Midweek Mention... Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense

Dan: Side, you came out of left field for this

Sidey: bit, a little bit, yeah. This particular one that we're talking about for the midweek is one that I've been wanting to talk about. for ages. And it has just been re released as an album. And there is a cinematic release of this coming out again.

I later this month, in fact, this month being September 2023. If you listen to this years

Dan: What, we can go to the cinema and see this.

Sidey: I did check yesterday to see if there was a scheduled screening of it over here. Nothing on the website yet, but so there, I think it's something like the 13th There is a screening of Stop Making Sense with a Q& A hosted by Spike Lee and the original, like the lineup of Talking Heads, the first time they've been together in a room since 2003 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

And then after that, in the 22nd, something like that, there'll be a few screenings. A24, the studio, picked up the... The distribution rights to stop making sense. So there will be a limited run. They did a trailer of David Byrne going to the laundrette to pick up the dry cleaning and it was the massive suit from stop making sense.

So that was how they announced it. It's really cool.

Dan: a special hanger.

Sidey: exactly. Yeah. So there will be, and I'm really hoping that they do show it which is probably telling you that I already, you know, that I did enjoy this. So we are talking about stop making sense and it is, you know, essentially. at its core a film, a recording of a concert.

Dan: of a concert, and correct me if I'm wrong, have we done anything like this on the pod before?

Sidey: No, we've done musicals, so where it's more of a film with a narrative structure in the traditional sense that features music to advance the storytelling, this is explicitly songs, just, just, just concert.

Dan: filming of the concert, but it's done in such a way that... You were kind of immersed into the, the concept. Well,

Sidey: we'll see if, we'll see if all three of us were immersed in it. So, it's gonna be sort of, I dunno, different because it's different to what we normally talk about in, in, there's no plot necessary to talk to, but they do it.

David Byrne, it's conceived. It says in the credits conceived by David. conceived for the stage by David Byrne. So there is a thought process to it. And what we're presented with at the start is just a, I think it might just even be the floor of the, of the theater. And the credits come up and I actually even really like the typography of the way that's presented.

It's very good. Well,

Dan: I actually really good.

Sidey: rest of you can get into that because I've got some super nerdy detail about it. So I've watched the one box. So,

Blu Ray cinematic all the film releases of it.

They're all 88 minutes and they all have the same track listing and running time and all that. It's the CD LP various different releases that are different that this this is a check minutes. It doesn't feature the all of the tracks that were recorded. There's two cities and another maybe a different one that are.

Bonus tracks. They're on the Blu-ray, but they, they're not part of the official release. So what you watched on Prime would be the original proper release.

Cris: well?

I did, yeah. I did watch it, but I don't want to be too proud of saying it, that I watched it on a stream.

I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but

Sidey: it's

Cris: I have done it. Well, I'm Romanian, so we, we, I don't know. We don't

Dan: You've got it, right. You watched it, all

Cris: have watched it. Yeah. I have watched it.

Dan: And had you been a fan of the band Talking

Cris: I could honestly tell you that I, I know a few songs. I had no idea it's them.

Dan: Yeah. think that's, that's with a lot of people. Talking heads, to be honest, that they go, they've heard their songs, they might not necessarily know

Sidey: have heard like once in a lifetime. They'll have heard like road to nowhere. Maybe burning down the house.

A couple of others like that.

Cris: Talking heads, to say it was one of them that my girlfriend didn't really watch it with me, but she kept singing along.

Dan: Right.

Cris: Because because for me, I've heard of the Talking Heads as a band and I've heard most of their famous songs, but I didn't know exactly who's. I didn't know it's them singing the songs and I didn't know

Yes, exactly and and I didn't know if you would have told me David Byrne I would be like

What is he a hockey player?

I don't know. I had no idea. So I didn't

Dan: know. As a front man, he's You know, he's just a tall, thin

Cris: white man, white guy

Dan: with a high hairline, And,

Sidey: He looks pretty nerdy. He's not like, you know, this isn't Kurt Cobain, you know, it's not Alex and Rose. It's like a quietly, softly spoken guy. They met the band, they met at Rhode Island School of Design.

So they're like art, you know, arty farty types and that, I think that comes across in the way that they There's more to it just than four people playing music, you know, and like we're saying earlier that it starts off. It's it's very blank canvas, theater stage and what we Get is after the credits a very very close up of David Burns feet.

We don't know it's him, but it is he's wearing a suit. He's wearing plimsolls and he walks out and he's got a little stereo and he plunks it down and he says hi I want to play a song and he presses play. That's obviously a gimmick. It's a backing track that's playing of just a very simple beat and he plays guitar.

