This Business of Show

by David Byrne

I’m thinking about the idea that much military action is not done to achieve its stated purpose, but is rather, in effect, a show, staged for an audience.

Remember these faces. Remember their names.

by David Byrne

These Are Your Representatives Who Voted FOR Trump’s Combo Health Care/Tax Cut Bill.

I’M MAKING A MUSICAL VARIETY SHOW AND YOU CAN TOO!

by David Byrne

On June 1st, a small creative team and I are putting on a variety show here in NYC… and I’m wondering if you can do it too, wherever you are.

ELIMINATING THE HUMAN

by David Byrne

I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has had an unspoken overarching agenda—it has been about facilitating the need for LESS human interaction. It’s not a bug—it’s a feature.

JONATHAN DEMME REST IN PEACE

by David Byrne

My friend, the director Jonathan Demme, passed last night.

What good are the Arts?

by David Byrne

Investment in the arts doesn't cost us money—it MAKES us money!

A Society in Miniature

by David Byrne

What was Black Mountain College's secret sauce? One can’t help but wonder if there was a formula and if the kind of radical innovation that happened there and that was carried out into the world can be repeated, because, boy do we need more of these kinds of models of innovation today!

A RESISTANCE WITH LAUGHS IS IRRESISTIBLE

by David Byrne

This was not MY sign, but it got many laughs. I went to the Women’s March in Washington on Saturday. It was glorious, I’m still…

RIP WILLIAM ONYEABOR

by David Byrne

Played live, Onyeabor's music came to life—it was fresh and transcendent. Everyone felt it. We played it, but he created it. Wherever he's gone, it's sure to be a place with a lot of heart and some killer grooves. Rest In Peace.

A FRIEND REACTS

by David Byrne

I have a Brazilian friend who lives in Brooklyn. She moved here a number of years ago after her father and brother were murdered in a drug related incident in Rio. Like a lot of immigrants she moved here in hopes of a better life.

NOTHIN’ COULD BE FINE-AH THAN TO BE IN CAROLINA

by David Byrne

I went to Charlotte, North Carolina to do some get-out-the-vote work for a couple of days. Granted a couple of days might not seem like much, but elections turn on small results sometimes.

WEIRD AMERICA

by David Byrne

I’m doing a talk with artist Steve Powers moderated by Tom Healy at the Brooklyn Museum this Thursday, August 4th… it’s called Weird America. Steve and I both love found poetry—often from the street—and sometimes we both have the ambitious aim to add something to that dialogue.

THE WAY THINGS GO

by David Byrne

Lots of artists incorporate images and sounds from popular culture as a way of commenting on it. Warhol and Rauschenberg used to appropriate photos from newspapers and magazines for their work—Campbell’s soup was flattered and amused, others not so much, especially when the work started going for serious money.

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

by David Byrne

I was recently invited to contribute to Zoetrope: All-Story, a story and art quarterly published by Francis Ford Coppola, each edition of which is designed in its entirety by a leading artist and available exclusively in print.

GUNS ARE ABOUT FREEDOM: OUR FREEDOM TO LIVE

by David Byrne

It’s not hopeless. No matter what some of my friends seem to imply, I firmly believe we can have gun control and reduce gun violence in this country. Allow me to be optimistic. At this point, any cause for hope is worth considering.

HOW CHANGE HAPPENS

by David Byrne

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead. My new musical about Joan of Arc has me considering lots of so-called dissidents, heroes and revolutionaries. What drives them? When are...

WE’RE BETTER THAN THIS! VOTE!

by David Byrne

I am saddened by the low level to which U.S. politics has sunk. The hate, vindictiveness, personal insults, racism, and pandering—it seems that the worst aspects of the internet have come to life and turned into flesh and blood. The causes are many, but now...

WELL FOLKS, I’VE WRITTEN ANOTHER MUSICAL

by David Byrne

So, what is it about this time? This show is about Joan of Arc—a story everyone sort of knows, or knows something about anyway. Everyone certainly knows how it ends, which I like—it means that everything that happens will feel like an irrevocable tragic advance toward a preordained ending.

