David Byrne And Dave Longstreth Get Red Hot
David Byrne has a post over at his blog (thanks for the tip, Jen) about collaborating with hyper balladeers Dirty Projectors for an upcoming Red Hot compilation. You've likely seen these collections in the past: Starting with 1990's Red Hot + Blue, and through 2002's Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti, the series, via the Red Hot Organization, benefits AIDS research. Byrne's been a part of a few of them. He's very excited about this one:
So, who's on this one? Feist, Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Sharon Jones, The Decembrists, The National -- jeez, what a lineup!
After that, he gets more specific about the Dirty Projectors and the track he and Longstreth concocted, even if they refuse to look each other in the eye.
[...] I like what Dave Longstreth and Dirty Projectors are doing, although part of what attracts me to them is something I can't exactly place, can't figure out. Their music has familiar elements, yet often sounds like pop music by someone who has read about the form, but never heard it, and then handed the essential building blocks to make some songs. That's not actually true though, as Dave made plenty of jokes about music while we were working --he has a deep knowledge of tunes and their respective artists. But the band's music remains completely strange and oddly familiar at the same time. I'd been told more than once that we should all work together, and it seems the suggestion was fated to be realized.For one song, Dave L sent me a demo by email that he had recorded in a Vienna hotel room on tour. I did my best to figure out the chords and the tempo, and record my own version, for which I then wrote the words. We didn't end up using my recorded version; but the words, and my somewhat straightened out version of the melody, came in handy.
As a starting point for the second song, I sent Dave some lyrics I had written in maybe '75 or '76. I used to type out odd little pieces in those years, some of which turned into Talking Heads songs. These lyrics were unlike any I knew at the time, and made some of those TH tunes so peculiar. These songs didn't lack emotion, but filtered it through an extremely constricting linguistic bottleneck, making the tension more pronounced, though never explicit. That sounds pretentious -- and maybe it is -- but looking back I can now see how truly odd those lyrics were. And I realize I don't, and probably can't, write like that anymore. Given the Projectors' output however, these lyrics seemed like something they might "get".
Here are the words to the second song (I always wrote lyrics all in caps back then):
HERE IS THE SOUND THAT PHOTOGRAPHS MAKE
WHEN I SEE THEM
WHEN I HEAR THEM
I SEE REGIONS OF SHARP PRECISION
OVER ABUNDANCE
OVER INDULGENCE
TIED TOGETHER WITH ROPE AND TWINE
STUCK TOGETHER WITH PASTE AND GLUE
TWO OLD PLANKS OF KNOTTY PINE
A COUPLE OF NAILS THAT POKE RIGHT THROUGH.Dave and Co. set them to a bouncy little tune. The tune is as oddly structured as any of their pieces, but you sort of don't notice because it is really catchy and it all flows as if nothing untoward is going on whatsoever. Amber sang the first verse, and Angel, Dave and I sang the second.
I added a little guitar solo at the end and we were done. Nicholas began mixing as I hobbled back to Manhattan with my broken ribs. I still feel that I may have straightened out these DP tunes just a tiny bit, although perhaps it's not an entirely bad thing: I sense that my participation reveals that there is a lot of method into what -- at least for some -- appears to be the total madness of the DP's tunes.
The man is insightful, really nailing certain ineffable aspects of those Projectors. As we've said before, we sort of worship Dirty Projectors. As we've also said before, and will likely say again, want to come blog for us Mr. Byrne?
Posted at 12:44 PM
Tags: Dave Longstreth | David Byrne | Dirty Projectors
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david byrne's brian eno.
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You do realize that you just copy-pasta'd nearly the entire blog post, right? Um, how about just quoting a small portion and linking to the rest, like all other blogs? Good grief, you don't need to pad your posts.
Anyway, it's cool to see some old, old Talking Heads lyrics. Good to see an artist who's not afraid to dig into the past for some material, as opposed to the "Don't talk to me about that, I've evolved!" attitude of so many others.
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You do not edit a genius like David Byrne--especially when he's talking about another genius like Longstreth.
I agree that it's interesting to see an artist dust off old material and give it to another artist to transform.
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Longstreth is possibly the modern day musician who most reminds me of a young David Byrne.. so I'm interested to hear the outcome of this collaboration.
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