Every performer is completely unencumbered, able to freely move around the stage. Everything - vocal microphones included - is radio-controlled. There are no cords plugged into instruments, nor are there any amplifiers to be seen. Something they all have in common is that they’re in no way attached to anything. Some of them sing, others play instruments, many do both all of them are involved in various forms of choreography, be it dancing, swaying, or marching. More performers, gray-suited and barefoot, join them onstage. The set list is off and running, with “I Know Sometimes a Man Is Wrong” from Byrne’s “Rei Momo” album. Soon, he’s joined by two other performers, both of them singers, both of them, like Byrne, dressed in gray suits, and barefoot. Lee had seen the show a couple of times when it was being shaped on the road, and attended many more of them on Broadway, so when he brought in his cameras near the end of its run last February, he knew exactly where to place them, including on the ceiling, right above the stage.īyrne opens the proceedings by his lonesome, seated at a table, holding a plastic model brain, singing “Here,” the final track on the “American Utopia” album. Some of them are in the almost two-hour set (“Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” “Road to Nowhere”), but there are also lesser known tunes from the Heads catalogue, a few from Byrne’s solo career - right up through “American Utopia” - and a couple of covers. It’s not, by any means, a collection of Talking Heads greatest hits. It’s a non-stop performance, consisting mostly of Byrne’s catchy, often idiosyncratic pop music. Whether or not you’re a David Byrne/Talking Heads afficionado is irrelevant, as the film of the concert-stage presentation is an inspired and entertaining production. Now, the combined creative vision of Byrne and Lee comes to television, premiering on Oct. So, he developed the concert show into a stage show, brought it on the road to work out the kinks and get it ready for a run on Broadway, and contacted Spike Lee about directing a film of it. At some point during the tour, he got to thinking about the 1984 Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense,” which evolved from the band’s 1983 tour to promote the album “Speaking in Tongues.” Byrne got the idea that maybe “American Utopia” would also work as a film. He went on tour, with a band, to promote it. Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman, released his solo album “American Utopia” in 2018. Here’s a simplified version of how “David Byrne’s American Utopia” made its way from album to stage to film.
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