Deep Cut Concert Review: Talking Heads / The B-52’s August 24, 1979 — Berklee Performance Center, Boston

Mass Ave crosses the Charles and runs down toward the ornate headquarters of Christian Science. Music and God. Symphony Hall is nearby, and up the block is the Berklee. Not the school. The performance center.

I’m early. Not because I’m anxious, but because I’m running lights. Rock and roll spilling out of the East Village and up I-95. Two bands. Sold out. It’s 1979. The ’70s party is winding down, and the punks are winding up.

The bands stand in opposite corners of the rock ’n’ roll arena. On one side, Talking Heads. The headliner. The crowd they draw is a new wave of ears. They take it in like a picture in a museum. They want deep and understated, and Talking Heads deliver. They stand onstage and play. The groove is locked. David Byrne, down center, is as much a rock professor as a lead singer. It works. Their new album, Fear of Music, is out. They’ve already found an audience.

In the opposite corner is the B-52’s, a new band with a debut album just out. What genius paired these two bands on the same bill? We’re in for a history lesson: the flamboyance of rock over the past twenty years matched with the sober truth-seeking of Talking Heads. And the audience is primed for the journey.

You can tell there’s a buzz in the air when you arrive. People are lining up, hanging out. Waiting. They want the same air as the musicians. They want to carry that feeling through the whole day. At some of the shows I work, people sleep outside overnight. I always walk past them and check it out. You can tell a lot about the day you’re about to have by looking at the crowd and the expectation on their faces.

Inside, new cables run across the stage and out the back door. They belong to radio station WBCN, a powerhouse for rock and the new music coming up around it. BCN’s airwaves soak Boston every night. You drive around the city with the station on. It sets the cultural pulse, and tonight it’s here to capture this moment. Decades later, the recording still carries the charge of the room.

I sit at my light board and watch the bands get organized. It’s a simple setup, and Berklee feels like a place built for listening. It has a slightly uptight air. Jazz professors and complex riffs. But on nights like this, it becomes something else.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn. It’s the BCN DJ hosting the show.

“Does the place do a lot of rock? I’ve never been here.”

I remember a Bose sound system that’s supposed to deliver the music to the back seats as soon as the front seats hear it. I don’t know if it works, but I do know this: rock acts overwhelm it, creating sheets of sound that drown out the acoustics. The hall has a secret weapon, though. It feels intimate. It’s soaked in vibe. All music. I’ve heard every type of music on this stage.

I look down and see David Byrne standing there in an overcoat. The setup swarms around him, but David just stands. He’s staring out at the sea of empty seats.

“I’ve got to go,” I say to the DJ, leaving him watching the setup.

In the hallways, I run into Fred Schneider. I’m studying Bartók and Rimsky-Korsakov, so I’ve never heard of Fred’s band. But my gig is to light them, so I put my hand on his arm to get his attention and introduce myself. I need to understand what he wants from the lights.

Fred looks at me and smiles. He waves his hand in the air.

“Make it green and pink!” he says, then laughs. “And when we do Rock Lobster, get it smaller and smaller and smaller.”

He crouches as he says it. He looks up at me.

“And then…”

He pauses for a beat, then leaps up.

“Let it explode!”

David has a different idea. He stares at me like I’m not really there, then says, “Can you make it look like a parking lot?”

I try. I pull the curtains back to expose the backstage, turn on the work lights, and settle in behind my lighting desk, figuring I’ll do nothing. I like the look. Byrne has stripped away the entire artifice of a concert. He’s clearing things out to make room for the music. It’s a lesson I take to heart. Anything that gets in the way of the songs has to go.

I love it. But Berklee doesn’t. They pull the curtains back into place. I’ll have to make my parking lot with white light.

First, though, the B-52’s.

They’re almost manic: a tight pulse, alien ’50s vocals, and Schneider’s dramatic delivery of inane lyrics. Our pink and green light follows the swimming vocals of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. Beehive perfection. The guitar and drums lock together like an overtightened wrench, the snare dry against the brittle guitar.