IMAGINE THERE’S NO COUNTRIES

by David Byrne

I have a feeling the above line owes as much to Yoko as it does to Lennon, as she had been doing thought experiment art pieces long before Lennon’s song was written. I thought I’d try a similar thought experiment. Are we moving towards a world without borders? Is that a good thing?

WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT SECURITY, ENCRYPTION, AND SECRECY!

by David Byrne

Thanks to those of you who took part in our little amateur survey. We got almost 500 responses, which is more than some political surveys! But we can’t claim that these results are in any way representative or scientific—that said, it was still a fun exercise and yielded somewhat informative results.

KEEP ON FUNKIN’

by David Byrne

Some of you may not know who Bernie Worrell is. He was a lynchpin of Parliament Funkadelic and after that he collaborated with a lot of other musicians—like Talking Heads (that’s Bernie in Stop Making Sense), as well as some of my own projects like Catherine Wheel, the score for a Twyla Tharp dance theater project. The list is long.

11 THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE HIERONYMUS BOSCH SHOW (I DECIDED TO TRY THIS POST DONE AS A LISTICLE!)

by David Byrne

I recently traveled to the small Dutch town of Den Bosch to The Noordbrabants Museum to see the largest assembly of work by Hieronymus Bosch ever assembled. This town was where Bosch spent his entire life—he lived on one side of the square and worked in his studio on the other.

SECURITY, ENCRYPTION AND SECRECY: TAKE A SURVEY AND FIND OUT WHERE YOU STAND

by David Byrne

I’ve been thinking about this whole digital security and encryption mess that’s been in the headlines recently. As an interested citizen (and absolute amateur and non-expert), I’m trying to parse the various sides of this issue.

VERNACULAR CULTURE AND NATIONALISM

by David Byrne

I have a bias towards the vernacular in many areas—in architecture, music, dress, song lyrics, food, and more. I think my bias stems from a possibly mistaken belief that the vernacular—things that we may take for granted and that we may think of as having no author or single creator...

THE ECHO CHAMBER

by David Byrne

Not too long ago some friends were asking each other, “How are Trump supporters so seemingly unaware of his lies and bullshit, and the ridiculousness of many of his positions and ideas?” Lately it seems that anything that contradicts a passionate belief has become invisible.

ARCAS: US AND THEM

by David Byrne

We traveled to the ARCAS Wildlife Rescue Center near Flores, Guatemala by boat—two boats actually: we took one across the lake to a deserted patch of shoreline where a hidden dock revealed itself and then, after a brief hike through the jungle...

LIBRARY STILL LENDING

by Todomundo

Meltdown is over. The artists have moved on to their next gigs, the stages have been reset, and the Southbank Center is hosting another project. One aspect remains, however: the Lending Library is still open!

MY FATHER’S FATHER, BY NOAH WALL

by Noah

“What did (or do) you call your grandparents?” was the question I asked 100 friends and family members. My Father’s Father is a 5 song EP and accompanying short film featuring 217 spoken grandparent names.

BARBARA HEPWORTH - NOT FREE, BUT ADAPTABLE

by David Byrne

I visited the Tate Britain last week, and took in the Barbara Hepworth show on the advice of others-I’m not usually a fan of that era of abstraction. But, to be honest, the work was lovely and, more to my taste, the wall descriptions described a process by which she and her husband and collaborator (Ben Nicholson) came to make the kinds of work they did.

ATOMIC ANNOUNCEMENT

by David Byrne

Happy to say the lineup for the Meltdown version of the Atomic Bomb! band (who play the music of eccentric African musical pioneer William Onyeabor) is now confirmed. It’s one of the more exciting lineups we’ve ever had as this concept has had a number of iterations, so tickets are going fast.

