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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