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Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present

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Sytze Steenstra, a university professor from Holland, wrote a book a few years ago called "The Noise Between Stations".

"Song and Circumstance" is an updated, partly rewritten, and not quite as scholarly version of his first book. In both, he traces David Byrne's art (notice I use "art", because while music made him famous, it's really just one part of his creative output) back to the Romantic movement which began in Europe in the late 1700s.

Neither of the books is intended for the casual Talking Heads fan, but instead are aimed at those of us who have followed Byrne's art from Talking Heads through right now. He's been incredibly prolific, and shows no sign of slowing down. Even as I write this, he's doing an installation of obscure signs placed randomly throughout downtown Reykjavik, Iceland (it's probably no coincidence that one Cindy Sherman is doing an exhibit in Reykjavik simultaneously, but I digress).

Back to the book: The phrase coined by Byrne "Stop Making Sense" pretty much summarizes the Romantic movement, as one of the central ideas was to reject formalism, rationalism, etc., and instead, artists and thinkers should focus on inner spirituality, intuition, and so on. That said, there are few artists who are as deliberate, focused, and structured as David Byrne.

Steenstra argues that Romanticism first begat avant garde, and more recently post modernism, and places Byrne as being directly influenced by these movements. Steenstra may not specifically articulate it, but one gets the sense in reading his books that Byrne is actually trailblazing a "post post modernist", "post avant garde", and post Romanticist genre with his own art.

Post Modernism in music was originally defined by a rejection of a traditional, layered, and conventional approach to recording. Although the Beatles late, mostly psychedelic albums arguably came first, within the rock genre, the Velvet Underground is most often cited as the first "post modern" band. Beyond stripping the music down to its bare essentials, with the help of Andy Warhol, the Velvets pioneered multi media presentations by using graphics, projected images, and film as part of their performance.

Both Romanticism, avant garde, and post modernism inherently rejected "popularly" accepted notions in design, architecture, music, and art.

Byrne's musical genius lies in blending avant garde with pop music. "Talking Heads 77", and especially "Fear of Music" and "More Songs About Buildings and Food", illustrate the deconstruction of rock music, a key element of post modernism. Brian Eno produced the latter two albums along with "Remain In Light". Most of the songs on the first two records reflect the alienation, paranoia, and lack of emotion produced in the individual in a post World War 2 consumerist America. "Remain in Light", the third Eno produced Talking Heads record, while owing a lot to Fela Kuti, can also be directly traced to the German band Can. The sound and textures of Can's late sixties and early seventies records are uncannily (that pun wrote itself) similar to much of "Remain in Light". The latter record also stands as a bridge between Byrne's more overt avant garde phase, and the more "pop" (or at least more accessible) oriented sound of Talking Heads beginning with "Speaking in Tongues".

Talking Heads' mainstream success peaked with "True Stories" and "Little Creatures". This didn't mean Byrne had "sold out" by any means. His steady stream of art since the breakup of Talking Heads has continued unabated, and while Steenstra argues it is framed within Romanticism, conceptualism and post modernism, Byrne is really forging a new genre, most of which can be equally enjoyed by the masses and by those who might be attuned to contemporary art and design.

In any case, great book if you're interested in learning more about what makes this endlessly multi faceted and fascinating artist really tick.

Sytze Steenstra (an arts and social science professor from the Netherlands) has written an impressive book covering the art (mostly music, but by no means exclusively) of David Byrne. The book follows a roughly chronological path, but connects each section/part/era to conceptual themes. You need to be willing to put up with a little bit of academic theory and structure with those themes, but do realize that Byrne doesn't seem to shy from those theory labels, so there's some level of tacit approval. (In fact, the review of the book by Byrne himself shows up above on the amazon description of the book.) This is a look primarily at Byrne through the works of the Talking Heads, his films, solo music, visual art, and collaborations, so it is not strictly a biographer, least of all a "rock-n-roll" biography with smashed televisions, pregnant groupies, and piranhas being kept on the tour bus.

Parts four and six, the ethnography and Tropicalismo sections, were the strongest to me, at least in part because I was less familiar with that work. There are strong connections made throughout the book, and you definitely finish reading with a long list of music to track down. I'd highly recommend it to fans of Byrne from any era (Talking Heads on) and to readers of Wire Magazine (the British new music magazine which also has a willingness to use, and lack of fear of, critical theory).

Table of contents for "Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present" :

INTRODUCTION
A song and a face
Singer and conceptual artist
Mythology and methodology
Romantic conceptualism
The method of this book

Part One: STRIPPING DOWN ROCK SONGS
The tentative rejection of mimesis
Cybernetics as inspiration
The first years of Talking Heads
Ethological and neurological aspects of music
Experiments with rhythm, texture and persona

Part Two: A WIDER MUSICAL COMMUNITY
Music and dance as social exchange
Isolated voices embedded in rhythm
At the crossroads: "Remain In Light"
Comparative studies of myth, archetypes and ritual
Archetypal conflicts: "goin' boom boom boom"

Part Three: MOVIES, TV AND THEATER: THE RITUAL IN DAILY LIFE
Introducing performance theater
A concert in the cinema: "Stop Making Sense"
Music in context: "Talking Heads vs. The Television"
"The Knee Plays", music for Robert Wilson
"Little Creatures": television's naiveté
"True Stories", a generic Gesamtkunstwerk
A soundtrack for Mabou Mines' "Dead End Kids"
"The Forest", a Byrne-Wilson piece
"The Forest" as film script

Part Four: ROCK STAR AND ETHNOGRAPHER
Rock star and ethnographer
"Naked", Talking Heads' most `African' record
"Ilé Aiyé": a musical ethnographic documentary
"Rei Momo": incorporating Latin sensibility
Soundtracks for ethnographic art documentaries
Luaka Bop
In the mirror: Sex `n' drugs `n' electronic music
Critical responses

Part Five: IN THE VISUAL ARENA
The arena of visual communication
Photographic repertoires
"Strange Ritual": documents of sacralization
The voodoo of the business world
"The New Sins": a new mythology of chaos
Dressed objects and other furniture

Part Six: TROPICALISMO IN NEW YORK
The singer as imaginary landscape
"Between The Teeth"
New York Tropicalismo
TV presenter
"Live at Union Chapel"
Songs and choreography: coming full circle

Part Seven: AN EMOTIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY
Cloud diagrams
"Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information"
Arboretum: the garden of correspondences
The representation of politics
Who owns our eyes and ears?
Philosophy in installments

Conclusion
Appendices
Index