Photo by Jody Rogac

Written by Jay Allen Sanford

A lot of people will tell you that Stop Making Sense, featuring the Talking Heads, is the greatest concert film ever made. But that would seem to presuppose that one is already a fan of the band’s music, no? Not necessarily. I watched my VHS copy of SMS so often that the label was already worn off long before I found it on DVD, and yet I’ve never once felt compelled to buy a Talking Heads album. For some, bands like the Heads and Oingo Boingo only matter onstage, it’s all about the show. The music is a soundtrack that, bereft of the visual element, is far less than one half of the whole. Onetime Talking Head frontman David Byrne seems fully aware of that fact, and thus promises elaborate theatrics for his first solo tour since 2009 when it pulls into San Diego Civic Theatre on April 17. Though he hasn’t revealed his backing band, Byrne did mention an upcoming album in a statement he released to the press announcing the tour. “I had an idea that everyone in the band might be mobile, so there would be no risers, drum platforms, or any of that stuff,” he says of the stage design. “The band and I will be testing all of this in front of a live audience during a small number of shows, beginning in March. We’ll be doing some new songs, and many others that will, I assume, be familiar…this is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense, so fingers crossed.”