OPEN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY’S BLACK BOX

by David Byrne

THIS should be the greatest time for music in history — more of it is being found, made, distributed and listened to than ever before. That people are willing to pay for digital streaming is good news. In Sweden, where it was founded, Spotify saved a record industry that piracy had gutted.

GROWTH, AUSTERITY, DEBT

by David Byrne

Like many, I've been following the mess that is the situation between Greece and the EU and the Troika — the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. What a mess.

WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE GO TO AN ART MUSEUM?

by David Byrne

Roberta Smith wrote about a Van Gogh show that just opened at the Met. It is a typical formal art analysis, rhapsodizing about brushstrokes and paint handling—which is such a tiny part of what art is about in my opinion...

MELTING DOWN

by David Byrne

Hello all. I'm curating the Meltdown festival in London the last two weeks of August this year! It takes place at the Southbank Centre—a sprawling complex that includes three theaters, multiple lounges, bars, terraces and even a library where every music-related book I own will be available!

CONTEMPORARY COLOR COLLABORATION PHASE

by David Byrne

I visited New Brunswick, NJ yesterday to be photographed with the Color Guard team Black Watch for a magazine feature on our Contemporary Color project. Dev Hynes is doing the music for this team’s performance, which is exciting.

COLORGUARD AND THE FAILURE OF IRONY

by David Byrne

A group of us went to Dayton, Ohio to watch the World Colorguard Championships at the packed University of Dayton Arena. We’re on a trajectory pointing towards our Contemporary Color projects in Toronto & Brooklyn in June.

CONTEMPORARY COLOR: THE PROCESS

by David Byrne

Our Contemporary Color spectacular is a project that doesn’t just come together at the last minute. It’s a long process, and part of that process took place two weekends ago. A group of us travelled to watch the Eastern Regional Championships—where all 10 of our teams competed!

GOT TO BLUR IT UP

by David Byrne

I’m jumping into the fray on the Pharrell/Marvin Gaye copyright ruling. According to Lawrence Y. Iser, a well-known copyright lawyer, "This is a tricky case because while the two recordings do sound similar, the similarity is in the style, feel, tempo and groove, which are not covered by the copyright...

NOMINATED!

by David Byrne

Fatboy Slim and I were nominated for an Olivier Award for Here Lies Love the other day. It’s sort of major—the equivalent of a Tony here in NY.

RECENT ADS

by David Byrne

Sometimes an ad—usually on the street—stops me in my tracks. This is what they’re supposed to do. Sometimes the message is clear, if a little bold and surprising. Here is one that was up near the Holland tunnel entrance...

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM—AN AMSTERDAM DISCUSSION ABOUT MUSIC STREAMING (OCT. 19, 2014)

by David Byrne

I’m concerned that as streaming and subscription models become the dominant way we consume music (not just music, but soon all movies, books, television, video games, journalism—almost any creative content you can name), the amount of income from those services that trickles down to the content creators might not be enough for them to live on.

TALES FROM HERE LIES LOVE

by David Byrne

Due to the way Here Lies Love is presented, with more than half the audience mingling on the floor as they would in a music or dance club, there are often interactions—some humorous, some disturbing—amongst audience members and sometimes between audience members and the cast. Here are a few of those...

ONYEABOR EN MEXICO!

by David Byrne

I was thinking to myself that if we did something or said something to at least acknowledge our awareness and sympathy…this party crowd might not care. I was proved wrong.

AN UNEXPECTED HISTORY LESSON AT THE RIJKSMUSEUM

by David Byrne

The Rijksmuseum museum in Amsterdam has recently reopened after about 10 years of renovation. It’s a giant palace-like structure at one end of a park, also bordered by the Stedelijk Museum of contemporary art, the Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw symphony hall.

RUSSIAN SURREALISM

by David Byrne

I joined Brian Eno and some others for an early morning (for us) look at the Malevich show at the Tate Modern. Mala Gaonkar, a Tate trustee who helped set this tour up, told me a story about contemporary Russia. She said that a web group is currently in charge of creating and spreading chaotic...

