Performance art, or actual psychoanalysis in progress? Billy Corgan and David Byrne are set to be psychoanalyzed at New York’s Rubin Museum of Arts as part of a series of discussions on the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The musicians will appear on separate nights, and will be paired onstage with a psychoanalyst, who will ask them to respond to and interpret a folio from Jung’s Red Book as a jumping off point for a broader conversation.

Corgan will take the stage to be psychoanalyzed on November 14; Byrne’s appearance is scheduled one week later, on November 21st. The Byrne event is sold out, but tickets for Corgan’s sure-to-be-intense session are still available. For those unable to attend, audio and video podcasts of the sessions will be made available at some point after the events.

Taking to his blog, David Byrne recently criticized U2’s touring excess after playing a date in Warsaw; claiming that U2’s mega tour effectively subsidized smaller, lower-grossing performances at the venue where he performed, since the money lost on less-lucrative productions would be made back once U2 hit the stage. Byrne went on to say:

Those stadium shows may possibly be the most extravagant and expensive (production-wise) ever: $40 million to build the stage and, having done the math, we estimate 200 semi trucks crisscrossing Europe for the duration. It could be professional envy speaking here, but it sure looks like, well, overkill, and just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all. Or maybe it’s the fact that we were booted off our Letterman spot so U2 could keep their exclusive week-long run that’s making me less than charitable? Take your pick — but thanks, guys!

Yeah, Bono- what about the starving people in Africa? It’s interesting that despite the singer’s effort to brand himself as a messiah for Africa’s cause, Bono has made no attempts to limit the impact, environmental or monetary, of U2’s tour. A STORM IS BREWING.

Photos and words by Rez Avissar

You can read reviews of this show all over the internet. I’ll just deliver with my 2 cents: The weather was perfect, the sound (at least up front) was great, Byrne’s voice sounded full after all these years, the Gala after-party (open bar!) was actually awesome, the amount of people that came out was mind-boggling (I read somewhere close to 30,000). As many reviewers point out, at 57, Byrne is in fantastic form. The press area in front of the stage had about 10-15 feet or so between the stage and the first row, and by the time the band was beginning to hit its stride, somewhere between “Heaven” and “Crosseyed and Painless,” everyone was up out of their seats and the area filled up with a sea of excited, dancing bodies, which remained there for the remainder of the 2-hour long set. That stride never lost steam from there, and of course the more well-known Talking Heads tunes got the most people rowdy and jerking around. One of those concerts where everything goes right.

Our bros, who we just so happen to share some very close quarters with, recently produced a whole magazine dedicated to Mr. David Byrne. As if giving the man an entire publication and calling him an “icon” wasn’t enough, now he’s giving aural tours of his office for them.

From The FADER:
In our current issue, along with all of its other David Byrne-related wonder, you can see regular FADER contributor Jason Nocito’s intimate photos of Byrne in his massive office at the Todo Mundo headquarters. Because of the natural constraints of paper magazines, we were neither able to fit every photo in the issue nor have Byrne explain what you were looking at. Fortunately, we have the internet, and Byrne was generous enough to record this guided audio tour of all the peculiar objects and ephemera photographed by Nocito that otherwise would’ve never been seen. We had so much material, and Byrne had so much to say, we’ve decided to split it into three parts, the first of which you can see and hear above.

Oh, and because they set their Blip link to private, we can’t embed it. So go here and watch it.

Big concert, and currently, every mag large and small in New York is raving about how amazing it was. I had to come out to check out what was in store, as the lineup read like a who’s who of upper-echelon indie rock, crowned by Byrne, plus Sharon Jones!?!? Of course, when you pack this many acts into a night something has to give, and each artist performed four songs or less, sort of bite-sized micro-sets.

The highlights of the night were the David Byrne tunes from the Dark Was The Night comps over the years (including “Knotty Pine” w/ Dirty Projectors, “”Dreamworld: Marco de Canavezes” w/ Bon Iver, “Waters of March” w/ Feist and “Don’t Fence Me In” w/ drummer crew) which sounded amazing, the latter three evoking his African-cribbing heyday, an alternate version of “Flume” featuring Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), “Train Song,” Feist’s Vashti Bunyan cover from the compilation, and the finale where everyone came out at once to do “This Land Is Your Land” which got Sharon Jones REMIXED. I’m not usually one for venues this large, but the sound was incredibly crisp and clear. Lots of collabs, lots of memorable moments. I’ll let the other reviewers recount them to you:

BrooklynVegan
Stereogum
Rolling Stone
Happy Genius Heroes
PAPER mag
Metro Distortion
Quiet Color
Second Doubles
New York Rock Market
Music Mix, Entertainment Weekly
Black Raptor [w/ video]

Google Blog Search: Dark Was The Night

NPR is supposed to have video of the entire concert shortly.

