The 1981 Listening Post - David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel

 David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel

#751

By Paul Zickler

David Byrne

Songs From The Catherine Wheel

Genre: Soundtrack Artifact

Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Paul’s Rating: 3.75 our of 5

Highlights: 

His Wife Refused

My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)

Eggs in a Briar Patch

What a Day That Was

Review:

“The Catherine Wheel” was a collaboration between David Byrne and choreographer Twyla Tharp. It debuted at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York in September of 1981 and was performed a total of 12 times as part of Tharp’s season of Broadway dance productions. Also included were shows featuring the music of Bruce Springsteen, Supertramp, and the Beach Boys. One of the pieces from the original Byrne ballet -- titled “The Golden Section” (after the gold-colored costumes of the dancers) -- was later performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. “The Catherine Wheel” was well reviewed: The New Yorker mentioned “dancing of astonishing beauty and power,” and the New York Times remarked, “the choreography is Miss Tharp at her best.”

So then there’s this album. I mean, can you call it that? Isn’t it just some songs given to a choreographer by the lead singer of a pop group? You might think so, if you knew nothing about Talking Heads, nothing about David Byrne, and even more crucially, nothing about Brian Eno.

Yeah, did I mention Eno produced this? I mean, it was 1981 and it was David Byrne, so it probably goes without saying. But just to confirm, here are the musician credits for a couple of the tracks:

Eggs In A Briar Patch

Bass, Vibraphone [Vibes] – Brian Eno

Drum [Gung Gong] – John Chernoff

Guitar [Floating Guitars] – Adrian Belew

Keyboards – Jerry Harrison

Performer [Horses] – David Byrne

Cloud Chamber

       Drum [Large Drum] -- Jerry Harrison

       Percussion [Kitchen Metals] -- David Byrne

       Performer [Water Pot] -- Twyla Tharp

So is it a forgotten Talking Heads masterpiece, or is it My Life In The Bush of Ghosts Part 2? Sadly, it’s neither. There’s clearly the African polyrhythmic influence that animated Remain in Light, here more explicitly attributed to John Miller Chernoff, who goes from being a huge influence to an actual collaborator -- Chernoff plays congas on a couple of tracks and even gets a writing credit for “Big Business.” There are definitely some Bush of Ghosts-style experimental pieces, including “Briar Patch” with its eerie/silly spoken voice sample (“Unsaved people don’t have any means of deliverance. None!”). There are also some actual songs: “His Wife Refused,” “My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks),” “Poison,” “Big Blue Plymouth.” Each one feels like it would have fit somewhere in the band’s discography. In fact, “What a Day That Was” actually ended up on Stop Making Sense, albeit in a far more exciting live band version. 

Actually, listening to that song really brings out why this album isn’t more interesting. Sure, Jerry plays on some songs, Belew’s weird guitars are all over the place, and Bernie Worrell adds some funky clavinet. But no Chris and no Tina. None of the incredible manic energy of the 1980 tour. Nothing that rivals the spacey computer perfection of Remain in Light. 

It’s possible that Byrne & Eno saw this as another opportunity to mess around and make something magical. Thing is, lightning rarely ever strikes twice. I can certainly imagine this as the soundtrack to a very cool modern dance show, but am I going to put it on and listen intently the way I would to Fear of Music? Nope, not likely. Might I put it on as background music to some creative project I’m working on? Maybe. But why would I, when Bush of Ghosts exists? I’d probably go so far as to throw “His Wife Refused” and “My Big Hands” onto a Spotify playlist, but that’s about it.

Calling it an album just invites comparison with the otherworldly stuff David Byrne was responsible for during this incredibly fertile period of his life. It’s safer to just see it as an artifact of that period, an interesting project, a soundtrack. Viewed on those terms, it works just fine.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5DyoXk3EjmrhbqUv0FiFA6?si=8UIlXllKRMevgEdxBZL5gw

The 1981 Listening Post - Brian Eno and David Byrne - My Life In The Bush of Ghosts

 Brian Eno and David Byrne - My Life In The Bush of Ghosts 

#62

By Lori Alley

February 1981

Brian Eno and David Byrne

My Life In The Bush of Ghosts - 

Genre: Experimental/Avant Rock

Allen’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Lori’s Rating 5+++++

Highlights: 

Help Me Somebody

America Is Waiting

Mountain of Needles

The Jezebel Spirit

Qu’ran

  Mea Culpa 

                       Okay!  All of them are highlights!!  Don’t make me choose!!!!!

