Stop Making Sense was presented by WMSE-FM 91.7 Milwaukee as part of their contribution to the Milwaukee Film festival, and played at the Oriental Theater on Friday and Monday evenings.
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Stop Making Sense is a concert film by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) shot during two live performances by the Talking Heads in 1984 that centers on the remarkable talent of its lead singer, David Byrne. Byrne's stage presence and fluid vibrancy steal every scene and Byrne and the band demonstrate influences of mime and tribal rhythmic interpretation mixed in with some dizzying moments of audacious madness. The humbleness of this film lies in it's lack of special effects, utilizing nothing more than one oversized suit and a few hand-held lights that create shadow plays on the screen behind the band, giving Stop Making Sense a modern day Metropolis feel.
The concert itself builds as sort of a musical performance puzzle. Given all the showmanship that Byrne develops as the film progresses, the opening sequences are rather low key. Byrne walks onto a bare stage with a deliciously 1980's style stereo cassette player in his hand, puts it down on the stage, announces that he has a song he wants the audience to hear, turns it on and sings Psycho Killer while playing acoustic guitar against a percussive loop (it is actually coming from off stage and not from the cassette player).
Eventually he is joined onstage by Tina Weymouth on bass for the second song, Heaven. Soon stagehands wander out from offstage and begin to assemble a platform for drummer Chris Frantz. Gear is moved into place. Electrical cables are attached. Speakers are hooked up. Band members appear. The backup singers join in. With each added piece of equipment and each addition of a band member the concert inexorably increases in tempo.
But despite everything that is going on, Byrne remains the focal point; bestowing his stage presence, creativity and musical proficiency upon a captive audience that is rarely shown throughout the film. His spirited stage dynamics serve as a musical spotlight. The entire, vivacious experience is positively trance-inspiring. Yet it is Byrne's famous oversized suit which distinguishes the work completely. The fact that a regular item of clothing can have the ability to make the wearer seem out-of-proportion and disfigured is both mystifying and captivating. Even more bizarre is the fact that the suit seems to grow relatively larger as the concert progresses. This sort of serves as a metaphor for the crescendoing performance and for the bloated, excessive state of the music industry at that time.
The music draws from many sources: there are elements of country, reggae and gospel along with African percussion. There are driving repetitions of single phrases and musical restatement in the closing sequences of many of the songs. What is particularly delightful is that the Talking Heads offer a visual experience as much as a musical performance in this film, the irony being that the visual is scaled down to simply the performers and the performances themselves.
Many of the songs performed were from the 1983 release Speaking In Tongues, but there are some wonderful asides that include music by The Tom Tom Club and also a driving performance of What A Day That Was, culled from the wonderfully eclectic collaboration by David Byrne and Twyla Tharp for her interpretive dance project The Catherine Wheel. What A Day That Was, along with Slippery People, Once in A Lifetime and Burning Down The House are easily the most energetic performances of the entire set.
The frenetic, off-kilter energy of a rock band that's emotionally charged and musically wired through the entire performance may be hard for some viewers to attune to, but that can be expected from a group which makes music of a somewhat acquired taste. Though The Talking Heads come off as an intellectual encapsulation of avant-garde rock and traditional New Wave, we are witness to something that is more of an exercise in connate banality. Credit Byrne and Demme for showing the band from that perspective and for removing those suppositions.
As for the choreography, it would be better defined as unstructured cohesiveness since the performers behave in a volatile, limitless manner. The progression in music and dance creates something of an altered reality, centrically unbound and ever-expanding thanks to a lack of props and a further lack of cached special effects but not without the borders and limits of the stage set up, offering just the right amount of physical containment.
In retrospect, it is amazing to see such joyful exuberance from a band that was on the verge of being gutted and dissolved by Byrne. At the time of the original release of this film, Demme's Stop Making Sense may have seemed like a launching pad for the Talking Heads rather than the band's visual performance in support of their penultimate album release. And that's a shame. The stylishly engaging film succeeds in capturing it's viewers collective attention and then holding it throughout the entire performance, and is a remarkable revisit to 1984.