I DON’T CARE ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART ANYMORE?

by David Byrne

But now I’m wondering if economics might kill painting off this time, along with a number of other kinds of work that we sometimes think of as part of our culture.

UK NEWS

by David Byrne

London and the South is dominated by old school politics and Tory conservatives, many of whom all went to school together—the English old boy network never really went away.

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE SCOTTISH

by Todomundo

Frequenting his favorite London pubs, the English artist Paul Davis asked Scottish friends and strangers what they thought about the impending referendum on independence from the United Kingdom.

THE STORY OF WILLIAM ONYEABOR AND HIS MISSING ITALIAN FRIEND

by Eric Welles Nyström

In the early 1980's, William Onyeabor was traveling the world. He was establishing his own record company, Wilfilms Limited, in his hometown of Enugu, Nigeria, and wanted to...

EMMA BYRNE

by David Byrne

Emily Anderson Brown was born on the 18th of July, 1921 in Glasgow, Scotland to Sarah and William—nicknamed “Willie”—Brown, who painted railroad signals for a living.

GAZA AND THE LOSS OF CIVILIZATION

by Brian

Between the two of them we got to see some harrowing things - Palestinian houses hemmed in by wire mesh and boards to prevent settlers throwing shit and piss and used sanitary towels at the inhabitants; Palestinian kids on their way to school being beaten by Israeli kids with baseball bats to parental applause and laughter...

LICENSED!

by David Byrne

Last week, Billboard magazine asked for my opinion on some music licensing-related issues for an article they have just published. Due to space consideration, my long answers were trimmed for…

CASTING THE WORLD

by David Byrne

A group of us were just in Manila to look for actors and singers for the London production of Here Lies Love. (We found some good ones!) Luisa Hinchliff from the...

STOP MAKING DIGITAL SENSE

by David Byrne

Today the Jonathan Demme documentary of the Talking Heads concert (or four concerts, actually) that eventually became titled Stop Making Sense (after a lyric in the song “Girlfriend is Better”) is released digitally. That means...

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT

by David Byrne

There have been almost daily reports in the news about the battle between Amazon, U.S. publisher Hachette, and German media group Bonnier. Amazon's tactics are among the most ruthless in the world. Their typical mantra is, “We’re all powerful. You have no choice but to accept our heinous terms—or else.”

CHINA!

by Todomundo

This post is written by our friend Sarah Caplan, who worked at Todomundo for many years on art and music projects. Some years ago she left and eventually moved to East Palo Alto, where she and her family live now.

STRANGE WEATHER

by David Byrne

“Epic,” I think, is the word that is often used.

BANDWIDTH AND NET NEUTRALITY

by David Byrne

It seems to me that the resurgent issue of net neutrality—whether all net traffic has an equal opportunity to go at the same speed—is very much related to bandwidth, with Netflix using 32.25% of the total web bandwidth of North American home users nightly, followed by BitTorrent, YouTube streaming, pirate sites and porn.

GOOGLE IS EVIL

by David Byrne

I have a few Android devices, and I noticed the other day that my phone was not storing my recordings on the SD card. I use it to record memos for songwriting—it’s a great way to jot down ideas. Then I got a notice that the SD card was no longer available as a storage medium. WTF?

DES MOINES

by David Byrne

On my way back to NY from LA, I stopped in Des Moines, Iowa to attend the opening of a joint called the Des Moines Social Club. A guy I met, Zachary Mannheimer—a Brooklyn transplant—has created this place that combines a restaurant, bar, theater, outdoor performance space, classrooms...

ONYEABOR TOUR: FANTASTIC GIRL

by David Byrne

We did the Onyeabor show at the Greek Theatre in L.A. last Thursday night. It went incredibly well.

