A chaotic workplace gave me the opportunity to see David Byrne in Sydney. On Friday I was sent to Sydney to help an office move, and on the weekend I pondered what to do there.
So I stumbled upon his Sydney performance. Months earlier I tried to get tickets for his concert in Melbourne but I only managed to find offers by ticket scalpers for $250 and said: Thank you very much. (BTW: today I heard WA banned ticket scalping. Good on them!)
Sydney had some left and so I ended my Tuesday night by walking over to Darling Harbour. I came from the “backside” and was not impressed at all. It looked like a Costco warehouse to me.
I also “marveled” at a 2 metres high pillar full of pictures with verboten items. A handbag more than 25 cm long or a large umbrella, all verboten. I understand the panic of the Sydneysiders now, with the old ladies running around and robbing around, just like in Monty Python. It added to my feeling of dread when I am in Sydney and hear “if you see an unattended item” in the train, contact Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison or whoever is running the scare campaign of today. In Berlin I forgot my saxophone once in a bus, and got it back. In Sydney they would blow it up, I am certain by now, and Peter the Dutton would cancel my visa and deport me back to where I came from.
Back to my warehouse. The crowd inside was more of my taste. I was reminded of an article about old people’s fashion recently: The older ones are more punk than young people, they just do not care. So there was colour and there were flowers and their were generations too. As the father who brought his teenage daughter along and surprised her with Kimbra.
Who was not bad but it is a pity to play dance music to a large crowd sitting. I resorted to my oldest trick: Telling the security that my back hurts so I got an exemption and could stand at the end of an aisle.
However, David Byrne saw it in the same way and asked everybody to stand up and dance if she or he feels like it. What many did, it was a party of dancing and clapping and humming and singing.
He played songs from the Talking Heads which I remember well from the Stop Making Sense movie and album, music from his “Latin American period” when I saw him 1992 in Hamburg’s Stadtpark (a good summer party too), from his more recent collaborations e.g. with St. Vincent, and tracks from his most recent American Utopia tour I did not hear before.
He played, he sung, he danced. And not just him, with him the whole band while carrying their instruments around.It was marvelous, it was mesmerising, it was sung well, danced well, played well.
I have never seen anything like this, and all people I met that night left with their own Once in a Lifetime feeling, it seems.