All posts by Hallgeir

Concert films, Talking Heads

Happy birthday David Byrne – Talking Heads Live in Rome 1980

david byrne

David Byrne was born May 14, 1952, he is a Scottish-born musician permanently residing in the United States, and was a founding member and principal songwriter of the American New Wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera, and non-fiction. He has received Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)

Few bands can boast a performance so image-defining as the one the Talking Heads did in Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense.  That film was released in 1984. We will celebrate David Byrne’s birthday with another concert, Live in Rome. This concert film captures the Talking Heads in 1980, a less established band, a band on the rise. David Byrne and the rest of the band express the same kind of strange energy displayed in Stop Making Sense, but here they do it in a  more direct and “punkish” way.

Live in Rome 1980:

Setlist:
1. Psycho Killer 2. Stay Hungry 3. Cities 4. I Zimbra 5. Drugs 6. Take Me to the River 7. Crosseyed and Painless 8. Life During Wartime 9. House in Motion 10. Born Under Punches 11.The Great Curve

Live in Rome features the group’s full Afro-Funk  lineup. Additionally,  guitar virtuous Adrian Belew is on stage and he is fantastic!  It’s a great show and we’re hoping for a blu-ray release.

It was an exciting time to be in the band. david, chris, tina, and jerry decided to keep the 10-piece funk machine rolling for a whole world tour including japan and europe. it was a wacky cast of characters to live with and we had loads of fun.

…the timing of our performance was fortuitous; just as the sun was setting. I joined the original four heads to play psycho killer, then the full band was brought onstage. we launched right into the new material. no one in the audience even knew the remain in light record as yet but it didn’t matter. the band was smoking!

– Adrian Belew

Enjoy David Byrne and Talking Heads at their very peak!

– Hallgeir

David Bowie

Video of the day: The Next Day by David Bowie

db_on_the_mike_1000sq

Great new video with Gary Oldman and Marie Cottilard brings a religious feast to a halt in this, kind of not safe for work, video.

Bowie as a Christ like figure sings from a stage in a church while women without too many clothes dance around – until one of them, played by Marie Cotillard, develops stigmata.

Wonderful pictures to a great song!

The Next Day:

– Hallgeir

Ryan Adams

Unreleased – Cracks in a photograph by Ryan Adams

10 Comments

suicide handbook

The Unreleased series

“If you run into my sister tell her Elvis is cool
but the Rolling Stones will sweep her away”

Cracks in a photograph is from the unreleased album that was supposed to be the follow-up to Adams’ solo debut Heartbreaker. We can only speculate why the album was shelved, but it is a bleak affair and the title was/is Suicide Handbook. I’m guessing the record company wasn’t too thrilled by what they got served.

The song is the 4th song on the second disc and I will describe it as a hidden gem or a buried treasure, to my knowledge it has never been performed live. It is one of his finest compositions, but maybe it is too close and too true to those bad feelings from before,  even for Ryan Adams. The song could be interpreted as part of a suicide note, or at least the notes from a man making amends and leaving “the old life”.

Cracks in a photograph:

Continue reading Unreleased – Cracks in a photograph by Ryan Adams →

Ryan Adams, Singer Songwriter

Unreleased – Walls by Ryan Adams

ryan adams 48

The Unreleased series

“Maybe I had something nobody saw, blame it on the wall”

Ryan Adams is fantastic songwriter and musician, maybe he is one of the very few geniuses in the art form. Many reviewers are complaining about his vast output, I’m not, I think his body of work is remarkably high in quality. What is even more remarkable is that much of his songwriting is unavailable to the public. His output could have been double of what his discography tells us. A lot of his recorded material is of equally high quality, and in some cases even higher, than his official albums/songs.

I have more than 2000 Ryan Adams related songs on my hard disk, many of them are unreleased songs in studio quality, it was quite a task to pick one to present to you…

Ryan-Adams-48Hours

In 2001, Ryan Adams made one of the best albums of his career, and never released it. It’s one of my favorite albums and it has never seen the light of day. The name of the album is 48 Hours. It was recorded during a, yes you guessed it, 48 hour intense session. 48 Hours is the stuff og legends. It was recorded shortly after Gold, and it was helmed by multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns who produced Adams’ Heartbreaker. For reasons unknown, 48 Hours was shelved in favor of Demolition (which does include a few tracks from the session). I love Demolition but 48 Hours is another league.

There are so many good songs on the album, there are at least 5 masterpieces and no fillers.  I should’ve done a post on the whole record, but…

I’ve chosen a country song from 48 Hours as my fifth in the Unreleased series, the song is called Walls:

Great pedal-steel work by Greg Leitz!

I see Walls as a song about looking back at your life, discovering that you maybe should have been more open, it’s about “the walls” between people.

Walls, lyrics:

These are the walls
Walls are emptiness made
Yeah, and this is the storm
Looks like it’s gonna hold
Yeah, nobody knows
Who they are around here anymore
Cigarettes and some beers
Then it’s back in the car to the store

Ain’t it funny how we forgot who we were through the years
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Maybe I had something nobody saw
Blame it on the walls

Well the rain’s gonna come
Come and wash away all of our sins
And if the damn doesn’t break
Going to wash it away with some gin
Cause they got money to make
And I’ve always got a reason to go
Sheets don’t move from the bed
My head doesn’t move from the floor

Ain’t it funny how we forgot who we were through the years
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Maybe I had something nobody saw
Blame it on the walls

Ain’t it funny how we forgot who we were through the years
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Yeah . . . yeah . . . yeah
Oh . . . oh

– Hallgeir

Sources: My own memory and knowledge

Live, Photo

Paal Flaata and Chip Taylor at Smio – Photo special

1 Comment

pfch-13

We have just come home from a wonderful concert. Paal Flaata and Chip Taylor played at  Smio in Vea. They had John Platania on guitar, Gøran Grini on el-piano and Paul Vikingstad was the sound guy (plus bass on the last two songs).

pfch-1

The show was sold out, it is a very small venue with, I think, a capacity of about 50 people. Very intimate. When the band played, they closed the toilet and they closed the bar. We were urged to listen and enjoy the music, but to do the talking before and after the show. Great rules! …and it’s sold out tomorrow as well.
Continue reading Paal Flaata and Chip Taylor at Smio – Photo special →