By: Annna [2001-05-30]

David Byrne: 29th May 2001

life goal #3 - check!


TAKE A LOOK AT THIS EYEBALL!


So I skipped my classes and went up to Portland to meet Sean and see David Byrne. I had forgotten that I had a dentist appointment when I heard about the concert, but that wasn't a problem. I didn't have any cavities, so I left the dentist's at 11 and headed up on I-5.

Got into Portland about 1:15, then found a good parking lot across from Hung Far Low, where I was scheduled to meet Sean at 1:30. About 1:50, he and Chad showed up. Hung Far Low was closed, so we went to House of Louie instead.

We wandered around Portland in Chad's car for a while. Went to several music stores, an arcade of vintage games on Hawthorn and Spartacus, which had a big clearance bin. I bought some incredibly cheap latex panties that I'd best just describe as "disturbing," a new Servotron album, and some Devo stickers.

Then it was an hour and change before the show started. Chad parked his car near mine, then went to go find a friendly scalper as Sean and I stood in the general admission line at the Roseland Theater. After a while, he joined us in the line, ill-gotten ticket in his hand.

They let us into the theater at 7, where we milled around and drank until 8, when the opening band came on. We made sure to stand in the very front, although they'd put up those sissy guard rails three feet from the stage. Nobody was stealing David Byrne's shoes tonight!

The opening band, Joe Henry, was pretty boring. The audience around me seemed to hate them, but they weren't even that interesting. Sort of like a very, very watered-down Elvis Costello, I guess. They played for almost an hour, which was entirely too long for an act that was standing between us and David Byrne. Joe Henry had a 1950s TV, tuned to static and facing the audience, on top of one of their monitors. I'm still not sure why - they never played anything on it or made reference to it.

Then the roadies came out and took away all the crappy band's stuff. They made a few adjustments, and out came David Byrne.

He's looking pretty good these days. Older, sure, but not too much.

The crowd was extremely enthusiastic, and he seemed pretty surprised and bemused by the reaction he was getting. A short girl in a Misfits T-shirt was right next to me by the railing, but only because I couldn't discreetly knife her. She spent the entire show pogoing at random intervals, then yelling "DAVID BYRNE I LOVE YOU!" at really inopportune moments. Then she'd do the devil horns hand gesture, then gyrate violently and wave her fists at face-height.

At what point did the "yay Satan" gesture become the "I like rock and roll, particularly yours" gesture? David Byrne is not the guy to make the Satan gesture at, I think. My sister says "You should only do that for bands who, you know, enjoy Satan. Like heavy metal bands." I'd have to agree. It's not that I'm anti-Satan; it just looks kinda sad.

The second or third time I saw Weird Al (at the Jackson County Fairgrounds, natch), some little trying-to-be-punk girls were pumping their little devil sign at Weird Al. That in itself is pathetic, but halfway through they made up some kind of new, super-duper devil sign where they put their two fists together and extended the pinky finger of each. I think that means, "I enjoy Satan, even though his horns are smaller in proportion to his head than you'd expect from the reports of other rock fans. Play 'Eat It!'"

I hate audiences these days. You listen to old concert albums and sure, they go nuts between songs, but there isn't any shrieking and hooting in the middle of songs. If you really love David Byrne, perhaps you should shut the hell up while the man's at work, you know?

And it's not like the songs were hooting-appropriate, either. I can tolerate morons yelling "woo!" after the occasional drug reference or place name, but the songs Byrne was playing were mostly sad, slow, moody songs.

Despite the audience, the show was great. At one point he messed up the words to a song - not badly; he just started singing the wrong version of the chorus - but he said, "oh, shit," chuckled and sort of wandered around the stage for a while. Then he came back to the microphone and said they were going to try to start up where they left off.

I blame the shrieking Misfits girl beside me. I don't really remember which song he muffed - I was too awestruck to keep track of exactly what he played - but I think it was "The Great Intoxication."

After a while, he brought out some strings. They were all hooked up to some weird headphone system, so Byrne spent a while making sure they could hear him.

(Earlier, he'd told us that someone was talking to him in his head, but sometimes he didn't listen to him. I assumed he was talking about the headphone system, but he could have just been telling us about his day-to-day life. I'm not sure what the headphone guy was telling him, other than maybe "You're doing great! Just continue not being Joe Henry!")