ENGINEERING AT THE ROYAL BALL

by David Byrne

I’ll skip the red carpet stuff—the web is probably full of that. I was introduced to people I didn’t know—and some I did. I shook a lot of hands and tried to introduce myself and pronounce my name clearly.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MUSIC

by Jasper Berg

Welcome to the first edition of "From The Archives: Music." While maintaining the living archive here at Todomundo!, we often come across interesting, funny, contemplative and/or somewhat…

DOWNTOWN! DOWNTOWN!

by David Byrne

A bunch of us are staying at the new Ace hotel here in downtown LA, as it’s relatively close to the Greek—where we’re doing the Onyeabor show tonight. I love downtown LA. This part of town is perennially being touted as an area ready to explode and revive, but it’s still a pleasant mess.

ATOMIC BOMB: THE MUSIC OF WILLIAM ONYEABOR

by David Byrne

Last year, Luaka Bop released a compilation of the songs of William Onyeabor—Nigerian electro-funk musician, who created music in the '70s and '80s. It's been a dream to put together a band that could bring Onyeabor's music to life—and Luaka Bop, with Sinkane's Ahmed Gallab, has done it!

HERE LIES LOVE CAST ALBUM OUT TODAY + LORTEL AWARD WINS!

by David Byrne

The cast album of Here Lies Love—with seven new songs—is out today on Nonesuch Records! As I've mentioned before, the physical package is gorgeous, and includes 2 CDs containing 26 songs, sung by the wonderful, original cast...

DIGITAL BRASILIA

by Callan Lamb

Callan Lamb works at Kickstarter, lives in Clinton Hill, and is currently working on a young adult novel. This blog has been thinking and writing a lot about technology and music and security, and we thought it would be nice to switch gears and have some ideas about technology and design represented.

GET IT!

by LeeAnn Rossi

LeeAnn Rossi from Todomundo went to the color guard world championships in Dayton, Ohio in April 2013. What, you may ask, is color guard? Well, it’s connected with drum line and marching band—but it’s really a thing unto itself.

April Radio: The Chills

by Steven Reker

Here is a collection of songs I have been jamming to lately that in some way have had a physical effect on me. Sometimes I'd catch myself swaying in the subway and I would say to myself, "Ha! Oh no—I'm that guy now." 

HOW WILL THE WOLF SURVIVE: CAN MUSICIANS MAKE A LIVING IN THE STREAMING ERA?

by David Byrne

I have written elsewhere that it looks doubtful that musicians will be able to make much of a living from their recordings given the kind of pittance that trickles down from streaming services after record labels and others have taken their pieces of the pie.

BREAKING UP WITH THE INTERNET

by David Byrne

About a month ago, I was asked to join some serious writers (Colin Toibin, Zadie Smith, etc.) at a reading. The theme we were given was "The Night We Called It A Day," and I applied that to something I'd been thinking about—what will the world be like AFTER the Internet?

THIS PERFORMANCE SUBSIDIZED BY SWEAT EQUITY

by Annie-B Parson

I make dances for people for a living; I am a choreographer. I trade in movement, a highly unusual profession.

BIG DATA, THE CYCLICAL UNIVERSE AND THE END OF SCIENCE

by David Byrne

I was reading a piece in Artforum by Mario Carpo on big data and how it is being used by a new wave of architects. He made some surprising comments that sort of blew my mind. He pointed out that for many hundreds of years, science has been about discovering the essences behind phenomena.

March Radio: Accumulated Goodness

by David Byrne

It’s been quite a few months since I did a streaming playlist of the various contemporary songs I’ve been listening to.

HERE LIES LOVE IN CHANCE MAGAZINE

by Todomundo

Chance is a new large-format photography magazine (this is only their second issue) that views the world "through the lens of theatrical design." 

THE STORY ABOUT THE SWEDISH MACHINES IN WILLIAM ONYEABOR’S BACKYARD

by Eric Welles Nyström

My name is Eric Welles Nyström and I work for Luaka Bop. Originally, I come from Sweden. William Onyeabor comes from Nigeria and you might wonder what any of those things might have to do with each other. That’s what I’m going to tell you now.