He plays psycho killer and basically we work our way through.

And as he's playing psycho killer some stagehands wheel on a little bit of equipment one by one. And then for the second song, he's joined by Tina Weymouth looking like impossibly cool and they play heaven. And as they're doing that, the next piece of stage and so every song.

They're kind of embellishing

Dan: person and another piece of equipment is introduced.

Sidey: Yeah, so Chris France comes on for thank you for sending me an angel. And then Jerry Harrison comes on for found a job and that's like the core. That's the band. They're joined by a bunch of other people to make it you know, a more fuller complete

Dan: Yeah. They're, they're coming through and, and so the setup of this is, It's amazing, really, you know, it's just one man, a guitar on a stage, and he does Psycho Killer, which is I mean, it's one of those, you're listening to this, and you're thinking you like talking heads, but never have seen them in concert, or, then this is perfect, this is

Sidey: you might have seen once in a lifetime the video where he's kind of dressed up a little bit like a bank manager he's just in a black suit with big thick rimmed glasses and he looks very nerdy and he's doing all this kind of crazy dancing he kind of does that in psycho killer here he there's some guys coming on bringing some stuff

Dan: He's an absolutely magical moving

Sidey: He's, he kind of goes around really crazy at times, it looks like he's almost going to fall over but he was basically doing a Fred Astaire from the movie Royal Wedding.

Dan: Right,

Sidey: Um uh the songs, I left my hat in Haiti.

And so, he's doing this kind of crazy thing. I I've kind of it's kind of the movement I associate with him and we see it when we're going to talk about for our main thing in the in the main episode. He he references it right at the start. It actually made me really low. But he does that. And it's just him at this point.

Then, like we say, the rest of the bands come on and each song gets a little bit more dynamic as they got more players. And then at the end, I think we've got two or three guys doing percussion, two guitarists, Jerry Harrison's like flitting between. He's a multi instrumentalist. He's doing keyboards and synths and guitar.

And Tina Wayman's kind of flitting between a synth. I couldn't exactly work out what she was doing. She had a little machine and you never quite saw because she's obviously the the only bass player and she was doing some other stuff. I wanted to find out what she was playing. It was almost like a little mini moog or something.

I couldn't quite tell and then there's two backing singers as well. And so when they really get into gear um I mean all the songs up until this point are great but the slippery people is a banger burning down the house. So, this actual show Was around the time that they were promoting the album speaking in tongues and that that has burning down the house on it Then they get into probably a lot of people's favorite track on this It's called life during wartime.

It's what they played At the rock and roll hall of fame induction, but when they do it here, it's one of the fucking coolest things of all time I don't know. We'll

Dan: It is, it is my favorite. They

Sidey: do a kind of running on the spot thing whilst they're also playing their instruments and it's so fucking rad I mean one of my favorite things of all time

Dan: what I really enjoyed about this was the transitions between songs and how smooth it was and how it flowed from one song to another.

And watching David Burn, going from the song previous to.

To

Sidey: this little walk and you

can

Dan: and he takes this little walk and you can just see him kind of you know, cooling down a little bit taking a deep breath because he knows what's coming up next and it's the most energetic song that they've got and as Syed says they start running on the

Cris: Yeah, I did enjoy that, to be

Dan: that whole dance where he's moving his arms he's waving them and his legs

Sidey: and the way it's done.

As a technical exercise, it was filmed over four nights, four different nights of the same concert, obviously different audience, I think in each night and they would piece things together, but they would focus on say, one night would be all of the wide shots.

So they wouldn't want to interfere too much with the stage if they could have it because it would get in the way of the performance because they wanted it to be an authentic. Band playing to an audience. I think they wanted to do some sound stage stuff after the band like no We can't replicate without the real energy of a crowd.

So that was shot down. So they in this particular performance of life during wartime we get the I think the best shots of the entire thing is the wide shot of the whole band playing on stage Doing that because they kind of lean forward and run and it sounds kind of crazy, but it looks so fucking cool

Dan: not only that, I found it really cool in a way that

Cris: not only that, I found it really cool in a way that they didn't, they didn't show the crowd. You, only towards the end you have a few, a few shots of the crowd. It was basic, and I, again, I know it's, for me even now, it's still a concert.

I, I

Sidey: It's so

Cris: it still difficult to associate a movie with a concert because I don't know angles, and I don't know cameras, and I don't know all these technical details. But at the same time, when... You know, compared to any concert that I've ever seen. Normally they'll show pictures of the crowd. There'll be someone, maybe someone with their tits out.

