Thoughts on David Byrne

The Talking Heads and David Byrne have been getting a lot of media attention lately, inspiring me to listen to all my recordings and to recap my own recollections of the band and band leader. I first heard of the Talking Heads when I was living in Denver. Saturday nights on KGNU Boulder there was a series on the history of punk rock and new wave music. There I learned about Pere Ubu, Devo, the Ramones, and Talking Heads. There was also a record store I went to, Wax Trax, where you could listen to and buy singles by various new wave type artists. 

The Talking Heads evolved into incorporating a funky world music sound, influenced by Brian Eno.  It was when I saw the MTV video of Once in a Lifetime that I was first impressed by the band. Over the years I bought LPs Fear of Music, Little Creatures and at some point bought a bootleg of a live 1977 performance, In the mid-nineties I went to a party and Stop Making Sense was playing on the tv, I guess from a DVD. If the party got dull you could walk into the Talking Heads Room and then gravitate back to the kitchen for beer and potato chips. 

My next exposure to David Byrne was in 2008 when I saw the exhibit Playing the Building in New York. I bought a poster then but I can't find it. It was sort of fun. There was a piano and everyone, including myself, got to play a few notes. After Covid, I saw American Utopia on Broadway and it was a great show. 

I also bought the cd's Rei Momo and I found Feelings in a bargain bin somewhere. I also recently discovered in my collection a home made CD of Grown Backwards that I probably got as a gift. Not bad. One Christmas I got the Here Lies Love box set. It came with two cd's, one DVD and a book. It featured Florence (without the Machine), Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper and lots of others. Now Here Lies Love is on Broadway. This project has always been a mystery to me. I don't care for the songs, except for the title number, and I never understood why anyone would care about Imelda Marcos. Old news.

I suppose the Latin influenced Rei Mono is my favorite David Byrne credited record. I also got the soundtrack of Stop Making Sense. Okay but the songs sound a lot like the studio recordings. At some point I acquired a Tom Tom Club record. The Tom Tom Club was hip for a brief period. 

Now the critics are raving about the re mastering of the Stop Making Sense movie. It might be fun to see it in a theatre but I'm too lazy to go the places where it is showing. He was on Colbert recently and taught the tv host how to dance. For an autistic guy he seems to have developed his public social skills. He didn't mention the Stop Making Sence movie. Yesterday I turned on the tv and there was the entire Talking Heads also on Colbert. They didn't play although they were coerced to attempt it. Maybe it was because they haven't played together in eons and didn't want to embarrass themselves. Instead, they plugged the Stop Making Sense movie. Yesterday I noticed he plays the doctor in season two of Amy Schumer's Hulu show.  

I almost forgot the book.  Talking Heads by David Gans is a nice history and discography of the band as of 1985. You can get it used on Amazon. I probably bought it in a used bookstore. So those are my thoughts on David Byrne.

Dress codes

 

After the recent story on the dress code in the Senate. John Fetterman is again in the news. You may remember when I predicted he would eventually become our president. I am starting to see him as more as the eccentric in the Senate rather than presidential timber. I can remember saying Gary Hart was presidential timber back in the day. 

Perhaps the Senate is not yet ready for hoodies  after all. Reminds me of when they instituted a dress code at the government office I worked in. For years people came to work in jeans, boat pants, halter dresses and the like. Then when a Republican entered the governorship, we were given a dress code. no more halters, blood stained chinos, flip flops, or beach ware. We were to dress in business attire. The first week I noticed that the women wore old dresses they must have borrowed from their grandmothers. After a few weeks, people started to buy new clothes in keeping with the spirit of things. We were allowed to revert to our old ways on "casual Fridays". The joke was that "casual Fridays" had never existed before the dress code. 

Spaghetti models

 

We have a new hurricane watch this week with Hurricane Lee. I was reading about the storm and kept coming across the word spaghetti model. Apparently, the lines that trace the storm resemble strands of spaghetti. I'm looking for tornados to be tracked with ravioli models and perhaps typhoons could be tracked with macaroni models. 

Editor's note: With the writer's strike still ongoing, I will attempt to include jokes in future blogs as a means to ameliorate the lack of new humor on tv. 

Not when I was a kid

 

Yesterday, I noticed the school buses in my town were emptying out after 1 PM. I guess the schools closed early because of the hot weather. This led me to a trip down memory lane of those happy days of my childhood.

Did my school dismiss kids early because of heat?

No.

Did my school have air conditioning?

For the most part no.

Did my mother drive me to school because it was too hot?

No.

Did my mother drive me to school because it was too cold?

No.

Did my mother drive me to the school bus because it was raining?

No. 

Did my mother drive me to the library?

No.

After I was twelve I had to take the bus to the dentist. 

Why in my day......

I hope I'm not becoming a curmudgeon.

Should a man open the car door for a woman

 

Recently I read on the Internet that a man who is about to transport a woman in his car has the obligation of getting out of the car, walking to the passenger side, opening the door, helping the woman with her bags and negotiating her into the car seat. This was a surprise to me. I have always believed  that the gallant man pushes the button on the car, thus unlocking the passenger door. Then the lady has to negotiate her way into the vehicle. This way the man affirms his belief in the equality of the sexes. 

U by the Incredible String Band

 U is an album I bought in 1970 when some college friends were huge fans of the Incredible String Band and I got caught up in the fun. It has laid around in my record collection for eons, for thirty years never played. As part of my "rediscovering my albums" phase I recently listened to it from start to finish. Surprisingly I like it. It is a bit amateurish and some of the songs go on too long, but I find playing the album makes for a nice backround to reading or cleaning the floor. It has an eclectic blend of music, some of it influenced by Irish string bands. For some reason it can be listened to in its entirety on You Tube. One of the bad things about boomers is that they have enough old stuff that they don't really need to listen to the new stuff that is out today. 

Editor's note: I talk about the Incredible String Band in my post on WBAI. 

Being a hiking curmudgeon

 I am lucky to have some nice parks nearby. Not just parks with swings and baseball diamonds but parks with wilderness trails. I can walk on the macadam trails but I prefer the wooded areas. They are more scenic, I get to see deer and chipmunks and I get to avoid listening to babies cry, fathers yellling at their sons and ladies complaining about their boyfriends and bosses. 

The problem, at least in the summer, is that gnats follow me on the trail, and they are worse in the more rustic parts of the park. I read that they are attracted to baseball hats. I took off my baseball cap but soon discovered that they will come around my eyes if I'm hatless. Today I tried putting a permethrin spray on my hat. It didn't seem to help much. Going back to the Internet I found that the combination of a large hat and sunglasses may do the trick. I'll try that next.