CONTENT DICTATES FORM

by David Byrne

I’ve been reading Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat about how and why he wrote lyrics for so many musicals. I’m not familiar with most of these shows, but it’s enlightening anyway. As he says, you can love to read cookbooks even if you don’t cook.

BIG CHANGES TO DB.COM!

by David Byrne

We have redesigned and completely changed the focus of the website. Like many websites, this used to be more or less an online archive—if you were persistent and dug enough you could find pretty much anything. Now we are changing the focus in two significant ways.

UPDATE—THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SECURITY

by David Byrne

A little while ago, I wrote that when news broke that Target's database of credit card numbers had been hacked, 40 million cards were compromised. It was also claimed that no PIN numbers were stolen. Neither of those claims turned out to be true.

NOLA PART 3

by David Byrne

What is nice here is that a food place can be considered great and be either a funky joint or a fancy place that demands that men wear suits. Fancy places have no prerogative on quality and reputation.

NOLA PART 2

by David Byrne

New Orleans is wonderful; the folks are generally generous, talkative and enjoy life. But it’s also the victim of a lot of bad policies, corruption and sad decisions. It’s almost as if the city is being punished for being as generous, sensuous and fun-loving as it is.

NOLA PART 1

by David Byrne

My daughter and some of her friends rented a whole house in the Bywater neighborhood here through AirBnB—it’s a shotgun house with peeling paint and three bedrooms with a FEMA inspection sign spray-painted on the front.

YOU ARE THE TARGET

by David Byrne

A few days ago Target revealed that they’d been hacked—beginning before Thanksgiving and ending December 15th. 40 million credit and debit cards were compromised: names, numbers and expiration dates. The name of the store now seems prescient.

WELL COMPOSED

by David Byrne

It was unlike anything I'd heard: odd and gorgeous.

HERE LIES LOVE BENEFIT SHOW

by David Byrne

On November 25, 2013, the cast and crew of Here Lies Love came together to perform a concert version of the show, in order to raise funds for the relief effort Doctors Without Borders is carrying out on the ground in the Philippines.

NO MORE RECORDS

by David Byrne

These days, it’s common to hear talk of the demise of recorded music as a source of income for musicians and the concurrent re-emergence of live performance as the primary way that we will hear and experience music...

DIVERSITY!

by David Byrne

I went out to Corona Plaza in Queens this morning to be supportive of the neighborhood DOT’s neighborhood plaza partnership initiative that is expanding to the outer boroughs. There are a number of these pop-up plazas in Manhattan...

SMITHSONIAN AWARD—ENGINE YOU-ITY

by David Byrne

A while back I got asked to present Annie Clark with a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. I immediately said yes.

A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

by David Byrne

What’s coming next from the NSA? As has been pointed out, it’s not easy to tell what they are or what their aims are just by name. Tracfin, for example, traces our credit card purchases.

BARELY SURVIVING, A GUARDIAN OP-ED

by David Byrne

So, what's the deal? What are these services, what do they do and why are these musicians complaining?

WILL WORK FOR INSPIRATION: THE FUTURE OF NEW YORK

by David Byrne

I’m writing this in Venice, Italy. This city is a pleasantly confusing maze, once an island of fortresses, and now a city of tourists, culture (biennales galore) and crumbling relics. Venice used to be the most powerful city in Europe—a military, mercantile and cultural leader. Sort of like New York.

DES MOINES, IOWA, PT II

by David Byrne

Iowa, especially central Iowa, has an incredibly beautiful, well maintained and extensive network of bike trails that stretch all over this part of the state.

DES MOINES, IOWA, PT I

by David Byrne

Today we’re in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I blogged about the town and The Great Log Jam years ago. All this made me think that however much we might hate traffic jams and bottlenecks, they have an upside. In those days they forced a pause that allowed whole towns to expand and flourish.

TIGHT SPOT

by David Byrne

I realized that the type of maps we associate with our days at primary school and childhood was what I was imagining—not a realistic rendering of our planet or a map showing the physical world.

August Radio Working Women Present: Crown Shyness

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