I don't know, all these kind of things. Whereas this one was strictly on them and strictly, even when they film from behind, there's no camera, there's no interference, there's no guy with a, I don't know, it's quite, almost, there is just them.

Yeah, yeah, that's the word I was looking for, yeah.

Sidey: they get to oh, they they do making flippy fluffy. What a great song title Swamp and that was the day that was and then they obviously take a pause. David Byrne comes out in a slightly different outfit but not the really iconic one yet.

They come back and do this must be the place. Naive Melody with the lamp there. He's he's juggling the lamp

Dan: It's such acle. He's such a showman. I mean, maybe Jarvis Cocker esque for people that haven't seen him, but know Jarvis Cocker. He's got that tall, lanky sort of awkwardness about him and nerdiness as you say.

But his style is all his own as his Jarvis cocker. But there yeah, he's just fantastic. The way he, he.

Sidey: transitions.

The songs are, like, at, well,

Dan: The

Sidey: If you like talking heads, which I do This is like a set list from the gods. I mean, it's absolutely like stone cold killer after, you know, one after the other. So they do Naive Melody, then they do Once in a Lifetime, then there's The Pause. No, then they, yes, then there's The Pause. And so there is, even at this point,

because

they're, this is the album speaking in tongues, so they've still got like a bunch of other albums, but there's tension at this point.

Tina Weymouth and Chris France, the drummer, are in a relationship. I don't know if they're married at this point, but they're doing, they have a side project, which is the next song which is Genius of Love. And my missus is like, is this the fucking oh, what's her name that does the All I Want for Christmas?

Mariah. And I was like, no, Mariah Carey. Fuck it. They sampled this. I'm like so he hated that. He hated that fucking side project. David Burns. There was tension already like so they were, you know, like any great band. It's never going to last forever. But you need that. I think you need that push and pull that

Dan: Yeah, well they've been together a long time.

Sidey: So, they do Genius of Love. Well, he's he's not on the stage at this point and when he comes back, this is where he's wearing the iconic

Cris: The big suit,

Sidey: yeah. So, he'd been traveling David Burn. He'd been traveling around Japan and he'd been inspired and it's called KOH. This kind of Japanese theater where they all wear these.

Big

Cris: Oh, I know what you mean now, okay,

Sidey: to like emphasize stuff and he wants to do it to make his head look small and he'd been doing some kind of dancing on stage where he'd be like flexing his head back when he's got a kind of really long neck anyway so it already looks kind of like funky and weird but with this suit i mean it's just like a giant gray rectangle and then he's

Cris: With a small

Sidey: dancing and doing all these weird dance Yeah.

Amazing. And he takes, at one point, he takes obviously fucking red hot. He takes the jacket off and you can see the trousers Fucking insane. They're so fucking square.

Dan: like sort of Wallace and Gromit

Sidey: Track is he does the, the first track there is girlfriend. Girlfriend is better. That's the song that has stop making sense.

The, the lyric that they took for the title. And there's two more tracks to go take me to the river and cross-eyed and painless. But there were, I think at least another two tracks that didn't make it into the. Cinematic cut but do appear on

Dan: on that blu ray.

Sidey: well, no, because there's multiple different CD releases and vinyl releases and the original was just a CD that accompanied the

Dan: Jeez, they milked this one, didn't they?

Sidey: they? They have a bit. They have a bit but the original one only had nine tracks on it. Eight or nine tracks. And That was just a little, probably just a little accompaniment and then they re released it with everything and the two bonus tracks.

Dan: Well, in my hands here, I've got this beautiful vinyl double album that is Stop Making sense.

Sidey: Bit of a bugbear with that because that's the, that's the latest new remastered Blardy Blardy Bar, but the cover is really boring and

Cris: was gonna say, you could have done so much with the

Sidey: Well, the original cover was David Byrne in the, in the suit,

Cris: In the big

Sidey: is what you would kind of expect. But here they've just made it like a plain white

Dan: it's not a double album at all, is

Cris: It looks more like the, it looks more like the Scarface, the movie kind of, you know what I mean?

Sidey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cris: white and it's,

Dan: it's for the music inside will be,

Sidey: It's got it's got a pretty cool booklet in there. That's actually quite interesting um and and all that stuff but right so I follow a YouTube channel. It's called Darko Audio and he did a thing this week. I will I will share the the the link to if you really want to nerd out about music format.

So a lot of people will will bicker about oh well this you know if you don't listen to it on vinyl you know that vinyl is the best or someone will say like tapes the best or CDs the best blah blah blah. There was a release on CD right and there's a piece of software basically what happened. In the 80s, when people were really concerned about high fidelity, there would be proper mastering and people would really give a shit about making it sound right.