Bibs up everyone, I’m gonna slobber all over this (sorry for that image, I think this album is a timeless work of art).  I was a junior in high school when this album came out.  Let’s just say that my friends and I were obsessed enough that we routinely quoted lines from it  - “do you hear voices?”  and Jim Vallette adopted his memorable new persona  “ Jezebel.”  

I learned somewhere along the way that the definition of a classic is that it can stand the test of time.  This album does that and , I would argue, is MORE relevant to the 2020 zeitgeist than it was 40 years ago. It’s almost as if it could predict the future.   If I made a movie “2020, The Year In Review” this would be it’s soundtrack.  And nobody would be the wiser (or want to watch the movie, either).  To me it sounds as fresh as it did all those years ago.  Side note:  For fans of this album I also highly recommend The Catherine Wheel (David Byrne) which is equally addictive and came out in Sept. of that year).  

The cool thing about this album, as weird as it seems at first glance, is that you can dance to it in your garage with a bunch of drunk people.  It is at once trippy, interesting, catchy, earwormy and yet somehow still unfathomable.  That’s a particularly Eno-esque trait, I know, but I think My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is the ultimate example of his ability to do that musically.  Makes you think “hey wait, what IS this?  And yet also want to play it while you do housework.  

Not to get political, because really, enough already, but America Is Waiting.  

https://open.spotify.com/album/0uWpq6h99OaylNLXe2KPTR?si=xfE-7QbkQ7qpbeX_9x3miw

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - 2008

My first exposure to this record was through the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Or Ridiculous things said by ridiculous people in a ridiculous movie). I found the song, "Home" pleasant enough but it reminds me of Beck's "Lost Cause". Both are lovely songs with needless sound effects to distract from the simplicity that they should bathe in. You want very much to like the song, but they are both so over thought that I, at least, find myself angry at them.
Also like Sea Change this is an album of songs. If one was expecting My Life in the Bush of (even more) Ghosts, this is not it. "MY Big Nurse and "One Fine Day" sound like the guitar written compositions they started out as. Something intended for campfire guitar. You expect to see people rocking back and forth under the stars and smiling at each other while canoodling under woven ponchos.
By the third track, "I Feel My Stuff", I find myself totally comfortable with the beat boxes and samples and glicks and chirps. The songs have all been so inviting that the determined weirdness of the piano breaks amidst the shuffling grooves don't bother me as much even as it morphs into a near cacophonic semi-rap. They wash over like soft waves at low tide and the rest is blithely hypnotic.
Marrying Gospel to Experimentalism might seem dicey, but on the title track it comes off as inspiring and saddening. It's a real treat. On previous albums Byrne or Eno or both would just keep on in that direction. Once they grasp on to some motif they tend to not let go. Instead, they turn up the tempo a hair and get us back to the campfire with the horn backed "Life is Long".
Sure, Byrne and Eno can't resist some tribalism as on "Poor Boy", but that's a small price to pay for such an accessible collection.

Everything that Happens....is notable for how Eno and Byrne (Like Radiohead before them) completely embraced the internet and new delivery systems, creating flickr pages and websites that engage the fan, completely eschewing advertising and traditional deliveries. They should be applauded and heralded as leaders. The war for the new music delivery template will be fought on two fronts: Startup bands embracing Facebook and Twitter (Steel Train. fun. Etc) and granddaddies of music who can afford to take these risks. Eno, Byrne, Radiohead, these guys are self-sustaining and can afford to be mavericks and vanguards.
I only wish that people like Bruce Springsteen, who appeal to a broader demographic, would do the same thing. The day of the "label" is over. But music is thriving and as good as it ever was. Not "same". Better.

