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FORGIVE_ME_FOR_LIVING

                                              February 12, 2007

Some of the parts left out of

      PLEASE_KILL_ME


David Byrne's voice is
an obvious absence...
so I went looking for
his comments elsewhere.

David Byrne interviewed
by David Bowman in 1999 for Salon:       [ref]

    I tell him that I think the new        (See the hook for a great example
    Victor Bockris biography of Patti      of clever music journalist garbage.)
    Smith is a real cut-and-paste
    slam job. "Do you know Patti       BANG
    Smith very well?" I ask.
                                                 CAMDEN_TOWN
    "No," he answers. "I met her a couple of
    times and that's about it. Talking Heads
    used to see her play all the time. It was
    great. But I think she felt we were sort
    of arty and pretentious or something. We
    didn't have that rock 'n' roll romantic
    thing that she had. Maybe she felt that
    we didn't hold any of those values." He
    takes a bite of food, and adds, "Lenny
    Kaye, who was with her since day one, was
    real supportive of us. He saw one of our
    first shows and started calling other
    people to come see us."

    I reach out and touch his
    sleeve. "I want to be your Victor
    Bockris." Byrne laughs -- a wicked           Huh?  This interviewer
    child laugh. He knows I'm making a           also published a hit-piece
    sinister joke -- Bockris seems               on the Bockris book in
    rather sleazy.                               the NY Observer.  It doesn't
                                                 make any more sense:
    ...
                                                    [ref]

   "In photos of yourself in your early 20s
   you look..."  I pause, then mutter,
   "a little geeky. But then several years later,
   in photographs by Richard Avedon and Helmut
   Newton, you're as beautiful as Gary
   Cooper. ... "

   "When the band was starting, I would get wrapped up
   in different ways of dressing. Leather pants one
   year. Dyed hair another year. Whatever. I was kind
   of naive about deportment. The whole thing of being
   onstage and presenting yourself -- being this
   adjunct to the music -- I didn't have a grasp of
   it. It's artificial in the same way that any acting
   or stage performances are artificial. But if you
   know how to do it, it's telling the same story as
   your other work. It's not like Robert Redford, who
   looks the same no matter what movie he's in. You
   never feel like he inhabits a role."


Miles, New Musical Express, 23 April 1977
"This is a Minimalist Headline":               [ref]

   "After rehearsing for about six months
   and getting some material together - we
   lived near CBGBs and we noticed that
   here was a place where few bands were
   playing at the time and very few people
   were coming to at the time. It was just
   beginning and at times there would be
   ten people in the audience. We thought
   it would be a fine place for us to get
   our thing together and find out what
   worked in front of an
   audience. Relatively quickly after
   that, there started to be more and more
   groups there - " David sat back                  Whenever this guy
   sharply- as if he'd already said too             David Bowman plays
   much.                                            mind-reader, I wonder
                                                    what's really going on.
    ...
                                                    " ... 'This Must be the
   It seems that playing their material             Place' by David Bowman.
   live did more to influence David's               Bowman promised to
   writing than art school. "When I                 deliver a heavyweight
   first started writing, my stuff was              critique of the band,
   more, I guess, Structural,                       but Byrne says he has
   Structuralist, stuff like that. And a            written 'a book about
   lot of it wasn't very uplifting type             me and Tina fighting'. "
   sentiments but then, after we played
   it, is was just so much fun playing              [ref]
   it that I can't say negative things
   when I'm having so much fun. So I'm              About the CBGBs era:
   having to start writing songs which
   are more fun to sing, which coincide             "'We were also the only
   with us having fun singing."                     band on that scene that
                                                    had a groove,' says Byrne."

   An example of the negative sentiments
   David talked about is "Psycho Killer",
   the only song in their repertoire
   which dates back to Artistics
   days. "Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que
   c'est?" (What is it?) - surreal
   non-sequitors.

   "The Artistics was another attitude",
   Tina says. When they perform the
   number live David is galvanized into a
   twitching marionette. "My voice does
   sometimes get a little high" he
   admits. He sure doesn't look as if
   he's having fun.


                                          And I see David Byrne has his
                                          own CBGBs book out now...
                                          Or at least a photo book where
                                          he wrote an afterword.



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