Then when like, everything started getting played on the radio, there came along, it's called the loudness war, and it just had to sound good on the radio. It basically had to sound as loud as possible. And so people really didn't give a shit. They just made it, they just mastered it to sound loud. And so the better recordings, the ones from the olden days, are the, it's called dynamic range compression.

And there's a piece of software you can buy. That you can then upload all the files and it will analyze it and it will tell you.

Dan: this is the nerdiest bad

Sidey: Yes, it will tell you the dynamic range compression of the files that you've uploaded. And so there's a

Dan: the dynamic range compression. Yes. Right.

Sidey: And, and one of the CD. So basically what we have here is the, the new double album, new master, new remastered version of the album, right?

The album from the 80s that only has the eight or nine tracks, I think it's that one, that has a dynamic range compression of 14. Okay. And that means there's a lot of range between the music. So, you can pick up the different instruments. You can hear the nuances and all that. So, that's good. When the when it's compressed down to nothing, that's when it's just loud.

You know, it's just like a blur. So, you can't really hear that. You can't hear the players. You know, it's no point people being great musicians. You can't hear it anymore. And so the the

2003, there's an album that came out that had all of the tracks but it's compressed to and so it doesn't sound very good and so this one, the new out the new double LP.

It's dynamics range compression is somewhere in the middle. It's still middling so it sounds okay but it's not as good as it could be and so basically when you take the whole gamut of all the different versions, different releases of this album, even if you because the guy on the YouTube chat, he's extracted the the files from the Blu Ray of the movie which has everything.

That's pretty good. It's like 12. So what I'm trying to say is there's still an opportunity to have a version of this on a format, any format that's properly mastered with a decent dynamic range that highlights all of the actual nuances of the recording with all the tracks that doesn't exist yet. The best.

Version of the route of the mastering only has nine tracks. there's 10 missed off there

Dan: Wow. A you would've thought they'd got, with all the versions they put

Sidey: You could be cynical and say well they'll just do that next time and then make and and get

Dan: People deserve to listen to it while, you know, the fans are the, the original fans are still around.

Sidey: that

kind of tells you how into this I am

Dan: well, I'm, I'm into this as well, to be honest. Not on that level. I didn't know anything about those kind of compression rates and everything, but the music. I was late coming into Talking Heads, to be honest, because, like you, Chris, I'd heard of a couple of tunes, I didn't know it was them, you know, their songs are so wildly different sometimes they sound like a different band from song to song, but there was the, the video from this Life During wartime

that Absolutely.

Sidey: YouTube if you want to just get a snippet. If you haven't seen this and you want to get a snippet for what this is like. Just hit up

Dan: Life during Wartime Talking Heads.

Sidey: one for all time. I mean this is like, you're watching a band at the absolute peak of its powers.

Dan: play it

Sidey: They look like they're having a fucking great time.

There's one bit where David Byrne's singing and there's one of the stagehands is on, moving something around and he just shoves the microphone in his face and the guy fucking sings along. Everyone's having a party. You don't get that many shots of the crowd because it's not really about the crowd per se.

But you do occasionally and they're all up dancing and everyone's having a great time The music is like all time. This is fucking 10 out of 10

Dan: occasionally see everyone up dancing and

Sidey: I didn't say that it's directed by jonathan demi demi who also directed science of the lambs.

So it is to Opposite ends of the spectrum.

Cris: That's another one that because I have to be honest, I didn't go that much into detail as you and I'm not a fan. I did enjoy it and and I did enjoy the whole the whole thing.

I didn't know again angles. I didn't know much about cinematography and all that, but I did see that is directed by the guy and I was thinking that's a bit of a strange one to to Film a concert really and then an excellent movie, but I enjoy that. I probably enjoyed it more than than I thought I would, especially at the beginning.

I thought, Oh, this is going to be a long night with just the concert because again, I didn't know what the music

Sidey: quite easy to segment it if you want to just, you could watch like three or four songs, go do something.

You know, you could just easily pause it and come back to it because it's not narrative

Cris: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not missing out. Oh, what happened? Did they, did they jump from the bridge? No, they're still on stage and they're still singing. So boil an egg and go back. It's

Dan: one of those you can just have on in the background, but I watched the the concert because I wanted to see and when you, when you listen with the, with the, the

Sidey: the visuals,

Dan: and with the visuals then even when I'm listening to it now, it's still in my mind those pitches

Sidey: I really hope we get a cinematic release over here. I will be there.

Dan: yeah, no, I'll join you.