them is that everyone has crazy, fantastic ideas, but only a few people heed those bizarre visitations and trust them enough to try to make something out of them. Those are the people we call the artists. A pop song cycle on Imelda Marcos surely sounds like a crazy idea, impossible even. Yet there is now such a work in existence and I hope it will soon be available for purchase because it was indeed impossible, and I mean that in the best sense possible.

I have long admired the way David Byrne effaces the separation between the earnest and the ironic. When he treats material easily ridiculed by less interesting minds—like, say, Microsoft PowerPoint or sesquicentennial Texans—he invariably does so from a position of genuine, non-condescending fascination while still retaining an awareness that, yes, these things are ridiculous, but...

With age, his songwriting interests have grown from quirky recitals of fact and paranoia on early Talking Heads albums to the moving and sweet emotional depth found throughout his later solo work. And as long as I'm making comparisons, why miss an opportunity to quote from 'Animals', a classic Byrne composition from Fear of Music (1979)?

'I'm mad
And that's a fact.
I found out
Animals don't help.
Animals think
They're pretty smart.
Shit on the ground,
See in the dark.'

[...]

'They say they don't need money.
They're living on nuts and berries.
They say animals don't worry.
You know animals are hairy?'

Oh yeah. They definitely don't write songs like that anymore.

As for the Imelda cycle, the closest thing to it is Sofia Coppola's recent film Marie Antoinette. The film depicts not the cake-eating, head-losing queen of French nightmare but a young woman dealing with sexual and romantic complication in a foreign setting. Likewise, Byrne presents Imelda, lover of beauty and glamour, through her relationships to the servant who raised her and the men who loved and left her. (The lovely-voiced Joan Almedilla and Ganda Suthivarakom sang the roles of Imelda and Estrella, respectively.) Here, too, the signature fact that dominates the public imagination—in Imelda's case, the thousands of pairs of shoes—is nowhere mentioned. Its conspicuous absence signifies other narrative and affective interests.

Surely some out there are sniffing this out as a sterile exercise in humanizing dictators. I, for one, appreciate any attempt to capture the complexity and surprise that we sometimes find outside our usual zone of judgment. Yes, let's bring down all the dictators and tyrants. But surely that does not mean that we can't stop for a moment and enjoy the weirdness of life. Saturday night at Carnegie Hall was the time and the place to do just that.

I'm going to limit myself to a single song, not simply because it's hard to write about twenty unrecorded songs performed once, but also because I hope to have the chance to revisit this material in greater depth when an album eventually comes out. Nevertheless, one song stood out beyond all the rest. Indeed, this one song 'Order 1081', about the imposition of martial law in the Philippines, may belong in the highest rank of art, i.e. the impossible.

Before getting to the unlikelihood of a pop song about martial law that is anything other than obvious, it's worth reminding ourselves that David Byrne has written a number of great songs on other unlikely topics, terrorism for instance. Reader, if you don't have Talking Heads' Remain in Light album (1981), stop reading now and download it. On it you will find 'Listening Wind', a song that dares to give us the POV of a terrorist named Mojique:

'Mojique sees his village from a nearby hill.
Mojique thinks of days before Americans came.
He sees the foreigners in growing numbers.
He sees the foreigners in fancy houses.
He thinks of days that he can still remember...now.

'Mojique holds a package in his quivering hands.
Mojique sends the package to the American man.
Softly he glides along the streets and alleys.
Up comes the wind that makes them run for cover.
He feels the time is surely now or never...more.'

'Order 1081' does not give us the dictator's POV on martial law, nor is it sung by a dissident. Instead, Byrne has made the boldest choice of all: it is sung by Estrella, Imelda's childhood servant, and she sings it from the position of gratitude for the order that martial law brings. (I previously wrote about the appeal that order holds for the fearful on January 2, 2007.) This song broke my heart because it bore witness to the truth that many people, if not most, welcome martial law when it comes. The song was accompanied by eight classical strings and seven brass and woodwinds beautifully demonstrating the bliss that people feel from knowing that the troublemakers are being suppressed and order maintained.

I imperfectly scribbled what I could of the lyrics:

'Got to stop all this confusion.
[failed to transcribe this line]
And the way to make it happen
Is Order 1-0-8-1.'

[... ]

'Now it's safe to walk the streets at night
[failed to transcribe this line]
Everyone is sleeping soundly
Thanks to Order 1-0-8-1.'

The song is not sarcastic in the least, nor is it sung with any ironic winking. We live in an age of fear, when torture and amplified executive powers and the suspension of the rule of law somehow seem attractive to many and have entered public discourse on a basis other than shame. We need to accept that many of our fellow human beings are prepared to sacrifice law—and us—in order to allay their fears and sleep more easily at night. Where 'Listening Wind' asked us to identify, this songs asks us to come to grips with the mentality of so many among us. Somehow, the song was depressing and beautiful at the same time, and the intentions and method behind it were absolutely brilliant. It was, in short, an impossible artistic achievement.