Retro Video Unit (9/16/11)

I realize it's already Saturday, but I was quite busy at work yesterday and couldn't get around to posting this. (Maybe I should find some of these videos and bookmark them ahead of time?)

When my monthly deadline happens to fall after a weekend, most of the work has to be completed before that weekend (or during it, and we know that's not going to happen), for arcane reasons having to do with how the various databases communicate with each other.

Last weekend I went to the latest installment of a music show called Mixtape. Local musicians and bands come together to perform songs from a given year; this edition was all songs from 1978. I turned 15 that year, and I listened to the radio all the time, so these were songs I knew well: the Bee Gees, Styx, Billy Joel, the Grease soundtrack.

But then one of the bands came on and did "Take Me to the River" (by Al Green, but covered significantly by Talking Heads in '78) and "Stay Free" by the Clash. It got me thinking about how this was right around the time when I was starting to discover that there was other music out there beyond what was popular and got played on the radio.

I saw Talking Heads on Saturday Night Live in 1978, and their second performance that night, of the song "Artists Only," was nothing like their earlier rendition of "Take Me to the River": the music was jerky and angular, and David Byrne was sweating and twitching around the stage like a guy having a controlled seizure. I was spellbound, confused, and intrigued.

Unfortunately Saturday Night Live doesn't seem to allow its music clips to be posted on YouTube (at least not the ones I've looked for), and I'm fairly certain there was no official music video for this song, so let's go with this: a live performance of "Artists Only" from May 1978.