David Byrne & St. Vincent – Who

This video comes from the first single off of the album Love This Giant, the collaboration between David Byrne and St. Vincent. I love that David Byrne is still out there, being himself* (and looking more like David Lynch’s brother with that white hair), and they are taking the show on the road.

BrooklynVegan has been posting a tour diary from Kelly Pratt, who is one of the horn players on tour. It’s pretty interesting and not just because I like the album and am a long time Talking Heads fan. For instance, who knew that marching band experience could ever come in handy off the football field? Band geeks unite! And that nearly the entire band has taken bicycles with them on the road. Is that not the coolest thing ever?! Did you know David Byrne has designed bike racks before? I do think I read that somewhere once but have you seen what this company can do to a bike rack? So freaking awesome!! I want one!

(click the links, you will be rewarded with things like a video of Burning Down the House from the Minneapolis show this past Saturday night.)

I played the French horn in junior high and high school. I don’t think any of us ever thought our time sweating it out in our band uniforms would ever end in anything as cool as touring with David Byrne & St. Vincent. We were mostly thinking that it got us out of study skills or some other lame class no one wanted to take. Our band teacher in New York was adamant that the French horn could only be played properly if sitting down so we never marched with our French horns. We played the euphonium when we marched, which was nice since it was smaller and easier to carry.

The band teacher up in Maine, where we moved halfway through high school, was not so particular about our proper French horn posture so we marched with our horns. To make matters worse, we also had those Buckingham Palace guard style hats. Somewhere at my mother’s house there is a perfectly awful picture of me, in that band uniform, playing the French horn on the football field. I look about 20 pounds heavier too because I had three layers on underneath to try and keep from freezing. Marching band in Maine suuuucked. It sucks everywhere but November in Maine is already winter. You couldn’t be in band the rest of the year unless you did marching band in the fall. Although I did know these two kids who signed up for hunting lessons just because they conflicted with football games and they managed to get away with it. As a recently transplanted New Yorker, that struck me as being the ultimate sign that we were really in the boonies.

* Case in point, he has a new book out too, How Music Works.