Talking Heads – Chronology [DVD]

There are two Talking Heads live albums in existence, and both are rightly considered essential. Everyone knows about Stop Making Sense, the 1984 extravaganza of performance art, cocaine overindulgence and taut new wave funk; but 1982′s The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads might just be the more definitive document, separating the band’s live career into two eras, over two discs – the first focussing on their days as a wiry quartet, the second showing off an ultra-expanded twelve-piece line-up. Chronology, the band’s first “career-spanning” live DVD, seems to attempt to fulfil a similar role – mixing up TV performances, live footage and the different formations of the band – but can’t help but falling way, way short of any of its predecessors.

For one thing, although technically in chronological order, it’s far from a comprehensive set. Let’s not forget, this is a band who didn’t play live for half their career, so any tracks past Speaking in Tongues (only represented here by a needlessly effects-laden TV performance of ‘Burning Down the House’) are immediately excluded. Nine of the DVD’s fourteen full performances are of songs from the band’s first two albums, further cutting down its scope, and even more annoyingly, some songs are only shown in excerpts, including ‘Found a Job’ – for my money, the best thing they ever did. Still, the early performances show an endearingly tentative trio, still finding their way around their music; Chris Frantz’s drumming is rock solid, but David Byrne still seems unsure of how to act onstage, and bass queen Tina Weymouth studies Byrne religiously for her cues, and still finds herself unable to make it through a song without screwing up. Once multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison joins the band in 1977, the live sound bulks out considerably; the nervous energy of the 1978 show-closing take on ‘Thank You for Sending Me an Angel’ (“We were starting to sound like a real band at this point”, they claim in the DVD commentary) is visible in the best possible way.

The TV appearances, however, fare less well, especially a pointless lip-synched version of ‘Take Me to the River’ for American Bandstand that looks like it came from a fan’s worn VHS. These are the kind of curiosities that YouTube was made for, and that find the band neutered by their surroundings – a post-performance interview sees Weymouth describing the frontman as “organically shy” – and playing to audiences who don’t quite get what they’re being confronted with. Byrne’s alleged shyness disappears by the eighties’ performances; a guitarless Byrne twitches his way through a rendition of ‘Animals’, while a kinetic runthrough of early single ‘Love -> Building on Fire’ – performed in front of over a hundred thousand confused people – works surprisingly well with the expanded band.

The bonus features are equally frustrating: a nervous interview with Byrne (its most revealing moment being an explanation of his pre-show bowel movements); an amusingly dated South Bank Show special, aired around the release of Fear of Music. Combining dry interviews with dull stock footage and predictable song choices – the band get introduced to the strains of ‘Who Is It?’ – its moments of interest are few and far between, though a rare four-piece take on ‘Life During Wartime’ trumps the main feature’s rendition from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in terms of sheer performance, if not significance. However the show’s attempt to bolster its subjects’ mystique comes off as pure pretension – obviously, the fault of the original filmmakers, but one which merely renders the show’s inclusion here at the expense of, say, more later performances, baffling. Meanwhile, the DVD commentary is occasionally intriguing (for example, the revelation that Harrison’s monitors were unplugged, leaving him with no idea what noise his synths were making during the Saturday Night Live performance of ‘Warning Sign’), but each member appears to have been recorded separately, allowing them to make catty comments about each other (mostly aimed at Byrne) without fear of recrimination – a sad testament to the lingering animosity between the band members.

If you’re the kind of Talking Heads fan who revels in a thirty-second clip of David Byrne testing his microphone, or a minute of song introductions (none of which are more interesting than the name of the songs in question), then this is for you. However, those of a clearer mind will merely see it as one of three things: a chance to read a rare Lester Bangs piece on the band (which is found in the booklet), an extended advertisement for the merits of Stop Making Sense or – and most likely – the bonus DVD of a non-specific reissue that got ideas above its station. A wasted opportunity.