Watch an Unearthed Talking Heads Concert From 1980
Rare concert footage of Talking Heads performing during their legendary Remain in Light trek has been unearthed after 35 years. Filmed four years before the band’s concert film Stop Making Sense, this 80-minute performance was taped in stark black-and-white at Passiac, New Jersey’s Capitol Theatre on November 4, 1980. The show came less than a month after the quartet released their landmark Remain in Light, and five of the gig’s 14 songs are culled from that album.
Songs like “Houses In Motion” and “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” take on a rawer, more frenetic guise on the stage, with the Talking Heads – then at the peak of their powers – aided onstage by King Crimson’s Adrian Belew, who contributes Fripp-ian guitar to the Remain in Light tracks. Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell – who performed with the Talking Heads live throughout the Eighties – also appeared at the Passaic show.
As Dangerous Minds notes, only the “Crosseyed and Painless” performance from the Passiac show has previously been released; that track appeared on the group’s 2011 Chronology DVD. The rest of the concert remained unreleased until it was dug up and posted onto YouTube by Music Vault. Dangerous Minds also writes that the Capitol Theatre was, thankfully, one of the venues at the time to have installed a multi-camera video system.
In other Talking Heads news, the music of David Byrne and his band will be the subject of an all-star Carnegie Hall tribute on March 23rd. The Roots, Perry Farrell, Rufus Wainwright, Sleigh Bells’ Alexis Krauss, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Beth Orton are all tabbed for perform at the benefit concert, with proceeds going to music education programs for underprivileged youth.