vintage

Last night was the much-anticipated performance by legendary David Byrne at Toronto’s Massey Hall, and let me tell you, all that anticipation was worth it. Byrne — sans opening act — rocked the house for a good two hours, including encores (three of them!), and the set featured a whole lot of classic Talking Heads material as well as new tunes from the record with Brian Eno (Everything That Happens Will Happen Today).

Notably, the large cast of performers included three dancers and three backup vocalists (the latter often doubling as dancers as well). The dancers were a pretty awesome addition, I have to say — even Byrne was choreographed into their routines much of the time, and what looked like a casual step back ended up being one part of a perfectly executed setup. Most of the choreographed tunes were old Talking Heads favourites, which included “Once in a Lifetime”, “Take Me to the River” and “Burning Down the House”. Byrne himself was relaxed and having a great time, smiling a lot and cracking jokes about the American election (“Why don’t you all drive to Buffalo and cast some ballots? They’ll never know!” — to which an audience member hollered “Drive to Ohio!”).

The new tunes translated really well to stage; the set opened with “Strange Overtones,” a nice solid way to start off the night. Also featured were “My Big Nurse”, “I Feel My Stuff” (particularly great), and, at the end of the night, “Everything That Happens”. The band was tight, the vocalists excellent, the dancing sublime, and Byrne himself was an absolute treat. I’m a Massey employee, but I was still getting my groove on a little during “Life During Wartime”. This ain’t no disco!!

David Byrne is clearly doing all this stuff because he loves it, and although not having Brian Eno on the tour was disappointing (though not at all surprising, since he never tours anyway), Byrne and company more than made up for Eno’s absence. It was an excellent show — well worth the excitement.

The record is also really good; it sounds more like a new wave album than My Life in The Bush of Ghosts did, but it certainly does a great job bridging the gap between Talking Heads and the aforementioned collaboration album. It’s out digitally right now (iTunes, Amazon, emusic, etc) and will be, as Byrne put it, “manifesting itself in the physical world” fairly soon. Expect a review when I have had more than three days to digest it!

In quick news, Stephen Harper unveils the new Cabinet to create the “right team for these times”; one cheeky commenter on the CBC website wonders “Two weeks ago, everything was fine and dandy; Harper said that due to his foresight the Canadian economy was fine and would resist recession. Now we have the right team for these times. If the times didn’t change, then did we have the wrong team before?”

Last night was also Barack Obama’s 30-minute televised infomercial, which is making waves all over the place today. Check it out. More on both of those topics coming soon.