Saturday Live

Last week's Saturday Live slot was Jane's Addiction in Milan in 1990. This week's travels ten years back in time and a few hundred miles south to another American band, although one cut from a very different cloth to Jane's L.A. rock- Talking Heads. 

Talking Heads have recently announced a re- issue package of their legendary 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense. Filmed across three nights, Stop Making Sense blurred the lines between gig and film, a high concept collaboration between David Byrne, Jonathan Demme and the band. The staging, starting out with just Byrne, an acoustic guitar and a ghettoblaster, then the stage being assembled as the group joins Byrne on stage, through to the big suit of the end, was as much part of the film as the music. 

In Rome in 1980 Talking Heads are playing a gig, no elaborate set or extras, just an extraordinary hour of music from the band, already expanded beyond Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison into a six piece band capable of reshaping the Talking Heads studio sounds into a live set. Adrian Belew is on guitar, not quite lead guitar but definitely more than a hired hand- his playing uses feedback, noise and texture as much as anything as ordinary as a solo. Bernie Worrell has joined on keyboards and percussion, bringing the space age Parliament/ Funkadelic groove. Buster Cherry Jones is on bass (along with Tina) and backing singer Dolette McDonald is one of several voices along with Byrne's own frenetic, anxious lead vox. It all looks like they're having enormous fun, writing the punk- funk rulebook and sending post- punk into a new place. Equally it's easy to see why Harrison and Weymouth began to feel like side players in their own band. 

The Rome crowd are enthusiastic from the start, a wired, guitar heavy run through Psycho Killer. They follow it with Stay Hungry, from 1978's More Songs About Buildings And Food, a short song in its recorded version stretched out with an extended instrumental section, Belew's guitar and Harrison's keyboards kicking up a storm. From there they play several songs from 1979's peerless Fear Of Music- Cities, an otherworldly I Zimbra, Drugs and the never-ending, breathless thrills of Life During Wartime. It's wired, intense, life affirming stuff, confident in itself and knowing this has not been done before. They play the hit, their cover of Al Green's Take Me To The River. But, the real treats in this gig are the songs from Remain In Light, songs from an album at that point only a few months old. Remain In Light saw the light of day in October. The Rome gig is December. They play Crosseyed And Painless,  Houses In Motion, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) and The Great Curve. These songs- fully realised, extended grooves, multi- rhythmic Afro- funk crossed with New York art rock/ post- punk, the imaginations of Talking Heads and Brian Eno running wild- played live by a group at the peak of their powers. There's no touring fatigue, no boredom with playing the hits every night, no going though the motions. Belew adds a whole new palette of guitar sounds and the danceable grooves brought by the extended line up are irresistible. Everyone switches across mics and instruments, cowbells are picked up and hit, shakers are shaken. When the gig moves towards the finale, we get a double header punch. Born Under Punches has a long intro, Belew manipulating his amp's feedback as the band stoke the groove and then Byrne slides in, 'Take a look at these hands...', Dolette crooning with him, twin basses providing a huge low end wallop. After the slow burn, intense funk noir of Born Under Punches they launch into the joyous and ecstatic The Great Curve, a jerky, amped up stream of consciousness with heavily distorted guitar playing from Belew and Afro- funk rhythms. The Romans are appropriately appreciative.