David Byrne: Music from the Knee Plays

I remember getting this on import (the spine of the LP says $9.98) from the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, before it came out in the UK, I think. The price label says £5.49, and, incongruously "chart LP".

While I was packing for our house move, I realised how many David Byrne books I've collected, Strange Ritual, The New Sins, True Stories, Envisioning Epistemological Epistemological Information, Your Action World. It's a similar thing with his solo albums: I've accreted a large number of his disparate projects without really noticing it.

The Knee Plays were the linking pieces in Robert Wilson's grand design for a durational theatre piece, The Civil Wars at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It was such a grand design that it never happened, but a few pieces of the jigsaw, like this, came to light. Jeremy saw Byrne perform it, I think at the Royal Festival Hall. Apparently Byrne was sitting on a tree stump as he delivered the half-sung, half-spoken lyrics. I'd have liked to have been there, because I really like this album, even though I don't play it very often.

The best way I can think of to describe it, if you haven't heard of, is as an extension of Listening Wind (from Remain in Light) — indeed that song gets name-checked on the album. The words are full of Byrne's elliptical speculations about people imitating other people's supermarket shopping habits in order to become more like them, and the superstitious routines they have for being successful in their jobs.

MusicBrainz entry for this album