“The big difference between us and punk groups is that we like KC and the Sunshine Band. You ask Johnny Rotten if he likes KC and the Sunshine Band and he’ll blow snot in your face.

—Chris Frantz

For me, the apex of the Talking Heads’ career was, hands down, Remain in Light and the subsequent tour with the expanded “Afro-funk orchestra”  line-up featuring future King Crimson guitar god Adrian Belew wringing all kinds of impossible noises out of his guitar. When the band released their (excellent) Chronology DVD in 2011, it included a clip of an astonishing 1980 performance of “Crosseyed and Painless” taped at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ, probably one of the few mid-sized concert halls of that era to have installed a multi-camera video system. Where there’s one number, there tends to be, you know, an entire show, as I and many other Talking Heads fans mused upon seeing that tantalizing excerpt and now the whole thing was posted recently at the Talking Heads page at Music Vault.

Setlist:
0:00:00 - Psycho Killer
0:05:45 - Warning Sign
0:11:34 - Stay Hungry
0:15:25 - Cities
0:20:10 - I Zimbra
0:24:41 - Drugs
0:29:23 - Once In A Lifetime
0:35:11 - Animals
0:39:28 - Houses In Motion
0:45:56 - Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
0:53:05 - Crosseyed And Painless
0:59:30 - Life During Wartime
1:04:56 - Take Me To The River
1:11:02 - The Great Curve

Personnel:
David Byrne - lead vocals, guitar
Jerry Harrison - guitar, keyboards, vocals
Tina Weymouth - bass, keyboards, guitar, vocals
Chris Frantz - drums, vocals
Adrian Belew - lead guitar, vocals
Bernie Worrell - keyboards
Busta Cherry Jones - bass
Steve Scales - percussion
Dolette McDonald - vocals

This setlist is as good as any Talking Heads show ever got and the build up to the synapse-burning finale of “The Great Curve” makes this my favorite long form Talking Heads show (I’d take this over Stop Making Sense any day, they’d already peaked by then.) This is so… fresh and joyful sounding. Timeless. If this doesn’t provide you with some sort of MASSIVE eargasm, you simply don’t like music. Or maybe you fear it?