Retro Video Unit, Concert Edition

I know I just did one of these last week, but I decided to try something a little different. Maybe I'll alternate it with the regular individual videos.

Digging around in the remainder bins of YouTube, I come across lots of stuff, including entire concerts from decades ago. Sometimes the shows are posted by the bands themselves, others are just from fans.

A couple of weeks ago The A.V. Club posted a Talking Heads concert filmed in Passaic, NJ in November 1980. It was a good show but it was done in black and white and some of the camera work was a little iffy in spots. Commenters suggested this show from the same year that was filmed in Rome, I'd seen references to it elsewhere, and it was conveniently listed in the sidebar of the other concert, so that's what we'll kick things off with.



[Historical note, of sorts: three days after that Passaic show, Talking Heads played at the Providence Performing Arts Center (which I think had a different name back then). I could have gone but I didn't know anyone else who was into them at the time, and I didn't know their music all that well yet either. That whole tour, coming right after the arrival of their groundbreaking fourth album Remain in Light, has become rather legendary, especially after the release a few years later of their concert movie Stop Making Sense—sort of an early '80s hipster equivalent of "I was into them before they got big," but with a legitimacy earned by having witnessed something truly special. One of my biggest musical regrets is that I didn't go to that Providence show.]