I had to work at the library on August 1 2023, and had a lunch with a friend from out of town so I wasn’t able to get much done on the site on that day. Also, recovery time from the trip. New York was exceedingly hot. This reminds me that I really should be checking the weather at the locations of each date. I’m not sure how difficult that will be.
On August 2 1983 Talking Heads performed at the Springfield Civic Center in Springfield MA. After performing the night before some 9 hours away.
To my layperson’s mind, it seems like a lot of travelling to begin a tour. Nine hours south from NYC to the first show, nine hours back north for the second? However, my researcher’s mind tells me that professionals usually have reasons for the choices they make. Unfortunately, the tour manager, David Russell passed away years ago and won’t be able to answer my questions. Hopefully I can convince Matthew Murphy, the road manager to share his insights at some point. In his Remain in Love book, Chris Frantz asserts that “Tina and I toured by bus with baby Robin and nanny Louise; the rest of the band travelled by plane.”
The Hartford Courant announced this show for the Center’s “Little Arena” on July 22 1983:
The venue is now known as the MassMutual Center there’s an…interesting blog post here describing the atmosphere at concerts back then. One author incorrectly excluded Talking Heads from a 50 most memorable nights list.
Working on this project has alerted me to the works of hardcore fans of other acts. In my last post, I linked to a Jerry Garcia fansite documenting all of his appearances. While researching this venue I discovered the Brucebase Wiki which is exactly what you think it is. Candidly, I only really mildly enjoy Springsteen’s 1994-2002 work and find the Grateful Dead dreadfully boring but I REALLY love overly dedicated fans compiling data (obviously). Brucebase reports that the pre-renovation Civic Center seated 8000. Talking Heads Concert History says that the show was a “half-house arena setup” so I’m guessing about 4000 attended this show. Given the proximity to various colleges, it seems possible that it came close to selling out.
There will be a post at some point about backstage passes, but it looks as though this show/promoter had its own passes, the Consolidated Entertainment Group.
Tickets had seating printed on them, so probably not a general admission show. Ticket shows $11.50 price, but even in 1983 there could be some variance in price between sections.
I’ve been able to find an audio recording of this show. The setlist, as for most of the tour is:
- Psycho Killer
- Heaven
- Thank You for Sending Me an Angel
- Love -> Building on Fire
- The Book I Read
- Slippery People
- Cities
- Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)
- Burning Down the House
- Life During Wartime
- BREAK
- Making Flippy Floppy
- Swamp
- What a Day that Was
- Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place)
- Once in a Lifetime
- Big Business/I Zimbra
- Houses in Motion
- TOM TOM CLUB: Genius of Love
- Girlfriend is Better
- Take Me to the River
- ENCORE: Crosseyed and Painless
I’m hoping to develop my musical and auditory description skills here. I’d really love to share these tapes, but I don’t want to violate Talking Heads copyrights. I’m going to add a song or two occasionally.
The tape begins just after the start of Psycho Killer, so we don’t know how Byrne introduces the show. It’s kind of stunning to hear how fully formed the band is at this point. Five months before Stop Making Sense would be filmed, most of the songs sound very similar to the final versions. That said, Byrne’s acoustic strumming patterns on Psycho Killer are considerably less…intense…that the performance that eventually began Stop Making Sense.
After Life During Wartime, Byrne announces “we’ll be back in about twenty minutes.” The “does anybody have any questions” does not appear, which affirms the assertions that that line of dialogue was added in postproduction to the film.
In Making Flippy Floppy, Worrell’s solos are somewhat different, it seems like he improvised here to a greater extent than in other songs.
The intro to What a Day that Was is quite extended. It sounds like Byrne missed his cue to begin singing, so the band cycled through a few more bars before he jumped in.
On Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place) the band seems to have some trouble finding the groove, it may be because the audience clapping along is throwing them off. It’s really interesting because there’s a freshness to the song that later live versions don’t have. The song itself has a coziness that later performances complement. This performance has an uncertain kind of electric charge to it.
This is only the second time the song had ever been performed in front of an audience EVER. It wasn’t yet the familiar classic, as covered by the Lumineers, Arcade Fire, Shawn Colvin and MGMT. It wasn’t yet the title (and premise) of a Sean Penn movie. David Byrne hadn’t performed it over 200 times on Broadway or some 250 other times on solo tours (Researcher-Ted really wants to verify these numbers, casually pulled from setlist.fm, but this blog is designed to help Writer-Ted improve so I’m uncomfortably forcing myself to not spend a couple of hours verifying specifics).
The album had been out for a while and Naive Melody might’ve even been your favorite song, but you hadn’t seen the music video (it hadn’t even been filmed yet), you didn’t have a single (it wouldn’t be released until late autumn). At this point the famous “lamp dance” had been seen by maybe 5000 people the night before. This song is new and obviously great and band is really trying to put it across. The audience clearly responds.
