David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel (1981)

a.k.a. "The Complete Score from the Broadway production of 'The Catherine Wheel' choreographed by Twyla Tharp." The production was staged at the Winter Garden Theatre from September 22 - October 18, 1981. The CD cover promises 72 minutes of music, but my CD player indicates a running time of 69:09.

This album always intrigued me as a teen because it seemed artsy and I desperately wanted to explore a more artsy side of my personality. Not so much in the sense of wearing dark clothes, squatting in an abandoned warehouse, smoking clove cigarettes, and developing a heroin addiction, but more the creative, artistic side of things. Writing and performing music for a dance production? Teenaged me would have jumped at the opportunity (and, in retrospect, I should have created my own opportunity). So it's more than a little surprising I never picked up this LP back in the '80s.

Tharp's website describes the production thusly:

The Catherine Wheel takes its title from a torture device used in the martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. This device has lent its name to a number of familiar things over time - a spinning firework, a crochet pattern, a flower. Tharp’s second Broadway production operates within a world of plurality wherein an archetypal family faces the implosive forces of domestic squabbles and abuse.

Tharp employs another reoccurring symbol with connotations that are at once beautiful and ominous. When one dancer hands another a pineapple, it is both a sign of hospitality and hostility. The shape recalls the Mk2 hand grenades of World War II, nicknamed "pinapple grenades." The dramatic tension builds until it finally explodes in the athletic, pure-dance finale.

The music and lyrics here are full of the tension mentioned above, mainly sounding somewhere between Talking Heads and Byrne's recent collaboration with Brian Eno, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

I went through several distinct stages with this release: 1) curiosity, 2) annoyance, 3) tolerance, 4) appreciation, 5) enjoyment. So it's worth the effort to actively listen to the entire work 5-6 times before passing judgement.

Press of the time:

• CashBox: "a heady mixture of third world rhythms and nuclear funk"
• Record World: "Creatively composed and rich in tone colors"
• Rolling Stone (★★★★): "a dazzling mixture of rock & roll overdrive, R&B elasticity and ambient gimmickry"
• Stereo Review: "music with a ghastly emptiness inside"
• Robert Christgau (A-): "The magic's all in Byrne's synthesis of the way drums talk and the way Americans talk"
• High Fidelity: "seemingly esoteric and ambitious assignment"

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #104
• CashBox: #107
• Rolling Stone: #37

In The Village Voice's annual 'Pazz & Jop' critic's list, this album placed at #13 for 1981.

Tracks: There's 23 tracks here. I think it is only natural that I prefer the ones that are most like Talking Heads. To my ears, those are:

2. His Wife Refused
11. Poison
14. My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)
18. Big Business
21. What A Day That Was
22. Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)

The instrumentals are quite repetitive but they are hypnotic and that's about what I would expect for this sort of production, keeping in mind this is designed to be music for modern dance, not music for listening, if that makes any sense.

I was previously familiar with Big Business and What A Day That Was because of their inclusion in the wonderful Stop Making Sense film. I'm not saying I dig that thing, but I do have the framed movie poster currently above a couple of my CD shelves in my study:

Okay, okay, so I do dig the thing. I dig it very much. It's the best concert film ever produced and I've been a fan of it since its release.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: This is one of those LPs I'd always pick up in the record store as a teenager, carefully read the cover, then reluctantly put it back, deciding to spend my hard-earned Burger King pay on something else.

Previously revisited for the blog:
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (1981)