By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself. David Byrne, it seems, is a machine. He's moving around the stage like a plastic doll in some art student's stop-motion short film, like two successfully fused halves of the mechanized mannequin parts in Herbie Hancock's "Rockit'' video. He stepped onto the Cain's Ballroom stage Thursday night upholstered in a pink, feathered suit, thick and bulky like the white one in the quintessential video for one of the disaffected anthems of his former band — the song he's opening the show with, Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime.'' His voice is clipped and cold, same as it ever was, and this old, cyclical lyric spews forth the same questions — where does that highway go to, and, my God, what have I done? — that none of us gathered for this otherworldly, Harlan Ellison kind of display have found time to answer. He must be a machine. He hasn't aged. By the time the programmed jungle rhythms for "The Gates of Paradise'' (from his latest album, "Feelings'') begin tsk-tsk-tsking out of the timid speaker stack, Byrne has stripped down to a baby blue jumpsuit that outlines a very svelt and fit 45-year-old. Grasping his guitar as the chorus riffs, he plants his feet firmly just inches from the front row of wide-eyed, cautious onlookers. He's so close that the peghead of his guitar nearly smacks the hat off the head of Don Dickey, the cheshire-grinning singer of Tulsa's own Evacuation of Oklahoma. Byrne is right there in front of us. Two nights previous, barricades and burly security goons kept a crowd of fanatics a safe distance from Morrissey, a performer claimed by fans to be coursing with real, palatable passions and, thus, to be esteemed as utterly human. This David Byrne model requires no protection. He is a machine. He must be replaceable. The five people on this stage are machine components, anyway. The keyboard player is merely pulling stops and turning knobs to allow the samples and programs to speak. The drummer plays a live snare and two cymbals; the rest are computer pads. The plucking and strumming of the bass and Byrne's guitar are only the beginnings of the sonic impulses, which — after numerous devices have encoded the frequencies — are emitted as wholly new and unreal wavelengths. Even Christina Wheeler, a dancer and backup singer, takes her turn playing not an instrument but a portable station of sound processors and compressors that capture her voice and utilize it as the breath of a larger, more layered sound. The machinery is co-opting the energy of humanity for its own artistic goals, the kind of live-vs.-Memorex dichotomy we've seen this year mastered by Bowie and muddled by Beck. But this is Byrne, and he doesn't seem to let the technology control him. If I dashed back to the sound board right now and severed the power cables with a quick hatchet chop, I'm convinced Byrne would still be able to make his music. He wears a headset microphone and dresses his new songs in doo-dad drapery, but there is a deeper and more fluid sense of art in this display than in Beck's synthohol or Bowie's ice crystals. Of all the classics to revive, Byrne starts playing the Al Green song that gave the Talking Heads the first sign of a human face, "Take Me to the River,'' and the cold, jerky Devo concert atmosphere begins to thaw. For "Daddy Go Down,'' a roadie who had just been adjusting microphone cables reappears on stage with a fiddle and balances the martial drum machine with Circean sawing. For "Dance on Vaseline,'' Byrne bops back to the stage wearing a black T-shirt and a red, plaid kilt (his third costume change thus far and, for many, the most titillating — a young woman shrieked, "He's wearing tighty-whities!'') and chuckles about the, um, slipperiness of love. People are bellowing, People are bouncing. People are bobbing. Byrne, the efficient showman — show-man -- smiles and shakes and sweats. Machines can't do that. The music swells and glows, like oceanic phosphorous — pouring through the sensual balladry of "Soft Seduction,'' foaming with the borderless joy of "Miss America'' and flowing swiftly through the righteous riffing of "Angels.'' Finally, the set ends with a song based on that live snare drum, another Talking Heads anthem -- "Road to Nowhere'' — recorded at the dawning of the derision of the post-boomer generation and written as a reductio ad absurdum argument against the prophesies of our detachment and cyberization. No, we may not know exactly where this highway goes to, but with Byrne running in place and the rest of us unconsciously jumping up and down on the Cain's spring-loaded floor, it's clear that the road leads somewhere and that Byrne is as good a piper to follow as any. In fact, he raises us to such cheer and wonder that we won't let him go. We call him back for an encore. He returns, this time in the most astonishing costume I've seen on a public stage: a full-body skin-tight suit, with only eye and mouth holes, illustrating the body's underlying muscles and bones. Like an alien child of the gimp in "Pulp Fiction'' and educational television's Slim Goodbody, Byrne sings a slow, eerie version of "Psycho Killer'' while climbing across the stage in slow motion. After folding himself into a yoga posture, the band bows, exits, and the crowd demands more. Byrne returns in another tight jumpsuit featuring flames from toe to chest. The rhythm festival cranks up for "I Zimbra.'' After a shouting, dancing frenzy, the band bows, exits, and would you believe Tulsa demanded a third encore? Exhausted and hoping to settle us down so that we'll let him leave, he returns and plays the new lullaby "Amnesia.'' In our newfound calm, we discover we are at peace. It feels good to be alive and to be human. David Byrne, it seems, is very human. Comments are closed.
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Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
May 2014
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