ALBUMS: Stop Making Sense (1984)
MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$$
This is the soundtrack to the movie some critics have called the greatest rock concert movie of all time. They aren’t far off base, although I think the Martin Scorsese film featuring the Band and many others, ‘The Last Waltz,” is a worthy adversary for that ‘best’ title. Some might say Woodstock.
The movies are similar only in that rock music was being played.
Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, is a concept performance that totally works. It makes the Talking Heads seem better than you thought they were. And they were good.
Filmed live over four nights in Los Angeles, the movie starts with David Byrne, the Heads’ lead singer and chief songwriter, walking on stage with a ‘boombox,” setting it down and seeming to turn it on. It’s the song Psycho Killer and Byrne sings solo with the beats. For each song another musician joins Byrne on stage so by the time they get to ‘Burning Down the House,’ the entire group is playing.
Byrne is wearing a ridiculous oversized business suit as they go through their songs. This whole thing wouldn’t work if it were not for the song quality. Songs like ‘Once in a Life Time,’ ‘Life During Wartime,’ ‘Slippery People,’ and the Al Green cover ‘Take Me to the River.’
A song about living in violent times, Life During Wartime, is just as relevant today:
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain’t got time for that now
There are many more great lyrical lines: ‘This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife … Hey how did I get here ‘ from Once in a Lifetime.
Every song is a winner and played live so perfectly that it sounds studio produced sometimes on the record where you can’t see the performance.
If you are to buy only one format, I’d probably buy the DVD. I didn’t do that because I rarely buy DVD’s, especially movies I have seen.