Grade: A
ASide: Home, Strange Overtones
BlindSide: My Big Nurse, I Feel My Stuff
DownSide: The River

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel

David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel - 1981

Ah, the early 80s. When we would all traipse to BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) to see Philip Glass's The Photographer. Or go to the movies to witness Koyaanisqatsi. You could see Laurie Anderson perform or bowl at the University Lanes and we all had a copy of Big Science.
For a couple years it seemed like art had won. And then it all came crashing down with, I think the advent of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". And art was sent back to where it belonged: in the poverty strewn lines of the decrepit in the East Village.
But, as I said, there was a moment.
And during that time David Byrne was a leader. Talking Heads were bridging pop with art in a way that The Cars only dreamt of. See, TH wasn't gonna sell out and make POP SONGS. They were going to do it on THEIR terms. Well, on Byrne's terms. When he and Brian Eno came out with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts it seemed like the really knew what the world needed. The world of art, that is. Lord only knows what Julie Taymor would have done when presented with the likes of Byrne. But, Twyla Tharp (long before her involvement with Bully Joel's music) jumped on the David Byrne bandwagon and commissioned him to create music for her.
The result was The Catherine Wheel.
From the very beginning couple of tracks I find myself feeling the same way I did in 1984 when I first heard it: I wish I could have seen what this looked like on stage. This music seems so singularly appropriate for dance (where My Life in the Bush of Ghosts certainly did not).
"His Wife Refused" suggests what Byrne was trying to accomplish with lesser musicians that he had been saddled with. But, now with the likes of Brian Eno, Adrian Belew and, yes, Jerry Harrison, Byrne seems like a fuller artist, a dictator, yes, with a singular elliptical and nervous vision.
The music of The Catherine Wheel never suggests that it should be superior to the images that one can lay over it. It's made to be moved to. But it isn't just a series of beats without purpose. It's a soulful, post-punk, proto-funk, purposeful album.
About halfway through, as the ambient dissolved african tapestry starts to get a wee dull, Byrne comes back in full voice with r&b backing on "Poison". The timing couldn't be better. (And it couldn't sound closer to the pop sound his nemeses would be churning out in Tom Tom Club the same year, though nowhere near as accessible and twice as ominous)
Toward the end, after a more and more intensely building ambient climax, we are treated to the song "What a Day That Was", one of Byrne's best tracks and a high point of the Talking Heads live album, Stop Making Sense. And the equally satisfying, "Big Blue Plymouth".
Byrne took everything he's learned over the years with Talking Heads and Brian Eno and art school and made one helluva great soundtrack.

Grade: A
ASide: His Wife Refused, What a Day That Was
BlindSide: Ade, Two Soldiers, Combat, Big Blue Plymouth

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

David Byrne & Brian Eno - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - 1981

(This review is based on the original vinyl pressing and not the expanded reissue.)

No overview of Eno or Talking Heads would be complete without taking a look at the work they did together in the midst of the Talking Heads career. In a sense, it represents everything Byrne has been trying to accomplish with the heads but was unable to, being dragged down by the albatross that is human beings with, you know, ideas of their own.
The heavy sampling of the record makes it one of the earliest albums to do so with such abandon, creating soundscapes that would become the bread and butter for the likes of Public Enemy and so many others in a couple years. It goes without saying that Byrne wouldn't have been able to complete his masterpiece without the help of Brian Eno who had been turning ambience and sound sculpting to an art form for the previous 5 years before this record was recorded.
What this means is the record is sort of bereft of actual songs. I just mention that because, if you were a Talking Heads fan and you went into this looking for "Life During Wartime" or even "I Zimbra" you're not going to get it. Tracks like "Mea Culpa" sound like they could have just as easily been produced by a young Jean Michel Jarre, if he wasn't so synthesizer obsessed. These are sound pieces with music. Not quite ambient in that they are supposed to flow into the background like "Music for Airports" but more like they are supposed to provide the backing for a high end fashion district shopping experience.
Not a spa, it's too energized for that, demands too much of your participation as a listener, and not a mall, either. But, maybe a high end shop INSIDE that mall. I'm thinking most of "Regiment" as a song I would like playing the next time I'm in Beverly Hills looking for a sports coat. (Which is never)
My Life is probably one of the most important albums of all time inasmuch as it predicated and predicted the explosion of sampling that would come and married that to african rhythms and other third world sounds. Black music could look at My Life as the template for just about everything that was about to come. For that it deserves high marks. I'm not sure when i would ever listen to this record again unless I was painting. Which is something I would like to do someday....
Ultimately, and I know that I am in the minority on this, I find My Life in the Bush of Ghosts supremely unsatisfying. I always have. I get the importance, but I'm not a fan.

Grade: B-
There's really no one better track than the others but...
Aside: The Jezebel Spirit
BlindSide: Mea Culpa, The Carrier
DownSide: A Secret Life