Why the big suit?. Review on Stop Making Sense

If you have never heard of the band Talking Heads, or haven't heard enough of their music, this movie is for you. If you HAVE heard of the band, and, like me, you love their music, then this movie is for you. The movie is basically footage from four shows performed during the final leg of the Stop Making Sense tour in 1983, and featured the first all-digital film sound in history. Jonathon Demme's skillful direction, David Byrne's set design and execution and the band's signature quirks on stage are combined perfectly into a performance consisting of almost 20 of their most popular songs. The Talking Heads' David Byrne (vocals and guitar), Tina Weymouth (bass, percussion and vocals), Chris Frantz (drums and vocals) and Jerry Harrison (guitars, keyboards and vocals) are joined by Lynn Mabry and Edna Holt (backing vocals), Alex Weir (guitars and vocals), Steve Scales (percussion) and Parliament-Funkadelic's Bernie Worrell (keyboards). The DVD, released as part of the 25th anniversary of the film's release, contains the following songs: Psycho Killer, Heaven, Thank You for Sending Me an Angel, Found a Job, Slippery People, Burning Down the House, Life During Wartime, Making Flippy Floppy, Swamp, What a Day That Was, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), Once in a Lifetime, Genius of Love, Girlfriend Is Better, Take Me to the River, Crosseyed and Painless, Big Business/I Zimbra (Bonus), Cities (Bonus). The special feature on the DVD is the very funny ''David Byrne interviews... David Byrne'' interview which was originally filmed to promote the movie in 1984. The movie begins with David Byrne walking onto an empty stage with a guitar and a tape recorder. With the typical Byrne penchant for understatement, he says, ''Hello, I'd like to play a tape for you'', and starts playing Psycho Killer. I love the live version and it is definitely one of my most favourite tracks ever. Slowly, as the concert progresses, more and more stuff is added to the stage, and more and more musicians come onto stage. By the time Burning Down The House (another personal favourite) begins, all nine musicians are on stage and stay there till the end. Byrne came up with this idea of slowly filling up the stage instead of the usual deal. After Burning..., Byrne shows up with his now-famous big suit - specially designed to be a few sizes larger - to perform Life During Wartime, which I also happen to like. The most unlikeliest of love songs is Naive Melody, and in this movie, David Byrne sings it to a lampshade. This is immediately followed by Once In A Lifetime, featuring Byrne's weird chicken dance and seizure dance. This song basically drains Byrne and he has to take some time out while The Tom Tom Club (ie Talking Heads minus Byrne) perform their most famous song, Genius of Love. I really like the live version, its faster than the original. (This song was sampled in Mariah Carey's Fantasy, Mariah even sings a couple of lines from this song - ''Time is heaven with my boyfriend, my lucky boyfriend/ There's no beginning and there is no end...'') This song is followed by Girlfriend Is Better, which contains the phrase stop making sense, an allusion to Byrne's style of song-writing in the early 1980s. All members deliver a superb performance and one can watch the energy slowly build up as each member comes onto stage. This is one of the best movies about bands ever made, and if you need your 80s music fix, I highly recommend this movie! If not, at least the soundtrack. I give it a 9.0/10!