People kept yelling for "Psycho Killer," but he didn't play that. I bet he's sick of "Psycho Killer" by now. He did play a bunch of obscure songs from side projects - I recognized "Sax and Violins," but there was another one I didn't. He sang a very energetic version of "Buck Naked," and a couple of songs off of Rei Momo. The only standard Talking Heads songs he sang were "Nothing but Flowers," "Once in a Lifetime" and "And She Was." He also did "What a Day that Was." I might have just been really enjoying myself, but it seemed like he sang a lot of songs, more than I was expecting.

For the encore, they played either "Dream Police" or "Marching through the Wilderness," whichever one they hadn't played earlier. Then a Whitney Houston cover, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." Then Byrne left the stage again, then came back to sing "The Accident." The audience was almost respectful for "The Accident" - I don't think they'd heard it before.

After the show, the crazy Misfits girl sat on a planter outside and, about every forty seconds, yelled "DAVID BYRNE IS A FUCKIN' GOD!" at people exiting the concert, bums and innocent pedestrians. She also waved devil signs and sometimes middle fingers at the world in general. Chad and I waited outside for Sean for a while and had the pleasure of listening to her until she finally wandered off, presumably homeward.

All in all, it was a great show. Well, except for the audience, and the opening band. At least I finally got to see David Byrne; it was worth getting back to Eugene at 4 AM and getting four hours of sleep. Other than the handful of insane people erratically shrieking, I think the audience reaction was just very enthusiastic. I hope that'll convince him to come back to Oregon the next time he tours.

...

I wonder if 10 PM is late enough to go to bed. Gosh, I hope so.
appropriateness of m/ and so on... [2001-05-30 23:06:21] staniel
David Byrne sounds fun, friend Dino and I may go see him in Philly, if that hasn't already happened. I like the metal sign, but using it more than, say, twice in the same day... no. I think that was somebody's first concert, or possibly first time out in public. Servotron is intriguing, but if the page was really designed by robots, the links to the album covers would probably work. THE FANTASY IS RUINED!
She punched me in the face a couple of times, too... [2001-05-30 23:14:34] Annna
...but not very hard. Apparently she was 28 and had kids, but she looked and acted like a 16-year-old. Wacky.

If Servotron were really robots, their PO Box probably wouldn't have been closed either when I tried to join the Servotron Cyborg Auxiliary. Dammit.

I am really going to bed now. I have begun to see large, malevolent birds out of the corners of my eyes.
the secret [2001-05-30 23:32:00] staniel
all birds are malevolent.
Average IQ [2001-05-31 01:37:58] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Dumb people again! I think the the Weschler IQ test based 100 average
of what a 16 yr old knows, so, that pogoing lady was about average. She punched you in the face a couple of times and told you all about herself? Damned peculiar! At one club, I ran into a couple who told me 4 or 5 times that "We don't get out much!" If they hadn't told me, I wouldn't have noticed. They had two kids, 5 and 8, and they were from Montana; they were nice, they didn't punch me at all!
All Birds Are Malevolent [2001-05-31 02:00:18] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Especially blue herons.
Random Byrne thoughts. [2001-05-31 02:01:43] Jonas
Yes, Joe Henry was awful. Well, I found him bland and unoffensive; luckily I was standing so the risk of falling asleep, a la opening act for Modest Mouse, was minimized. I think their bass player was getting too far into those songs than the songs really warranted, plus she was an offense to all blonde women bass players; her name better not be Kim or Tina.

We could not decipher what the blank TV was for either, but my guess was that it was there to provide an entertaining alternative to Mr. Henry.

The Vancouver show was incredible: it was solid and sonic. The three-man rhythm section crarried the songs like nobody's business, especially "Once In A Lifetime" when DB wasn't playing the guitar, and "And She Was" -- the percussion player kept looking at us, I think cos we were the youngest people in the audience by about ten years. Excellent string accompaniment culled from the Vancouver Symphomony Orchestra; I guess "The Accident" was the really sombre DB+strings song he finished here with, a nice creepy "See ya!" While not as erratic or cocaine-fueled, DB's little dances and sashays were very much appreciated. Plus, he looked like a normal person, no possessed eyes -- although his ability to age well (and the abilities of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth as well) are somewhat disturbing: is there a wrinkle on his face? And their clothes were great!

I wondered, if they removed the partition between the drummer and the strings, would they fight?

