The Quiet Road

hallo y’all.

I’m sat here at one of those fancy web-terminals they have in public spaces these days. I’ve been in London for the past few days and am now on my way back to Dublin.

It’s been a groovy weekend and no mistake. London has changed in the three years since I left of course, but not by much. I felt utterly at home walking around the streets of Wood Green earlier today. Some of the shops are new, but most aren’t. There was familiarity everywhere I turned. The faces and voices. The smells. The shape of the buildings. The steel grey sky of London in Springtime. And that tree on Waldeck Road still has flecks of white paint on it. 16 years on! (about three people will know what that means, but they’ll get a smile from it. The rest of you will just have to wonder.)

The less said about The Queen’s Head at Turnpike Lane though, the better… London’s finest dirty rock pub turned into a sports bar? We live in profane times.

Anyhoo, I was over in London for a David Byrne weekend. Leastways, that was the excuse. Needless to say, the Byrnester didn’t disappoint. Though even if he had, the opportunity to catch up with some old friends was itself more than enough to make the trip worthwhile. I stayed with my old mate Gyrus (once again dude, many thanks for organising everything) and together we chilled out with a few cups of tea as well as attending a David Byrne movie double-bill at the BFI (Stop Making Sense and True Stories) on the night before the gig at the Festival Hall.

And what a gig!

I’ve seen Byrne at least once (and usually more often) on every tour since the eponymous album in the mid-90s. I’ve also seen several one-off shows (festivals and what have you). I can safely say he was never better than last night’s gig.

In fact, I’d kind of felt a bit worried about seeing Stop Making Sense on the big screen the night before the gig. Clearly live music and cinema are radically different experiences… but even so… how could his 2009 tour possibly match up to the performance on what is arguably the finest concert film ever made?

I needn’t have worried. The two can’t really be compared of course, but last night’s gig was simply breath-taking. As you may (or may not) know, the tour is called “The Songs of Brian Eno and David Byrne” and covers tracks from all of their work together… the two direct collaborations (My Life in The Bush of Ghosts and last year’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today), the three Talking Heads albums that Eno produced (More Songs About Buildings And Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light) as well as The Catherine Wheel (the Byrne solo album that includes a few Byrne-Eno compositions).

Anyways, it’s probably safe to say that while I’m a fan of pretty much everything Byrne has done; from ’77 to ’09; it’s his work with Eno that excites me the most. Well, Remain in Light is the best album ever recorded after all*.

I was delighted, so, when it turned out that the two albums that dominated the set were the latest one (naturally) and Remain in Light. He must have played at least half of that record. Needless to say, I’m hoarse from cheering.

Dressed all in white, the band and the three dancers (whose whirling, creatively slapdash choreography was at times funny, at times sexy and at times just weird, though always successful in transmitting energy to the proceedings) rarely stopped moving for the two hours. It was truly joyous, and how many gigs manage to even get close to that?

By the halfway point, everyone in the festie hall was on their feet. The audience reaction was incredible. The whoops, cheers and wild applause were heartfelt and real. Those in the lower tiers crowded down to the front of the stage, and the festival hall became a dance hall.

Life During Wartime, a glorious version of Once in a Lifetime (a song that has perhaps suffered a little from over-exposure but managed to sound fresh and wonderful all over again last night) and stunning versions of Houses in Motion and The Great Curve (“The world moves on a woman’s hips / the world moves when she swivels and bops”). Those were the highlights for me up until the encore.

Returning to the stage, still in white, but now with the addition of ballerina’s tutus, Byrne and the band launched into a blistering version of Burning Down The House. By the end, pretty much the entire hall was shouting the refrain… must have been a little bit like what Funkadelic gigs were like in the late 70s.

That wasn’t the end… but how to top that? Well, how about getting Brian Eno on stage for the final encore to provide backing vocals on the achingly beautiful title track from the last album? It was the cherry atop an already perfect cake. When the house-lights came up at the end, the Japanese chap sitting next to me asked in broken English… “the man at the end? He was Brian Eno, yes?” “Yes”, I said. He looked utterly delighted. It was the cherry for him too.

So yeah, that’s where I’m at. I must away now… my time on this terminal is running out, and I need to think about making tracks soon. If you get a chance to see Byrne on this tour, then you really need to. It’s bloody incredible.