Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” Re-Release is an Instructive (and Funky) Digital Transformation Story
“Watch out! You might get what you’re after, cool babies.” — Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House”
As a lifelong fan of Talking Heads, I was thrilled to learn earlier this year that indie distribution powerhouse A24 was remastering and re-releasing in cinemas the band’s landmark concert film “Stop Making Sense,” considered by many, including me, to be the greatest film of its kind ever made.
Naturally, I was delighted to be there alongside a friend and a hundred other rabid fans during the recent world premiere IMAX Livestream, streaming direct from the Toronto International Film Festival (this specific Talking Heads event became the highest grossing in IMAX Livestream history) as the remastered classic was shown on an 80 foot screen with IMAX laser projection and digital multichannel surround sound. There was dancing, air drumming, singing along, cheering and even applause throughout the “movie.” Legendary director Spike Lee scored the first interview with the band in 21 years, to cap off the event.
As I continue to read coverage of the re-release, and watch and read interviews with the band, thankfully all still alive and apparently in good health, and seemingly enjoying this “reunion” after decades of bruised egos have kept them apart, it strikes me that this re-release is a tale of digital transformation that offers a very funky lesson any business can learn from.
“And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” — Talking Heads, “Once In a Lifetime”
For backstory, it is circa 1983, and New York post-punk pioneers Talking Heads are enjoying their biggest mainstream hit to date with “Burning Down the House,” from their Speaking in Tongues record, their fifth LP in a span of 7 short years. Their tour is selling out midsize venues all over the country, and noted film director Jonathan Demme sees one of the shows.
“You don’t have to wait for more instructions. No one makes a monkey out of me.” — Talking Heads, “Making Flippy Floppy”
Before long, Demme and the band are talking about turning the show into a theatrical film.
The band makes a series of incredibly smart decisions at this point:
1) They partner with the right people to serve their vision, Director Jonathan Demme, Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner), and various others.
2) They line up the financing themselves, and thereby are able to retain the rights to their own intellectual property.
3) They agree to shoot the film with multiple cameras on each performer and across three distinct performances, which enables Demme and Cronenweth to catch the many subtleties most concert films miss and offering plenty of options for editing.
4) Perhaps most interestingly, the music itself is captured using digital recording media, one of the first films to pioneer the use of this then-new technology.
The film and its “soundtrack,” an abbreviated set of the songs featured in the film, goes on to critical and commercial success on cassette and CD, and achieve legendary status.
The band releases three more studio albums but does not tour behind any of them. In 1991, front man David Byrne notoriously declares in a solo interview that the band has broken up, without first telling or consulting his bandmates. Shock and resentment create a toxic relationship among Byrne and the others for years. Nevertheless, the band as an entity retains the rights to the film and the sound recordings.
In 1999, prompted by the desire to issue a DVD release of the film, the band has the opportunity to remix those digital recordings to take advantage of new innovation in sound and video. Adding in some of the songs left off the original release, a “Special Edition” CD becomes a hit all over again, with even those who still have perfectly fine CDs of the original release happily buying it a second time.
In 2002, Talking Heads are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and while they do play a few songs together at the induction ceremony, fans are devastated that no reunion, no new album, no new tour is forthcoming.
“This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around.” — Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime”
Twenty-one years pass, and during this time, innovation accelerates on every front. IMAX, a quirky, expensive, museum-centric format when “Stop Making Sense” was shot in 1983, has become much more mainstream, and has expanded to include a significant network of specially equipped commercial cinema houses around the world. IMAX with Laser offers 4K images with unprecedented brightness and clarity even on these very large format screens, in houses featuring immersive 12-channel digital sound technology. A new capability called IMAX Livestream enables digital distribution of live content to be projected in the large format.
Meanwhile, Apple makes the concept of spatial audio mainstream with the popularity of AirPods. Dolby’s Atmos technology offers highly dimensional rendering of audio content even through low-cost subscription streaming music and video services like Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube.
“From the age of the dinosaurs, cars have run on gasoline. Where, where have they gone? Now, it’s nothing but flowers.” — Talking Heads, “Nothing But Flowers”
Suddenly everyone has an immersive multichannel surround sound system in their pocket. Bose Centerpoint Surround in vehicles like my Honda CR-V Hybrid, for example, and many other mid-market cars, make it possible to enjoy astonishingly immersive surround sound on the road as well. Listener expectations rapidly evolve. Early recordings begin to sound increasingly antiquated if not adapted properly to these new technologies.
“Why, why, why, why start it over? Nothing was lost. Everything’s free. I don’t care how impossible it seems.” — Talking Heads, “Girlfriend is Better”
In 2023, A24, having worked with David Byrne on his Oscar-nominated song for their Best Picture winner “Everything Everywhere All At Once” negotiates with the band to acquire worldwide distribution rights to the film version of “Stop Making Sense.” They commission a new digital remaster of the film elements, creating a digital transfer in 4K starting from the original celluloid negative.
Jerry Harrison, a highly sought after music producer in his post-Heads career, personally supervises the audio remix from the original digital recordings, layering in extra punch aligned to those subtleties originally captured on film by Demme and Cronenweth, so when the audience sees Tina Weymouth smiling mischievously while playing a funky bass line, or keyboardist Bernie Worrell looking possessed by the groove while evoking those otherworldly sounds from his Prophet 5 and Minimoog, we hear those musical elements elevated ever so subtly above the rest of the band’s playing, enriching the user experience of watching the film and increasing engagement to the point that people are widely reported to be dancing in the aisles and applauding as if they are indeed at a live concert.
A new “Deluxe Edition” featuring for the first time ever the complete set of songs from the film is released in just two formats: digital via streaming services, and vinyl, ironically an analog technology which has experienced a resurgence in popularity, thus creating the amusingly retro need to make high quality analog pressings of content that itself was originally recorded digitally. After 40 years, Talking Heads fans finally have the entire Stop Making Sense soundtrack on the format that was state of the art when the band originally released their first recordings in 1977.
The digital transformation of Stop Making Sense is complete. Or is it? As technology advances, continuous improvement and continuous modernization can proceed indefinitely.
“Why stay in college? Why go to night school? Gonna be different this time.” — Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime”
The lessons learned here are found in those four shrewd decisions Talking Heads made in 1983:
1) Partner with people who will prioritize your vision above their own.
2) Carefully manage ownership of your intellectual property.
3) Set yourself up with options for reworking your assets as new technologies emerge.
4) Be bold in leveraging state of the art technology. Trust that the long-term dividends will pay for the nominal extra investment cost.
To put these lessons into action for yourself, ask yourself how can you make decisions now that will pay off as handsomely for your business in the future?
“The world was moving she was right there with it and she was. The world was moving she was floating above it and she was.” — Talking Heads, “And She Was”
Stop Making Sense is now playing in movie theaters.
Stop Making Sense (Deluxe Edition) is now available on all major music streaming platforms, and on vinyl LP.
Talking Heads merchandise is available through the official Talking Heads store.
© Jeff Becraft. All Rights Reserved.
