One Talking Head

David Byrne
Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno
Fox Theatre
St. Louis, MO
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
Section VIP3, Row L, Seat 107
$75

David Byrne came on stage to a standing ovation. Instead of starting with a song, he talked to us first. Hello, did any of you go to Obama's speech today? was the start of the concert. I yelled yeah and applauded even more. I saw quite a few people with Obama t-shirts and pins in the audience, so I knew I wasn't alone.

I first saw David Byrne live a couple years ago, and I enjoyed that concert a lot. I'm actually a bigger fan now. I went to that earlier Byrne show because Roy wanted to go. I liked the songs I knew from the Talking Heads, but I was only familiar with the songs I'd heard on the radio. I didn't start listening to current rock until after their heyday in the 80s, and I never went back into their catalog to discover them, like I had with so many other bands.

All that changed when Byrne played I Zimbra, from the Talking Heads' Fear of Music album. It was my first time hearing the song, and it immediately reminded me of King Crimson's Thela Hun Ginjeet. I know Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew each played with the Talking Heads prior to the 80s lineup of King Crimson. This is what led me to dig into Roy's Talking Heads albums, to listen for the influences and cross-pollination of sounds from this band to my beloved Discipline-era King Crimson. Fripp played on the studio version of I Zimbra, and Adrian Belew played on their next album and tour for Remain in Light. It makes me wonder who brought what to the table.

When we got to our seats, we started chatting with another fan sitting next to Roy. He was younger than me, and it seemed like he was the only fan in the group of three people he was with. Seemed excited to be talking music with us. We discovered we were all King Crimson fans, so we talked about them.

The last time we saw Byrne was at the Sheldon Theater, a small venue that's known for good sound and good sitelines. Every seat offers a good view, even for short people like me. This show was at the Fox, which is a really nice place. I've always been worried about sitting in the orchestra section on the floor there though. The floor isn't sloped enough, so I'm worried about how blocked my view of the stage will be. I used to always get tickets in the balcony, with its tiered rows. But last year, I got free tickets to Avenue Q; the seats were far back in the orchestra section and I could see fine. And we had such luck getting tickets for Return to Forever up close in the orchestra pit. When tickets went on sale for Byrne, I thought we should try for the floor and get the closest seats we could.

I'm heading back to the balcony next time. We bought tickets as part of the presale, and we ended up in Row L, about 17 rows back. Freakishly tall people sat in front of me. I could see part of the stage looking in between the heads and shoulders of the people in front of me. But they were like lovebirds, constantly leaning towards each other to whisper or do other stuff and block my limited view. Roy suggested I switch seats with him. Right then, the guy in front of me turned away from his girlfriend and turned to the guy to his right to whisper something, and started blocking my new view. I can't win.

After David Byrne took the stage and asked us about attending the Obama speech, he and his band started with a song from his new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. This is an album he did with Brian Eno, another musician with a big connection to Robert Fripp. This whole tour was called Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno, focusing on the albums they did together and the first few Talking Heads albums which Eno produced. That's the making of a good setlist. Byrne also did something smart - making his new album available streaming on his website, so people would at least be familiar with all the new music.

The show was also very interesting visually. I remembered that the last time we saw Byrne, he and all his backing musicians wore brown and it kinda reminded me of UPS drivers' uniforms. This time, they were all wearing white. He had a large band with him, Byrne sang and played guitar, and he had a keyboard player, bassist, drummer, percussionist, and three backing vocalists, one of whom also played guitar. He also had three dancers with him. It wasn't like the dancing singer and the backup dancers that you'd see at pop concerts, but they were integrated into the stage performance. The dancers first came out during I Zimbra, and I think they added to the energy of the song. Sometimes, the oddity of seeing them on stage, and even David Byrne joining in with them for a few steps, gave the concert a sense of whimsy. It added to the fun of the show and took nothing away from the music. They must have done a lot of rehearsals, because it looked so natural. Of course I want to dance to this music. The only unfortunate thing is, with all this fun stuff going on on-stage, it was really distracting to have these people's heads in my way.

I'm cheating with the setlist here. I'm writing this up a month after the concert and reading a setlist from a review on the Riverfront Times webpage. After I Zimbra, Byrne played One Fine Day, another song from the new album. He dedicated it to November 4, election day, and that was the last political comment he made.

The complete setlist was:
Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody
Houses in Motion
My Big Nurse
My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)
Heaven
Never Thought
The River
Crosseyed and Painless
Life Is Long
Once in A Lifetime
Life During Wartime
I Feel My Stuff

Encore One:
Take Me to the River
The Great Curve

Encore Two:
Air
Burning Down the House
Everything That Happens

At some point in the middle of the show, the freakishly tall people in front of me all got up and left, probably to get a drink. They were gone for 4 or 5 songs. Some people in the audience stood up for Heaven, which gave it a bigger reaction than I thought it would. I'm not sure I liked the dancers on Life Is Long. They brought out rolling desk chairs and moved around on those. The song was a slow one and the movements seemed forced.

The people in front of me returned just as Once in a Lifetime started. Here, the whole audience reacted. Everyone on the floor stood up and we all danced along. We stood for the rest of the show. I wonder why it's acceptable to dance to this music, but people never want to join in dancing to Yes or King Crimson. They all move me, and it was fun to be a part of it here. I have no idea what was happening on stage at this point, but after a while, Roy pulled me over to his other side. The people further down on our row must have left and when we moved over, I could actually see between the standing bodies to get a view of the stage. I don't think the bad views would have frustrated me so much if I hadn't also been tired from such a long day. We left home for the Obama rally at 8 that morning, and while I did get to take a little nap in between the events, it was a very full day.

One song on the setlist was a surprise. Burning Down the House was one of the few Talking Heads songs I had been familiar with since I started watching MTV as a teenager and I always liked it. It wasn't from the Byrne/Eno oeuvre and I hadn't seen it listed in the setlists I'd seen for this tour. I don't think he did it the other time we saw him either. It was nice to see performed. The final song was another new, slower song Everything That Happens, which brought an end to the frenetic feeling in the audience. It kinda quieted us down.

I am so glad I went to this show. I was just exhausted when it was over, the results of a couple very full days. There was a Jackson Browne concert at the Fox the next night. Roy and I were both glad we hadn't decided to go to that one, to get a day of rest and recovery before the work week started again. Both times I've seen Byrne, I've been very impressed.