TALKING HEADS : STOP MAKING SENSE

 

  1. Psycho Killer
  2. Heaven
  3. Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
  4. Found A Job
  5. Slippery People
  6. Burning Down The House
  7. Life During Wartime
  8. Making Flippy Floppy
  9. Swamp
  10. What A Day That Was
  11. This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
  12. Once In A Lifetime
  13. Genius Of Love
  14. Girlfriend Is Better
  15. Take Me To The River
  16. Crosseyed and Painless
    Bonus Tracks :
  17. Cities
  18. Big Business / I Zimbra

Label : Palm Pictures

Length : 88 minutes

Venue : The Pantages Theatre, Los Angeles, California, USA

Recording Date : December 14-16, 1983

Release Date : April 24, 1984

NTSC : 16:9

Review (AllMusic) : While there's no debating the importance of Jonathan Demme's classic film record of Talking Heads' 1983 tour, the soundtrack released in support of it is a thornier matter. Since its release, purists have found Stop Making Sense slickly mixed and, worse yet, incomprehensive. The nine tracks included jumble and truncate the natural progression of frontman David Byrne's meticulously arranged stage show. Cries for a double-album treatment - à la 1982's live opus The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads - were sounded almost immediately; more enterprising fans merely dubbed the VHS release of the film onto cassette tape. So, until a 1999 "special edition" cured the 1984 release's ills, fans had to make do with the Stop Making Sense they were given - which is, by any account, an exemplary snapshot of a band at the height of its powers. Even with some of his more memorable tics edited out, Byrne is in fine voice here: Never before had he sounded warmer or more approachable, as evidenced by his soaring rendition of "Once in a Lifetime." Though almost half the album focuses on Speaking in Tongues material, the band makes room for one of Byrne's Catherine Wheel tunes (the hard-driving, elliptical "What a Day That Was") as well as up-tempo versions of "Pyscho Killer" and "Take Me to the River." If anything, Stop Making Sense's emphasis on keyboards and rhythm is its greatest asset as well as its biggest failing: Knob-tweakers Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison play up their parts at the expense of the treblier aspects of the performance, and fans would have to wait almost 15 years for reparations. Still, for a generation that may have missed the band's seminal '70s work, Stop Making Sense proves to be an excellent primer.

Review (Wikipedia) : Stop Making Sense is a 1984 American concert film featuring a live performance by Talking Heads. Directed by Jonathan Demme, it was shot over the course of four nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983, as the group was touring to promote their new album Speaking in Tongues. The film is the first made entirely using digital audio techniques. The band raised the budget of $1.2 million themselves. The film has been hailed by Leonard Maltin as "one of the greatest rock movies ever made", and "the finest concert film" according to Robert Christgau, while Pauline Kael of The New Yorker described it as "close to perfection". Lead singer David Byrne walks on to a bare stage with a portable cassette tape player and an acoustic guitar. He introduces "Psycho Killer" by saying he wants to play a tape, but in reality a Roland TR-808 drum machine starts playing from the mixing board.The gunshot-like beats cause Byrne to stagger "like Jean-Paul Belmondo in the final minutes of 'Breathless,' a hero succumbing, surprised, to violence that he'd thought he was prepared for." With each successive song, Byrne is joined by more members of the band: first by Tina Weymouth for "Heaven" (with Lynn Mabry providing harmony vocals from backstage), second by Chris Frantz for "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel", and third by Jerry Harrison for "Found a Job". Performance equipment is wheeled out and added to the set to accommodate the additional musicians: back-up singers Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales, and guitarist Alex Weir. The first song to feature the entire lineup is "Burning Down the House", although the original 1985 RCA/Columbia Home Video release (which featured three additional songs in two performances edited into the film) has the entire band (minus Worrell) performing "Cities" before this song. Byrne leaves the stage at one point to allow the Weymouth-Frantz-led side-band the Tom Tom Club to perform their song "Genius of Love". The band also performs two songs from Byrne's soundtrack album The Catherine Wheel, "What a Day That Was" and (as a bonus song on the home video release) "Big Business." The film includes Byrne's "big suit", an absurdly large business suit that he wears for the song "Girlfriend Is Better". The suit was partly inspired by Noh theatre styles, and became an icon not only of the film - as it appears on the movie poster, for instance - but of Byrne himself. Byrne said: "I was in Japan in between tours and I was checking out traditional Japanese theater - Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku - and I was wondering what to wear on our upcoming tour. A fashion designer friend (Jurgen Lehl) said in his typically droll manner, 'Well David, everything is bigger on stage.' He was referring to gestures and all that, but I applied the idea to a businessman's suit." Pauline Kael stated in her review: "When he comes on wearing a boxlike 'big suit' - his body lost inside this form that sticks out around him like the costumes in Noh plays, or like Beuys' large suit of felt that hangs off a wall - it's a perfect psychological fit." On the DVD he gives his reasoning behind the suit: "I wanted my head to appear smaller and the easiest way to do that was to make my body bigger, because music is very physical and often the body understands it before the head." The filming of Stop Making Sense spanned four live shows at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles. It pioneered the use of 24-track digital sound recording which resulted in a particularly clear soundtrack. Demme has stated that one night of shooting was dedicated almost entirely to wide shots from a distance, to minimize the intrusion of cameras on stage. Demme had considered additional shooting on a soundstage made to recreate the Pantages Theater, but the band declined to do this, as they thought the lack of audience response would have hindered the energy of their performance.