David Byrne & the Balanescu Quartet performing on Sessions at West 54th (recorded 1998-10-13 at Sony Studios, NYC, aired on PBS 1998-12-01)
David Byrne famously performed here in 1997, and hosted some performances by other musicians, but in this episode (in addition to hosting) he performed again, alongside The Balanescu Quartet, featuring string arrangements that would end up paving the way for his next two albums.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:38 Balanescu - Revolution
04:46 Memories Can't wait
08:20 Interview
11:40 Burnt by the Sun
16:10 Dreamworld
22:22 Interview
24:15 The Model (Kraftwerk cover)
Some notes:
- Interviews are between David Byrne and Alexander Balanescu
- The piece that the Balanescu Quartet plays at the start is their own song, "Revolution", from their 1994 album Luminitza. (Not to be confused with David Byrne's 2001 song The Revolution)
- Memories Can't Wait comes from the 1979 Talking Heads album Fear of Music
- Burnt by the Sun comes from David Byrne's 1979 album Feelings
- Dreamworld is a duet by David Byrne and Caetano Veloso
- The Model (or Das Model in German) is originally from their 1978 album The Man-Machine (or Die Mensch-Maschine in German)
David Byrne's band:
David Byrne - vocals/guitar
Christina Wheeler - vocals/theremin
Rea Mochiach - drums
Desmond Foster - bass
(Missing Bruce Kaphan who previously toured with the other four during David Byrne's Feelings tour)
The Balanescu Quartet:
Alexander Balanescu - violin/vocals
Clare Connors - violin
Nicholas Holland - cello
Bill Hawkes or Paul Martin - viola
(I've spent a while researching Balanescu members/instruments/photos from adjacent years to try identify who's playing here, since the lineup changes a lot, this is the best I've been able to do)
David Byrne performed 11 songs but only 4 were included in the TV broadcast unfortunately.
However, there's an audience recording of the full performance, featuring both songs and spoken segments that didn't make it to TV.
Here's a link to a Google Drive with the audio files if you want to listen to it: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
1. Memories Can't Wait (Talking Heads song from Fear of Music)
2. Sax & Violins (Talking Heads song for the soundtrack to Until the End of the World)
3. The Dream Police (Rei Momo)
4. Burnt by the Sun (Feelings)
5. Finite=Alright (Feelings)
6. Dura Europus (The Forest)
7. Hanging Upside Down (Uh-Oh)
8. Dreamworld (David Byrne + Caetano Veloso duet)
9. I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Whitney Houston cover)
10. Kings and Queens (Unreleased song)
11. The Model (Kraftwerk cover)
[The Model is missing from the folder but it's in this video at least]
Credit to Ruben M for providing this video