God Johnson Stops Making Sense @ Trocaderos 11/24

What a brilliant and obvious idea this was: Take a band of Talking Heads heads and do an interpretation of the classic Talking Heads film, "Stop Making Sense". The show had all the essential elements of such a tribute: A dead on David Byrne impersonator, a fantastic funk band, chicks in grey spandex outfits, and of course, the famous "Big Suit". They weren't able to inflate and deflate the suit the way they did in the movie, but this humble yet spectacular performance was done with a budget considerable smaller than $1.2 million. The show began as does the great concert film, with Byrne walking on stage with a boom box, then casually starting "Physcho Killer" with nothing but an acoustic guitar backing him up. Then the rest of the band slowly joins him onstage, one by one, and eases into the rest of the set. The lovely and aptly dressed backup singers did a fantastic job with "The Genius of Love", the Tom Tom Club hit, as Mr. Byrne took a little break offstage. They also did a fine job with the simple choreography (mostly thrusting hands in the air and running in place) that makes the original film so much fun to watch.

Opening the show was Heatbox, a lone young man representing Minneapolis in high fashion with a red "612" sweatshirt, whose sole instrument was his voice. He had a looping machine that he has obviously spent countless hours with, putting together lots of different vocal tracks and sound effects. The result of his hard work was an astonishing display of talent. The guy beatboxes, sings, raps, etc, and was a fantastic start to the night.




"Stop Making Sense", shot over three shows back in '84, was shot mostly from one camera angle, fixed squarely upon the star of the show, David Byrne. God Johnson's performance featured the appropriately lanky GJ keyboardist Scott Roerick covering most of that starring role. Roerick does an uncanny impression, with great adaptations of David Byrne's jolting dance moves and the creepy, unfocused, distant stare that Byrne is famous for. Tom Collins helped out with that physically demanding role for part of the show as well. In addition to the strong, standard lineup of God Johnson was Aaron Peterson (of WBPN and formerly of Sweet Potato Project) helping with guitar duties, Al Oikari (of Big Wu fame) on keyboards, and Mellisa Klocke and Kari Marie doing the sexy backup singer/dancer thing. Man those grey sweatshirts and little skirts looked way better on them than in the original flick.








Then it was a short but sweet God Johnson set, with a few choice GJ songs like Squirms and Electric Shoes getting the crwod grooving before the nightclub raised the lights and sent us all into the night.