My year in writing

I wrote a lot of stuff this year! First, let’s talk about the big projects that I started in previous years but finished in 2022. The biggest one was my doctoral dissertation. Read the story of it here. Now I’m in the gradual process of adapting it into a more accessible format, probably a book aimed at music teachers. That’s percolating in the background.

I also finished a book chapter about critical race theory in music education with Frank Abrahams. We started it quite a while ago, before CRT was a regular topic on Fox News and before conservative states started banned its teaching. We were still editing about a week before it went to the printers.

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Psycho Killer

Read my entire Talking Heads series here.

I connect more to Talking Heads’ Afrobeat and funk-inspired material than to their more “song-y” material, but, I mean, this is the archetypal Talking Heads tune, so I can’t not write about it.

“Psycho Killer” is part of a particular family of Talking Heads songs that also includes “And She Was”, “Cities” and “Don’t Worry About The Government“: a collage of simple musical ideas that do not have any obvious relationship to each other. This makes the songs feel comfortingly familiar within each section while also feeling jarringly weird every time they move from one section to another.

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Crosseyed And Painless

Since I’m stuck in my apartment with Covid for a while, looks like I have plenty of time to continue my Talking Heads series. Here’s one of their funkiest and most Afrobeat-sounding tracks.

David Byrne always speak-sings to an extent, but this song has an actual rap verse (“Facts are simple and facts are straight…”) Chris Frantz says that he played Byrne “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow to inspire his delivery. Frantz also says that the song’s title refers to being extremely drunk.

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Making Flippy Floppy

Somebody suggested that I transcribe all the Talking Heads songs. I won’t do that, but I do seem to be in the process of analyzing all of my favorites. There are a bunch! Here’s one. I assume that the title is a sexual euphemism? If so, it’s a weird one.

In addition to the four band members, the track features guitar by Alex Weir and double violin by Lakshminarayana Shankar. According to the album credits, David Byrne is playing percussion. My guess is that he played over a slowed-down track and then they sped it back up. Either that, or he has secretly been a virtuoso drummer this whole time.

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This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

Since my kids continue to be obsessed with David Byrne’s American Utopia, I have Talking Heads on the brain. Here’s one of their best songs ever, produced by the band members themselves.

Here’s the delightful version from Stop Making Sense. As David Byrne says in his interview with himself, “I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house. Love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.”

Here’s a good life goal: learn to enjoy doing anything as much as Alex Weir enjoys playing the guitar.

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David Byrne’s American Utopia

I go way, way back with Talking Heads. The first band I was ever in did “And She Was” as an acoustic folk number. My wife, who is awesome, recently took me on a date to see American Utopia on Broadway. You can see the fantastic filmed version directed by Spike Lee on HBO.

Like everything David Byrne does, the visuals are striking. The enormous band is dressed in matching grey suits, but their feet are bare. All the mics and instruments are wireless. The stage is surrounded by chain-link curtains but is otherwise empty. The lighting is all flat colors, simple geometric shapes, and the performers’ shadows. With nothing else to look at, you focus on the faces and the bodies, which, as David explains at one point, is the whole idea.

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