Our audience was more-or-less nicer: they at least had the good sense not to yell out for "Psycho Killer", cos you know, like DB is just itching to play that one one more time. But like I said, it was full of thirty-to-fifty-year-olds, I did feel kind of out of my element, surrounded by a bunch of Sartres-waiting-to-happen staving off one more week of soul-killing tedium by acting like kids -- that's my job!

After the show we went behind the Commodore and waited in the alley to see if we could meet the man himself. Soon, two very sloshed forty-year-old concert-goers arrived on the scene, being very drunk and forty-year-old-ish:

Drunk the Younger: "You start a conversation! You can't even finish it!"

Drunk the Elder: "Has he come out yet? See that van? He's gotta come out, his limo's not here yet."

Drunk the Younger: "There's water under the water! Water under the water! That's -- that's crazy, water under the water!"

Drunk the Elder: "See that window? [pointing to a lit window that is clearly not part of the Commodore] He's in there, partying it up! [Yelling to window] C'mon out, Dave! C'mon out!"

Drunk the Younger: "I start a conversation and I can't even finish it!"

Anyway, at this point a non-DB-fan drunk came shambling down the alley, so the other drunks decided to leave: "Uh-oh, here comes a freak, let's go." "Start a conversation!" So we left too. If we had stayed, they would have stayed, and then DB would've been too scared to come out, and the tour would have been delayed! Basically then, that means I've only met half of the Talking Heads so far, so Tina Weymouth's suspicions that DB is evil incarnate remain unconfirmed.

Later on, as we were walking to DV8, we called 911 on some testostorone monkey chasing a transvestite up Davie street, with firm voiced intentions of beating her up, for reasons that remain unknown; but, the beating up of people, especially those who look very scared, is not condoned by us with brains -- I hope the police showed up before anything really awful happened.

After that, that it took us an hour to get our food didn't seem quite so bad.

And then after that, I read Your Action World and the first half of Strange Rituals, so am now a pretty solid DB fan. So I went to the local chain record store today to buy Remain In Light -- you know, TH's best (give or take) album. And of course, they didn't have it; so I said "Your store could use some fixin'!" Actually I didn't, but I should've, there was a bunch of stuff I was looking for today. You can read about it here.

But wait, there's more (it's not sold in any store! -- Annna, you've been to three "Weird Al" concerts? Wow! I've only been to one, the Bad Hair Day show, I missed the Running With Scissors tour):

If you'll recall the I Hate Jerry Harrison article (is article the right word?), you'll remember that around the middle of May it recieved a bit of traffic. That was all my fault. You see, around the beginning of May, I showed the uke songs to my friend Louie, who, after some getting-used-to-them, posted a link on the Talking Heads mailing list. After further exploration of the site on his part, he came across said Jerry Harrison article, and posted a link to that on the mailing list as well. That's where all the people came from. If nobody knows yet, Francey sent the article the way of Mr. Harrison himself. Apparently, he has a great sense of humour.

Okay, I'm off to bed now, I've a full day of yelling at school admin coming up.
m/ is appropriate for Deicide, i think... [2001-05-31 08:32:00] Vicarious
I hate Deicide. But anyway, sounded like a good concert.

I particularly admire Jonas, in that he wrote a comment that seemed to be as long as the article itself (no sarcasm intended, I actually do admire that. Such is my life).

I'm getting myself "stoked" because I am going to the Reading Festival in August, and it's always better to get excited before hand than bustin' up your cool on the day. The bands don't like it when you squeal like a little girl, especially when I was in their bus.

Iggy Pop will be there! Lagwagon are playing, too! And... best of all... Queens Of The Stone Age. Finally, I will get to meet my hero and idol, Josh Homme. Wahey!

I'm off to revise now, got an English Language exam on monday. Damn language acquisition and stylistics...
Language acquisition [2001-05-31 10:46:43] Jonas
Language acquisition is for... for, um... uh... people who, uh.... people who suck. Yeah.

"As slippery as a pair of slippers?"
Stylistics [2001-05-31 12:21:21] König Prüß, GfbAEV
The Stylistics played at the Glottochronology Festival
David Byrne [2002-05-03 13:07:35] Anus Man
People,
I have recently installed Windows XP onto my computer. I put on the media player and found one song there i listened to it and it was complete dogshit!!! I can't believe that you gays could like such crap. Please e-mail me a response
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