How Do We Get To Carnegie Hall? (a brief history of music)

(originally posted on myspace here)

I caught the "slightly expanded" transcript of this talk a few months ago on the very rewarding blog of David Byrne ("the Noticer" I call him). The subject, how the space you perform in dictates what you make, is obviously very close to my heart (a lot of the ellipsis-heavy stuff I say in "Money" is tailored to our oblong acoustics) and there's something particularly exciting in seeing an entire history of an artistic medium presented purely in terms of the changing spaces that have showcased it. Anyway it's on youtube now (delivered by Byrne disguised for some reason Jim Jarmusch) meanwhile I'm off to try and make another trailer for the show (Ben Brantley of the New York Times may feature heavily).

 

And here is that expanded version on Byrne's own blog.

And here is the New York Times on us, yum.
And, oh, here is Michael Billington, being wrong on the New York Times, petty I know but we're playing sometimes to audiences of just fifteen right now, so I'll tear my consolation from whatever seedy nook I can. (On the plus side these smaller numbers are really helping the acoustics. Good, dream- like echo.)