The band launches into “6060-842.” Fred takes the lead, and off-the-cuff accents float in and out of the song. The B’s have an idea, and it seems to be to march into the songs and out again, like quick-stepping surf soldiers looking for a beach-pit barbecue.

“This next song is about a volcano,” Fred says. By “Lava,” the band’s signature is clear: a pounding, locked rhythm, spiky leads, and voices swooping up and down like seagulls hovering over a trash dump.

All the B’s need is a guitar amp, a snare that hits like a shotgun, and keyboards that alternate between popped riffs and synthesizer bass. It’s enough to get the crowd going. We travel through “Private Idaho” and the rock-and-roll dunes of our midnight beach party, then into the cutting riff of “Rock Lobster.”

Fred goes down, down, down, and I take the lights with him, into a tight solo spot as he crouches onstage in darkness. When he leaps up, the stage explodes in bright pink and green.

Then Talking Heads walk onstage. Each player takes a place and roots to it. I flood the stage with white light and leave it alone.

The groove is simple but tight. Chris Frantz lays down the beat, and Tina Weymouth’s bass locks into it. The band is in no hurry. They open with “Artists Only” and let the groove deepen, Tina’s bass sketching the hook before Byrne begins to sing.

It’s a stark contrast to what has just happened in the performance center. Talking Heads lean into grooves that feel looser than the B’s. Their upright stage presence moves us: a Lower East Side 3 a.m. dance to a Bowery beat. It’s not a beach party in Byrne-land. It’s modern-life angst, drifting identity, buildings, governments. Sex and drugs are ashes in the fire pit.

Talking Heads are grounded in the mind-meld of Chris and Tina, no matter how far into outer space David drifts. That’s the beauty of the band, the timeless arc of their songs: set loose and rooted in the earth at the same time.

The grooves shift across a landscape of backbeats and soul. They put lots of space in their songs. And funk. Tina’s bass works across the band, bringing all the parts together, from the edgy “Mind” to the almost prog-rock flavors of “Electric Guitar.”

Almost. To my ears, prog rock starts with blistering chops. Talking Heads keep grounding the show in an East Coast rock march, committing to a pounding beat that Byrne can bounce his intense lyrics on like a skin-tight trampoline. It sends him higher, into herky-jerky dance moves, his sunburst guitar held tight to his gut.

I think the crowd takes some time to move from the beach to the Bowery, but by “Psycho Killer,” they’re there. They rise and turn the Berklee into a dance hall.

The encore brings “Life During Wartime,” then “Take Me to the River.” Again, the groove settles into our hips. Tina’s repeating bass line lets Jerry Harrison punch organ slabs across the beat. David opens his voice into a lyricism I haven’t heard in the other songs.

A lot has happened between that night in Boston and today, but this Al Green cover is one of the great covers of all time.

Talking Heads set list

1. Artists Only

2. Stay Hungry

3. Cities

4. Paper

5. Mind

6. Heaven

7. The Book I Read

8. Electric Guitar

9. Air

10. Warning Sign

11. Love → Building on Fire

12. Memories Can’t Wait

13. Psycho Killer

Encore:

14. Life During Wartime

15. Take Me to the River — Al Green cover

## The B-52’s — released live recording

The following is the track order on *Live! 8-24-1979*, rather than a claim that every song played that evening appears on the release.

1. 52 Girls

2. 6060-842

3. Lava

4. Private Idaho

5. Devil in My Car

6. Dance This Mess Around

7. Runnin’ Around

8. Rock Lobster

9. Strobe Light

## The musicians that night

Talking Heads:

- David Byrne — vocals and guitar

- Tina Weymouth — bass and backing vocals

- Chris Frantz — drums

- Jerry Harrison — keyboards and guitar

The B-52’s:

- Fred Schneider — vocals

- Kate Pierson — vocals, keyboards, and synthesizer bass

- Cindy Wilson — vocals and percussion

- Keith Strickland — drums

- Ricky Wilson — guitar