Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Križanke / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 10.07.2009
Attendance: 1000
Ticket price: €39.00 / €44.00
David Byrne is an American musician and artist who was born in Scotland. He moved to the United States of America at the age of two, and it was there, as a musician and songwriter, that he introduced himself to a wider audience with his wonderful project Talking Heads. In the late seventies and early eighties, they were considered one of the most popular and innovative new wave bands around.
Talking Heads haven’t been active for quite some time, but David Byrne has built himself a really great solo career, one that’s been just as full of highlights and successes. This time he came to show us what he’s got with his backing band in a packed Križanke, where the crowd was waiting in anticipation to see what the great singer-songwriter David Byrne had in store for us.
Few people can boast such a diverse catalog of songs as David Byrne. You can hear practically everything in him – from experimenting with samples and ambient music (also in collaboration with Eno), to country, new wave (Talking Heads), world music, funk, and market-ready rock. We got to hear all of it during the concert in Križanke. And that’s not all – the guy is excellent at pretty much everything he does, with a top-notch sense of melody and a heaping dose of eccentricity. You hardly ever hear pop/rock like that these days.
David Byrne is also pretty well known as a solo artist, but you can feel just how important a part of his life Talking Heads were, since he wrote most of their songs himself. So we got the biggest hits like Born Under Punches, Once in a Lifetime, Take Me to The River (originally by Al Green) and Road to Nowhere. We also witnessed a few other, lesser-known Talking Heads tracks, which made just as big an impression on the audience. We heard great versions of I Zimbra, Life During Wartime, Crosseyed and Painless and Burning Down the House. The only big hit missing was Psycho Killer, but somehow nobody missed it, because David and his crew put on a great concert and made sure everyone had a first-rate time.
Of course, alongside Talking Heads, we also heard a cross-section of his solo career, where the standout was his new album (Everything That Happens Will Happen Today), made in collaboration with the legendary musician Brian Eno (who has already worked with Robert Fripp, Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry and countless other top-class musicians). So during the concert, Byrne mostly presented his career with Talking Heads and his new solo project.
Over the two-hour set, we got everything we could have expected from David Byrne. The man didn’t shortchange us one bit, and I always had the feeling he was playing full tilt and having a blast on stage. The audience clearly sensed that too, calling the musicians back out three times. It probably also helped that Byrne told the organizers to take down the safety barrier for photographers, so the biggest enthusiasts could come dance right up front.
David Byrne clearly decided that on this tour he wouldn’t just play typical renditions of his famous songs, and the band made quite a few changes. In some of the classics we often heard a whole bunch of new twists and additions that aren’t on the studio albums. For me, that’s exactly the magic of live shows – the band shows something new instead of just playing by the book, which can sometimes even smell like playback. Byrne clearly has nothing but professional musicians on his team, who were consistently excellent and served as a brilliant foundation for the main man of the night.
Besides the musicians, we were also entertained on stage the whole time by dancers, who were dressed in white just like the band. Personally, I wouldn’t have missed the dancers one bit, since at times it felt like they didn’t know what they were doing and were just improvising on stage. But apparently that’s meant to be part of the show too – that unpredictability.
With big concerts of this caliber, there’s always a risk that the “star” won’t give it his all, especially since this is a smaller country. But David Byrne is not your typical star. There’s no hint of pretense about him. He never laid it on too thick with the crowd, but his sincerity and love for what he does came through the whole time.
David Byrne’s concert was a success in every respect. David Byrne showed himself to be a great performer and a great human being. Maybe the dance part of the show was a little too chaotic for me, but that’s all part of the David Byrne phenomenon, a man who has shown different sides of his personality many times over the course of his life. The dancers fit best with the image his Talking Heads cultivated from the start. Either way, all the musicians on stage gave it everything they had, and we witnessed a truly quality performance by one of the greatest musical personalities of the last thirty years.
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1.Strange Overtones 2.I Zimbra 3.One Fine Day 4.Help Me Somebody 5.Houses in Motion 6.My Big Nurse 7.My Big Hands 8.Heaven 9.Air 10.Home 11.Life Is Long 12.Cross-eyed & Painless 13.Born Under Punches 14.Once in a Lifetime 15.Life During Wartime 16.I Feel My Stuff —encore 1.— 17.Take Me to the River 18.The Great Curve —encore 2.— 19.Road to Nowhere 20.Burning Down the House —encore 3.— 21.Everything That Happens
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