this website." data-portal-copyright="From this website." />
(Adapted from this post on another website.)
Here’s your link for the movie! It’s from a Strange Site, but most internet security experts consider it pretty safe (for streaming; I wouldn’t try downloading). It has no commercials, so no sync issues! Sync issues are a pain on Movie Nights! Start the show at 7:30! (This Strange Site doesn’t start automatically, so cue it up first, and click the start click at 7:30.)
I grew up in a home where, increasingly, any/all rock music post-Beatles was characterized
as Satanic. Backbeats were Satan’s lulling rhythm; the way the Prince of Darkness got his claws into your soul. I dunno, some of it sounded pretty neat to me.
So, at one point in the 1980s, I dared going to the library’s Rock section of their record collection. And I grabbed the album with the most religious or sacrilegious title I could find, Speaking in Tongues. (The title refers to a non-coherent vocalization which, some believers feel, allows them to directly channel the Holy Spirit.) I figured it would actually be a good, Christian rock album, or the worst Satanic music I’d ever experience, and I was curious either way.
I put the record on the library’s record player, with headphones, and awaited the ominously-titled opening track, “Burning Down the House.” Which… was confusing. It didn’t seem to be about speaking in tongues, or burning down a house, either. Just some kinda oddball funk with some really nasally-sounding vocals.
The band, of course, was Talking Heads, the first band I “discovered” by myself (if ten years after they’d started playing). I’ve liked more bands better, since, but the Heads will always be special to me. They were my gateway to liking whatever music I wanted to like.
Chris Frantz and David Byrne met as students at RISD, and formed a band they called, variably, The Artistics or The Autistics. Eventually fellow student (and Frantz’s future wife) Tina Weymouth joined because the band couldn’t find a bass player they got along with; so Weymouth taught herself the bass. They renamed themselves the Talking Heads (after people you saw on political discussion shows) and moved to New York in 1975. Former Modern Lovers keyboard/guitar player Jerry Harrison joined the band in 1977, and played on that year’s debut album.
This movie was directed by Jonathan Demme, who had made the fine film Melvin & Howard and would later do the very musically-driven Something Wild. David Byrne designed most of the set decor. The film was shot over three nights in Los Angeles in December of 1983. (The footage from one night was useless; the filmmakers had lit the audience to capture their reactions, and having lights pointed in their faces killed the audience’s enthusiasm for the show.)
As the movie progresses along, we meet the Heads’ incredible touring band; percussionist Steve Scales, guitarist Alex Weir, lovely, energetic singer/dancers Lynn Mabry & Edna Holt, and then Bernie Worrell, who at times seems beamed in from his own planet. (Well, he DID play with P-Funk, and they sometimes hailed from the Mothership.)
It’s an amazing filmed record of a band having a great time together, working at the peak of their powers. Or, it was in December of 1983.
In February, Byrne would walk off the stage during a show in New Zealand; the Heads would never put on a concert again. (They’d make three more albums of varying quality, but they never went on another tour together, and they fought for years over who had writing credits on the music.)
So why do they look so happy here? Well, even couples who’re about to break up can still have some good times together. Until they don’t.
The songs are (mostly) from the Heads’s first four albums, and the one they’re touring behind here, Speaking in Tongues, was the weakest of the four. There’s two songs which really aren’t very good. I will tell you when we get to them so you can go use the restroom / eat a sandwich / smoke a doobie.
The rest of the songs range from pretty good to actually great. The cinematography’s by Jordan Cronenweth, who was cinematographer on Blade Runner. The excellent editing’s by Lisa Day.
And no, it doesn’t have my very favorite Heads song. My favorite’s a song which wasn’t working at all in the studio until Jerry Harrison just slowed it down and made it kind of a country number.
I remember one time, on a plane flight decades ago, looking down at somewhere in the Midwest, and thinking of the lines from the song: about seeing the baseball diamonds, the houses and the schools and restaurants. The song’s about how that kind of low-key life seems appealing, but living among the squares is not; “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.”
Yet what I always responded to was the line “I’m tired of traveling; I want to be somewhere.” I had tried living in several places, none had worked out. (Largely because of my own problems.)
Well, now I am somewhere, and it’s where Mrs. James is, and my friends are, and it’s a wonderful place to me. Even if our current goons in charge want it razed to the ground. I still love the Heads, but the lesson they taught me was not to want to be a hipster like David Byrne; to want to be somewhere in squaresville, like Minnesota, instead. And I’m grateful for it.
Oh, and apparently Matt Chapman of the Giants uses “Burning Down The House” as his walk-up song. So this is officially a Baseball Movie! It’s still not the best walk-up song; that goes to Nick Punto using Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight,” because Phil Collins is PERFECT for Nick Punto. But we’ll allow it, nonetheless.
Here’s your link again for the movie! Start the show at 7:30! (This Strange Site doesn’t start automatically, so cue it up first, and click the start click at 7:30.)
Here’s the upcoming schedule:
March 13: 42 (2013)
I wanna make sure we get this one in, because we started with The Jackie Robinson Story. I might be outta town March 20. Free on a Strange Site.
March 20: Field of Dreams (1989)
So, if I’m outta town, I can trust all y’all to behave nicely to each other during this one, right? You’re all nice people. Most of ya. Free on the Strange Site.
No more time for suggestions this year… but, who knows, maybe we’ll give it a go next year, too? In any case, show starts at 7:30!