Song Performances:
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Stop Making Sense is a concert film by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) shot during two live performances by the Talking Heads in 1984 that centers on the remarkable talent of its lead singer, David Byrne. Byrne's stage presence and fluid vibrancy steal every scene and Byrne and the band demonstrate influences of mime and tribal rhythmic interpretation mixed in with some dizzying moments of audacious madness. The humbleness of this film lies in it's lack of special effects, utilizing nothing more than one oversized suit and a few hand-held lights that create shadow plays on the screen behind the band, giving Stop Making Sense a modern day Metropolis feel.
The concert itself builds as sort of a musical performance puzzle. Given all the showmanship that Byrne develops as the film progresses, the opening sequences are rather low key. Byrne walks onto a bare stage with a deliciously 1980's style stereo cassette player in his hand, puts it down on the stage, announces that he has a song he wants the audience to hear, turns it on and sings Psycho Killer while playing acoustic guitar against a percussive loop (it is actually coming from off stage and not from the cassette player).
Eventually he is joined onstage by Tina Weymouth on bass for the second song, Heaven. Soon stagehands wander out from offstage and begin to assemble a platform for drummer Chris Frantz. Gear is moved into place. Electrical cables are attached. Speakers are hooked up. Band members appear. The backup singers join in. With each added piece of equipment and each addition of a band member the concert inexorably increases in tempo.
But despite everything that is going on, Byrne remains the focal point; bestowing his stage presence, creativity and musical proficiency upon a captive audience that is rarely shown throughout the film. His spirited stage dynamics serve as a musical spotlight. The entire, vivacious experience is positively trance-inspiring. Yet it is Byrne's famous oversized suit which distinguishes the work completely. The fact that a regular item of clothing can have the ability to make the wearer seem out-of-proportion and disfigured is both mystifying and captivating. Even more bizarre is the fact that the suit seems to grow relatively larger as the concert progresses. This sort of serves as a metaphor for the crescendoing performance and for the bloated, excessive state of the music industry at that time.
The music draws from many sources: there are elements of country, reggae and gospel along with African percussion. There are driving repetitions of single phrases and musical restatement in the closing sequences of many of the songs. What is particularly delightful is that the Talking Heads offer a visual experience as much as a musical performance in this film, the irony being that the visual is scaled down to simply the performers and the performances themselves.
Many of the songs performed were from the 1983 release Speaking In Tongues, but there are some wonderful asides that include music by The Tom Tom Club and also a driving performance of What A Day That Was, culled from the wonderfully eclectic collaboration by David Byrne and Twyla Tharp for her interpretive dance project The Catherine Wheel. What A Day That Was, along with Slippery People, Once in A Lifetime and Burning Down The House are easily the most energetic performances of the entire set.
The frenetic, off-kilter energy of a rock band that's emotionally charged and musically wired through the entire performance may be hard for some viewers to attune to, but that can be expected from a group which makes music of a somewhat acquired taste. Though The Talking Heads come off as an intellectual encapsulation of avant-garde rock and traditional New Wave, we are witness to something that is more of an exercise in connate banality. Credit Byrne and Demme for showing the band from that perspective and for removing those suppositions.
As for the choreography, it would be better defined as unstructured cohesiveness since the performers behave in a volatile, limitless manner. The progression in music and dance creates something of an altered reality, centrically unbound and ever-expanding thanks to a lack of props and a further lack of cached special effects but not without the borders and limits of the stage set up, offering just the right amount of physical containment.
In retrospect, it is amazing to see such joyful exuberance from a band that was on the verge of being gutted and dissolved by Byrne. At the time of the original release of this film, Demme's Stop Making Sense may have seemed like a launching pad for the Talking Heads rather than the band's visual performance in support of their penultimate album release. And that's a shame. The stylishly engaging film succeeds in capturing it's viewers collective attention and then holding it throughout the entire performance, and is a remarkable revisit to 1984.
Song Performances:
- Psycho Killer
- Heaven
- Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
- Found A Job
- Slippery People
- Burning Down The House
- Life During Wartime
- Making Flippy Floppy
- Swamp
- What A Day That Was [The Catherine Wheel]
- This Must Be The Place
- Once In A Lifetime
- Genius Of Love [Tom Tom Club]
- Girlfriend Is Better
- Take Me To The River
- Crosseyed and Painless