โDavid Byrne, all neurasthenic nettles pointing inward. He looked like someone whoโd just ODโd on Dramadine โ all cold sweat clammy and nerve net exoskeletonโฆ just looked like some nut just holidayed from the ward with a fresh pocket of Thorazine, thatโs all. There was something gentle, shy, reflective and giving about his hideous old psychosocial gangrene.โ
Thatโs Lester Bangs, in full flow, recalling the first time he saw Talking Heads live, around 1976, in a rambling, sometimes flashing essay written in 1979 as a review of the Fear Of Music album, but only published for the first time now, as accompaniment to this superbly conceived DVD.
MC Taylor, a songwriter and a student of folklore, is not a declamatory man. His songs are compressed and poetic, with nary a syllable out of place. You will hear echoes of familiar things โ a bit of Van Morrisonโs mystical warmth, or John Martynโs angst, and the language will be unfussy, and derived from the folk tradition.
It would be nice โ and indeed, itโs sometimes professionally expedient โ to pretend that we all work in splendid isolation, following our own idiosyncratic paths in directions that no other journalists travel.