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Rating: Here! It's from a "here" that the concert-event started, in the sophisticated setting of Umbria Jazz 2018, featuring David Byrne, after the Massive Attack (July 16) certainly the most talked-about artist of the edition, both appealing to a wider audience than just jazz lovers and connoisseurs.
"Here", taken from the latest album by the ex-Talking Heads, was chosen as the opening track, paradoxically—and I believe deliberately—because it closes the album: the concert begins where the album ends. Mr. Byrne appears on stage, behind the curtain that slowly rises; the lights come on, promptly projected onto a 66-year-old, not yet entirely gray-haired, who, sitting down, sings holding a fake brain in his hand. During the song, some of his musicians enter the scene, but only as presences, without their instruments in hand.
"Here", as in "here", conceptually makes sense, since the artist, as a follow-up, goes back 15 years, recovering a song born from collaboration with the electronic dance music duo X-Press 2, which, if you literally take the title ("Lazy"), wants to be a clear autobiographical self-ironic declaration of laziness. It is with this second brief sound episode that Byrne's band of musicians enters, each with their instrument in hand (there's no fixed equipment—no drums, no keyboards on a stand).
The concert starts well, a bit on the lukewarm side, but it's okay. With the Talking Heads classic "I Zimbra", things start to seriously move in terms of engagement. And "Slippery People" (from "Speaking in Tongues" of '83), also by the TH, represents another piece of the growing positive energy hovering around. Still, all seated, the spectators, myself included, can do little, being relegated to an almost static position: you really can't dance, you can't let loose. "I Should Watch TV" (signed Byrne/St. Vincent), "Dog's Mind", and "Everybody's Coming to My House" guide the listener through David's solo panorama, but still, something decidedly needs to make a difference: a gesture, an explicit invitation, both sonorous and not.
"This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" preludes the change of course, what can be considered as the second part of the concert, or if you will, marks the start of the real concert, as it was meant to be. After such a masterpiece, another had to follow—and even more striking!—: "Once in a Lifetime". David barely finishes the first verse, abruptly stops in sync with the band, and yells something to Security. I find myself briefly bewildered but quickly understand: Our man is asking, or rather ordering, Security to allow us, the audience, to stand up and go under the stage to dance and sing, to essentially experience the concert as deserved. And from the second row, it's a whole different thing!... Or better: the fun, enjoyment, and the experience are more pleasurable, more intense.
To reassert, in his purely conceptual way, that we are only "doing the right thing," the ex-Talking Head" begins "Doing the Right Thing". A cover of a Fatboy Slim piece, "Toe Jam", follows, and quickly after, it's madness again with "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" (from "Remain in Light", 1980, an album favored by Mr. Byrne—for many justifiable reasons!). The semi-robotic moment comes with "I Dance Like This", where the artist's self-ironic streak manifests again ("I dance like this, 'cause it feels so damn good; if I could dance, but you know I would"). Begins romantic, calm, elegiac, transforming later into, an industrial dance in the form of an electronic nightmare.
The sinister and esoteric "Bullet", precursor to the semi-gospel "Every Day Is a Miracle", and "Like Humans Do", are the last fragments offered, from a solo career dedicated to experimentation, between pop and "avant-garde." The Talking Heads reappear: "Blind" from "Naked" of '88, and most importantly, the super-hit, the time bomb, the trump card, "Burning Down the House". At this point, the audience is all propelled upward, jumping and dancing in unison, and anyone who was previously skeptical (crazy!) is now aware of the greatness of that 66-year-old man dancing and singing around the stage, in spontaneous symbiosis with the band. It is collective joy, redemption!
The first encore, loudly—and hysterically—called, consists of "Dancing Together" (Byrne/Fatboy Slim) and the exhilarating "The Great Curve", again from "Remain in Light". The second encore, equally desired, consists of just one track: a cover of "Hell You Talmbout", a protest song, written by Janelle Monae, in which several names of African American men and women killed over racial issues are mentioned (including the very young Emmett Till, sung by Bob Dylan).
A concert nothing short of stunning, perfect, executed in the best possible way, by an artist who truly feels the music he plays, the words he says, the movements he makes. A true artist, who knows how to convey and, teach! A "talking head", a sentimental nerd (in the good sense of the term), capable of saying serious things lightly, and saying light things seriously. An absolute must-see, given the chance (hopefully, he'll return to Italy in the coming years)!
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