Sunday, October 18, 2020

Musical: David Byrne's American Utopia is the greatest show of all time

David Byrne's American Utopia
on HBO directed by Spike Lee, filmed from the Broadway show. Love the shit out of David Byrne. I saw the touring show live in Indy at a great venue with really good seats. Fucking sick. Seen over 100 bands in my life. This was by far the best show I've ever seen. American Utopia was more than a concert. It was performance art, something of a TED Talk, and people just stoked to be jamming together.

Really solid and optimistic set. Some of the best of The Talking Heads, minus "Psycho Killer," the show is too positive for that. Definitely the best of his solo work. Some powerful covers in there as well. Some of the setlist includes "Lazy," "I Zembra," "Everybody's Coming to My House," "This Must Be the Place," which is my favorite, "Once in a Lifetime," and so on and so forth. 

I'm obsessed with this show. Listen to it all the time and watched a copy on YouTube at least three or four times. Sooooo, when this dropped on HBO last night, I was stoked, but I'd been enjoying the fuck out of it for a while now. It was great, don't get me wrong. But at one point I sort of asked if this was the best use of Spike Lee at this point. I felt that sort of anyone could have done this, and I thought he sort of fucked up one of my favorite parts, when Byrne dances like a wildman to "I Should Watch TV." It's really fucking sick, but Spike cuts away and we don't see any of it. What the fuck, man? Is this amateur hour?

But there were some cool flourishes, like some cool overhead stuff. Couple of times I was pretty impressed seeing the movement from above like that. Then we got a standard Spike Lee shot at the end when the band rides home on their bikes, this to remind us it is Spike 'fucking' Lee doing this shit, I guess.

The use of space and light is incredible and has to be experienced first-hand to truly be appreciated. That's why this fell a flat, to me. But totally still worth watching. Also made me miss going to concerts and being with the people I went to that concert with, truly some of my favorites and some of the best. But can't be there now or see them, so might as well enjoy this, I suppose.

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