David Byrne Journal: 09.21.2008: On the Road Again

Atlanta

This will be our fourth show. It’s going incredibly well so far. Even though the Newport News, Virginia audience was a little restrained for a while, they were up and dancing by the end. The dancing element of the show really lifts everything to another level. At first, I was concerned that it would even “work” and be a real integrated part of the show. It is. In Baltimore, at the Lyric Theater, someone yelled out in the middle of the show, “This is the best show EVER!” Wow, I thought to myself, you can’t ask for more than that. It makes me feel strange to say it, but this exhilaration at seeing something slightly risky work reminds me a little of the first few times Talking Heads performed as an expanded band. Then, as now, we’d rehearsed for weeks but had no idea if it would actually work in front of our audience — yet it did. Seeing this work gives me a similar feeling.

My daddy took me to the Lyric in Baltimore to see Ravi Shankar when I was in high school in the late 60s. That says something about what I was into back then and also how supportive my dad was of my musical interests. Actually, going to an Indian music concert wasn’t so hip or unusual then, as Shankar was known to everyone via his Beatles connection…but still.

Just before we left Baltimore, the dancers and singers visited us from their bus (ours has too much testosterone). The driver popped the bay extension (the front lounge extends out about a foot and a half sideways) on our bus and immediately some of the singers and dancers jumped up and began to dance to the Earth, Wind and Fire track that was on the TV system. The lounge became a club, filled with jumping gyrating bodies and wiggling arms. The drivers had to get going, so the bay eventually slid back in, but I heard that the party continued on the other bus as we headed south. I have an image of the band bus filled with boys nursing drinks watching a couple of episodes of The Wire — which is what we did — while on the other bus, one might see a window filled with silhouettes of dancing bodies.

In Newport News, a group of us biked to the beach on the banks of the James River — a long trip, mostly on local highways, passing chain restaurants, industrial parks, gas stations and a steak joint offering square dancing. The residential areas are tucked in behind these strips, I guess, as there were none visible from these connecting roads. There’s an airbase nearby as well. Fighter jets streaked overhead now and then. There’s no town visible in any direction, just endless sprawl. At one point we reached a crossroads, which appeared to be the remnants of a small town, now mostly converted to a row of antique stores, but still pretty quaint. Eventually we found a small beach next to a massive bridge beyond which lay a huge naval station and port. A few of us waded in the water as a film crew set up nearby to shoot a girl in Goth makeup for a TV commercial.

The day after our first show in Bethlehem, videos of the show began appearing on You Tube, the day after that blurbs and photos appeared on Pitchfork and more recently on Rolling Stone. The concept of an out-of-town date that is beyond the view of the media is obviously a thing of the past. Band members’ distant friends wrote them asking, “How do you like dressing all in white?” — something they’d discovered watching us online. How are we — how is anyone — supposed to get the bugs out of a show? Well, we did have plenty of rehearsal, so we’re OK….but in the past many shows wouldn’t gel until they had been tested and honed in front of a live audience for at least a couple of weeks. That luxury is gone.

A professional photographer I ran into backstage said from his point of view it seemed odd that press professionals are limited to taking pictures of the first 3 songs, while the phone camera and video hoards — the audience holding up their phones with little red lights we can see from the stage — are completely unrestricted. “What are you going to do,” I replied, “take everyone’s phones away from them?”

Here in Atlanta, I biked downtown to the Contemporary Art Center — a long-ass ride down Peachtree Street, and longer ride uphill on the way back. The center is in the middle of a small warehouse district tucked between some train tracks, highways, and vacant lots. That evening they had an event that eight of us attended. A local performance artist hosted a kind of mock talk show. The artist/host had a DJ instead of a band, and when he emerged he was dressed all in black, with a cigar and an asymmetrical Afro fade I haven’t seen since the 70s. An auspicious beginning. The artist/host's “guests” were a local woman who is an artist/curator, a historian who was also a delegate at the Democratic convention, and a young man who had just signed a deal with Universal to put out his next record. The event had its ups and downs — the historian was the most engaging — but what made it different than contemporary art events I’ve attended in New York was that the crowd was at least 60% black. Although there was plenty of talk of politics and identity as one would get at a New York African American art event, here there seemed to be a more comfortable mix than I would imagine at a similar event in New York. There was more relaxed laughter and fewer attitudes than up North. The historian bragged that he’d gotten chewed out by Vernon Jordan for a piece he’d written in The New York Times proposing that if Obama wins there won’t be as many jobs for civil rights activists. His comment didn’t go down that well with many of the old guard here in Atlanta. Seems this might be a general reflection of the aspirations, attitudes, and ease among the local community — a pretty good feeling.

The Atlanta show was in a large (4000+) outdoor venue with a covered stage and small tables for food and drinks up front. We’d been warned it might be a picnic crowd that would view the musical acts as background for their Southern social get-together. That proved not to be the case though. By the second song, some audience members were up and dancing. And by the end, the audience, on their feet, demanded a 3rd encore. Everyone — the band, dancers, and singers — was on stage, taking what we thought was a final bow after the second encore. Then suddenly, like a wave, there was a massive swell of applause and shouting, an almost frightening surge. A human roar. We looked at each other and realized we really should do one more song. Paul mouthed the title of an extra song we knew, and I nodded.

Post-show, Lily commented that in comparison to the polite audience response usually given to dance performances or opera (or classical music), the audience response for a pop concert — well, ours anyway — is so exhilarating and thrilling. She asked, “What do you do?” Lily was so energized that she said she was ready to run laps or something just to burn herself out and get rid of the excess energy, though it was too late in the evening.

I mentioned the article Alex Ross recently wrote for The New Yorker, in which he gives a short history of how audiences for classical and opera (and by extension, dance and performance art, etc.) changed, and to some extent why. It’s well known that early opera audiences were rowdy, socializing and rubbernecking throughout the performances. But this behavior extended to a lot of what we consider the classical repertoire as well. For example, audiences shouted out requests and performers made an effort to “entertain”. At some point, he says, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, wanted in, as it would surely give them some status. And in the process, the current requirement that audiences sit in rapt silence, applauding only at the end and never ever shouting out, began to establish itself as the mode for audience behavior. It certainly wasn’t always the way it is now — it was more like the concert we just gave in Atlanta. Something was gained and something was lost as audiences changed, at least as Ross describes it. With a quiet theater, more subtleties could become part of the performances, more nuances could be heard, and work and composition evolved accordingly. But, as we know, a lot of excitement was lost too. I wonder if some social element may have been lost as well, as audiences were expected to adhere to proscribed rules of behavior. Part of the pleasure of attending any performance is social. It’s cathartic, energizing, and we get to mix with lots of other people — something we sometimes like to do. Sitting in silence is nice sometimes. The polite socializing happens, maybe during intermission, but the pure social release of a more rowdy and enthusiastic bunch has its merits too.