We speak of “desert island” recordings. Few will land as high up the ladder as the Talking Heads Remain in Light record. A confluence of art punk hijinx, African rhythms, and proto-sampling era field recordings produced by top of his game Brian Eno. To those who know me, you realize that I would need to procure a nearby desert island to house my desert island recordings. There would be Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, natch and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, duh, the storage island would need to be big. So excited was I then to see an event that had original guitarist Jerry Harrison and hired axe-slinger Adrian Belew fronting a crowd of regional jamsters performing this album. Any jam crew worth their salt needs a passing grade in Talking Heads 101, and the outfit Turquaz, now awkwardly named Cool Cool Cool, moved to the head of the class and backed this adventure. CCC had a drummer, drummer/percussionist, bass, guitar/keys, trumpet/keys, multiple saxes, and dueling women vocalists who dervished to the beat. Harrison has been underground for years but seemed grateful to Belew for driving this project. Started with Psycho Killer and never looked back. Cross eyed and Painless, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On), Houses In Motion, Once In A Lifetime were supplemented with Life During Wartime, Drugs, I Zimbra, Slippery People, and Cities. Harrison played Rev It Up from his Young Gods release and Belew tackled King Crimson’s Thela Hun Ginjeet from the simultaneous Discipline recording. The near capacity crowd was into it and I felt like a kid in a candy store reliving my many viewings of this tour. Multiple New Haven shows, West Hartford Agora, the Orpheum in Boston, culminating in the Colliseum Stop Making Sense viewing. I even retained my TH 1982 tour pin. Closed with an excellent reading of The Great Curve, a song that matched this group of musicians perfectly. David Byrne can’t be replaced, his avant-Gump dead pannedness is a singular talent that can only be attempted. The fact that Byrne is a restless artist who is always swimming upsrtream or maybe even out of water entirely, should not relegate this vital music to a drawer. It belongs on a desert island, or on your turntable. For the happy crew in attendance it was the same as it ever was, for the rest of you, well, ……you are still waiting.
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