David Byrne On Barry Manilow's Latest

"Barry Manilow’s new album My Dream Duets is all duets with dead people. He sings with Marilyn Monroe, John Denver and Mama Cass, among others — a dream come true for him, as the album title makes clear. The listening experience is uncanny — the dead sound remarkably alive. This is not someone interjecting comments over a scratchy LP or patently lo-fi recording (like the surviving Beatles singing and playing with the late John Lennon). Here, the dead sound like they are fully contemporary. Although the performances on this record never really took place, sound takes precedence over intellect, as all of us who enjoy music know. You will believe. You can reason as much as you like that this never happened, but your senses tell you it did.

"The same can be said of most recordings over the last 40 years. The disconnect is the way we live now. What we see, hear and feel is not necessarily what is actually going on. We can no longer trust our senses. Then what do we trust? In this way Mr. Manilow’s record is profound, bluntly confronting us with this cognitive dissonance. He never conceals the fact that he’s duetting with his favorite dead singers, free of the risks involved in getting their permission, let alone in actually collaborating. But once the digital patchwork is complete, he and his partners sound unanimously chummy and affirmative and defect-free. It’s creepy, but only in your head. - David Byrne, writing for the Talkhouse.

It's the introduction that's creepy in my head.

David Byrne Covers Biz Markie

Stereogum writer Tom Breihan explains:

Cake frontman John McCrea is one of the many artists railing against streaming services like Spotify and the way they only pay a pittance in royalties to artists. He’s put together a nonprofit called Content Creators Coalition, and last night, David Byrne headlined a CCC concert at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge; it also featured McRea, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Tift Merritt, and a few others. I have no idea how this led to Byrne doing an incredibly still and joyous cover of Biz Markie’s eternally wonderful atonal yawp “Just A Friend,” but that’s what happened.

The clip is going viral. I love this.

David Byrne On Web Streaming

"The larger question is that if free or cheap streaming becomes the way we consume all (recorded) music and indeed a huge percentage of other creative content – TV, movies, games, art, porn – then perhaps we might stop for a moment and consider the effect these services and this technology will have, before 'selling off' all our cultural assets the way the big record companies did. If, for instance, the future of the movie business comes to rely on the income from Netflix's $8-a-month-streaming-service as a way to fund all films and TV production, then things will change very quickly. As with music, that model doesn't seem sustainable if it becomes the dominant form of consumption. Musicians might, for now, challenge the major labels and get a fairer deal than 15% of a pittance, but it seems to me that the whole model is unsustainable as a means of supporting creative work of any kind. Not just music. The inevitable result would seem to be that the internet will suck the creative content out of the whole world until nothing is left." - David Byrne in a lengthy Guardian piece that examines (among other items) the meager royalties paid to artists by Spotify.

David Byrne & Jherek Bischoff - Eyes

Gorgeous. Bischoff is in Amanda Fucking Palmer's band.

David Byrne & St. Vincent - Who

St. Vincent took her stage name from the recently closed West Village hospital best known for its role in the early years of AIDS. Her collaborative album with Byrne is titled Love This Giant and comes out on Tuesday. St. Vincent's vocals in this reminds me of Sheila Chandra in Monsoon's 1982 hit Ever So Lonely.

Charlie Crist Apologizes To David Byrne For Ripping Off His Talking Heads Song

(Via - Towleroad)

David Byrne To Charlie Crist: You Owe Me $1M For Stealing A Talking Heads Song

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is suing Florida Gov. Charlie "Closet Case" Crist for using the band's hit 1985 single Road To Nowhere without permission in a campaign ad.

Byrne is seeking $1 million in damages from Gov. Charlie Crist, who's also Florida's former Attorney General, and his senatorial campaign for use of the song earlier this year in a website and YouTube ad attacking his then-Republican primary opponent, Marco Rubio. Crist has since changed his campaign and is running as an independent candidate. The suit was filed early Monday afternoon in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. Byrne tells Billboard.com that he became aware of the Crist ad from a friend in New York, where the Talking Heads co-founder resides. "I was pretty upset by that," says Byrne, who had Warner Bros. Records contact the Crist campaign, which subsequently stopped using the ad. But, Byrne contends, "in my opinion the damage had already been done by it being out there. People that I knew had seen (the ad), so it had gotten around. The suit, he adds, "is not about politics...It's about copyright and about the fact that it does imply that I would have licensed it and endorsed him and whatever he stands for."

Byrne's lawyer is the same guy that successfully sued John McCain for using Jackson Browne's Running On Empty without permission in 2008. Crist's GOP Senate opponent Marco Rubio also recently tangled with Steve Miller's lawyers over his unauthorized usage of Take The Money And Run. That case has been settled. Clearly, the GOP does not respect copyright laws.

Free David Byrne

David Byrne will perform a free show in Brooklyn at the Prospect Park Bandshell on Monday, June 8th at 6:30pm.

In this free concert, David Byrne will perform Music of David Byrne and Brian Eno, featuring material spanning his collaborations with Brian Eno: three Talking Heads albums, 1981’s groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and last year’s Everything that Happens will Happen Today. An ensemble cast including dancers, background vocalists, and a singular band will amplify the spectacle.

I loved The Jezebel Spirit from Bush Of Ghosts.

David Byrne's Bike Racks

Art rocker David Byrne has designed nine temporary bike racks which have been installed around town as part of the Summer Streets program I've been raving about. The dollar sign is naturally on Wall Street, the high heel is in front of Bergdorf's, and the reclining woman is in Times Square, although today's tourists may not get the reference. The lonely man (bottom center) is, sadly, in Chelsea. The racks will be in place for a year, then Byrne gets to sell them as works of art.