From a Hongkie Town , a HK blog about the show.
[quote]But today …
David Byrne. Wow. I never saw Talking Heads live, but I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Stop Making Sense. With the show billed as music of Talking Heads and David Byrne/Brian Eno, my guess was that the T Heads songs would be limited to the albums co-produced by Eno, which are my favorites, and my guess was right. A healthy dose of the new album, one song from Bush of Ghosts, one song from Catherine Wheel, but it was the classic Talking Heads tunes that had the crowd on their feet and literally stomping for more. Two hours in total, with four encores.
Byrne on guitar - the rest of the band included keyboards, bass, drums, percussion, three back-up singers and three dancers - all introduced but sorry, didn’t recognize any of their names, but they were all topnotch. The dancing was beautifully integrated into the show. Not being a dance aficionado, I’m not sure I can describe the style any better than to say probably the same sort of modern interpretative dance you’d see if you went to see something choreographed by Twyla Tharp (Byrne made a point of mentioning after the Catherine Wheel number that the choreography was not by her, even though she’d done the original CW show). I was a tad distracted actually because the one male dancer really reminded me of Spike Jonze in the Fatboy Slim “Praise You” video.
T Heads songs performed included I Zimbra, Life During Wartime, Born Under Punches, Crosseyed and Painless, The Great Curve, Once in a Lifetime, Houses in Motion, Burning Down the House … and yes, Take Me to the River was one of the energetic encores. It was literally my wishlist. No, there was no Psycho Killer, even though some people kept screaming for it, but I wasn’t expecting it since so much of the focus was on collaborations with Eno.
My gf, who was totally unfamiliar with Byrne and Talking Heads (I had shown her some bits of Stop Making Sense over the weekend but she didn’t seem impressed) was totally enthralled by the show. The great multi-part harmonies, the inventive dancing.
Byrne’s voice was in fine form for most of the show - but by the time he reached the final encore (a lovely rendition of the title track from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today)(Byrne and the entire band wearing tutus!) his voice was almost completely blown out. And at 56 years old, he’s much more of a showman than I expected, taking part in a lot of the dancing, even shaking his butt a bit for the audience.
Hall 3 of the HK Convention Centre in Wanchai - even Byrne commented that he figured it was probably the first time for almost everyone to be in that building.
Anyway, I have to rank this as among the best shows I’ve seen in HK. Finally getting to see Byrne after being a fan for almost 32 years, he still managed to surpass my expectations.
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