We were only allowed to shoot for the first song of each act (ugh). Here’s what I came up with.

[Dirty Projectors w/ David Byrne]

[John Carlin of Dark Was The Night and Red Hot]

[My Brightest Diamond]

[The National.]

[Dave Sitek]

[David Byrne]

[intermission]

[Bon Iver]

[Feist]

[Sharon Jones]

[everyone]

Look who decides to make a cameo – Annie Clark (St. Vincent)!

In his usual fashion, David Byrne has been keeping himself quite busy, and now the multitasking musical genius will be curating his own stage at Bonnaroo this year — and is the first musician to ever do so at the festival as well.

Byrne’s stage will be on Friday, June 12 and he’s already tapped Dirty Projectors, Ani DiFranco, St. Vincent, Katzenjammer and Santigold to be a part of his world. We’re hoping we will get to see some great collaborations by the end of the Friday set.

Among the multitude of things Byrne is diving into lately, the musician has also confirmed that Santigold will be contributing vocals to his upcoming album with Fatboy Slim. According to Pitchfork, Here Lies Love is a concept album working around the life of former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Byrne has also enlisted the assistance of Roisin Murphy and Tori Amos, among others, to lay down vocals on the new album.

Celebrate Brooklyn’s Green Gala is a bit too costly for the chump change in our pockets, but really, who needs cocktails and a fancy dinner when David Byrne is playing for free? (Well, there’s a $3 suggested donation, but we are willing to throw down some spare pocket change in exchange for some amazing music in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.) Byrne will be kicking off the Celebrate Brooklyn Festival after the gala event, on Monday, June 8.

Byrne will be the first to perform for the summer series at the Prospect Park Bandshell. MGMT, Animal Collective and Jackson Browne will also be playing at the Park this summer, and the line up for the rest of the shows for the summer arts festival will be announced in a few weeks. Unfortunately, MGMT and Animal Collective are not performing for free like Byrne, and tickets of the MGMT performance have already sold out.

Celebrate Brooklyn was started in 1979 in hopes of revitalizing Prospect Park, and has been dubbed one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in New York City. If for some reason you can’t make it to Byrne’s freebie performance in the park, you can try to catch him on the rest of his tour dates, but we’re hoping for this special event we’ll see Byrne decked out in a new fancy tutu.

The rumor mills have been spinning with talk of a possible Talking Heads reunion, but it looks like David Byrne has dispelled these hopeful thoughts. Sorry Talking Heads fans, but it looks like you’ll be more likely to see Byrne twirling around in a tutu on stage these days, than seeing him team up with his former band anytime soon. 

In response to an interview with Metro, Byrne said “I’m not keen and it’s unlikely to happen. I don’t need the money badly enough.” Talking Heads haven’t been on stage together since 2002 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. 

The band split up in 1991, and Byrne has been busy with numerous side projects since, including his record label Luaka Bop and most recently, his collaboration with New York dance trio Brazilian Girls on “Losing Myself” — Byrne’s third hip-hop/dance collab of 2009 according to Rolling Stone.

Byrne will be taking the stage in June as one of the headliners for this year’s Bonnaroo music festival, so if you need your Talking Heads fix, don’t worry. Byrne will most likely be taking your mind on a classically conceptual “Head trip” — adorned with tutus and props galore.

True story: Maia and I are at a bar waiting to interview Lady Sovereign when the bartender — who at at this early hour is just opening up the joint and spinning songs from his iPod — plays the song “Strange Overtones” from the David Byrne / Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today album over the stereo. This prompts Maia to turn to me and ask if I’ve ever seen the video of David Byrne interviewing himself. I say no. Until now.

This hilarious video of David Byrne interviewing himself was originally shot for a Talking Heads‘ film concert by Jonathan Demme.

The Dirty Projectors and David Byrne will be among the more than 30 artists featured on 4AD’s upcoming Dark Was the Night compilation album benefiting Red Hot and the global fight against AIDS.

The album proceeds go to Red Hot, which is an international charity dedicated to raising money and awareness for HIV and AIDS through popular culture. Dark Was the Night will be available as a double CD, triple vinyl and download album, and will be released in the U.S. on Feb. 17.

The album also features tracks from Arcade Fire, Feist, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Beirut and more. The Dirty Projectors teamed up with David Byrne for “Knotty Pine,” which you can check out below.

Dirty Projectors & David Byrne – “Knotty Pine”