Thursday, 10 Apr 2008
I do not have the accompanying DVD set of this performance, but the recent purchase of Live from Austin, Texas on CD brought David Byrne back into my life. For a time, especially around the release of Grown Backwards, he pretty much monopolized my listening for months on end. His online journal is a must read, and I’ve often thought about writing him a letter but couldn’t come up with anything better to say other than “Thank You.”
Getting back to the album itself, it comprises 13 tracks culled from his 2001 performance on the televised version of Austin City Limits. Favorites? I’ve got a lot of them, but I’ve always been a sucker for “This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody)”, and was thrilled when Arcade Fire started covering it. When people ask the inevitable favorite song of all time question, that song always finds its way into my answer. Below, I’ve got the first track from the performance, “(Nothing But) Flowers.”
What’s your favorite David Byrne album? How about favorite Talking Heads record?
Myspace: David Byrne
MP3: David Byrne – “(Nothing But) Flowers”
Find MP3′s at The Hype Machine or buy stuff from Strictly Discs | eMusic
April 10th, 2008 at 8:43 am
My favorite David Byrne album has to be Look Into the Eyeball. I saw him on that tour and it was one of the best shows I have ever seen. He played a ton of his Talking Heads material too, and I have to say I didn’t miss the rest of the band. All I could think of at the time is that I was seeing him play such an intimate venue with this iconic material and I was about 10 feet away for the whole thing. He also had members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra backing him up.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Great topic Ryan….
For awhile my favorite solo album was “Feelings”…I was in love with “Miss America”. But “Look Into The Eyeball” is an absolute masterpiece.
It’s tough to pick a Heads CD as a favorite since they’re all so good for very different reasons. I still love watching “Stop Making Sense”…
April 10th, 2008 at 10:28 am
My favorite Talking Heads album would have to be ‘Talking Heads: 77′ – I don’t know who I got it from, but I got my hands on the CD my freshman year of college. It was my introduction to the band, other than hearing “Burning Down the House” on the radio. I remember many nights listening to that album while “studying” calculus in my dorm. I didn’t do very well in calc but I did come away with an abiding love for this band.
I’ve only got one David Byrne album – ‘Look Into The Eyeball’. I actually picked this up since there was a version of “Like Humans Do” on my parents’ old computer, and I really liked that song. It was actually after I bought this that I learned that Byrne had been the lead singer of the Talking Heads. Yeah, I wasn’t the smartest back then.