#Ednah

[widespot]

"What a good girl, eating your mush right up!"

"I'm about asleep on my feet and the commode's clogged and the chicken should be put away - you think maybe it's near bedtime?" "Ahbaahba ah!" "Sigh. You're right. I'd better get some caffeine."

Fortunately Delilah is able to rouse herself early and take over. Ednah, at least, is a self-starter.

"Yes, I know, you had to sit there trapped for too long. I'm sorry, but Mommy had to unclog the commode. Thank you for your patience."

Roxanne is more interested in live things than toys.

In the interest of giving Edwin a bit of a break, they spend a little more money than they should on beds toddlers are supposed to be able to get in and out of by themselves.

(It's possible I've got a hack conflict for the Haffa Crib and Changing Table. Edwin in particular froze in front of it for hours, and even Delilah lagged at it. I was afraid Edwin had actually got himself corrupted, but I guess we'll find out.)

[leonardcohenofficial]

david byrne, lynn mabry, and ednah holt during "life during wartime," stop making sense (jonathan demme, 1984)

[cyber-corp]

I finally got around to watching Stop Making Sense last night, and I don't see enough people talk about Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt, the backup singers.

Not only do they breathe life into classics from Talking Heads' catalogue, but it's very clear they're both having the time of their lives on stage. Their presence is absolutely infectious, and it's so hard not to smile any time the camera focuses on them.

They had the chance to perform with a great band and they seized every second of it. They are the stand outs for me

[moviemosaics]

Stop Making Sense

directed by Jonathan Demme, 1984

[mychameleondays]

Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense

incl. booklet

EMI 1C 064-24 0243 1

Released: 1984

[asshatproductions]

What’s your dream job that you definitely cannot do today for whatever reason, I’ll go first-

I want to be a backup singer for The Talking Heads during the Stop Making Sense shows sO BAD.

[spilladabalia]

Talking Heads - Life During Wartime (Live in LA, 1983)

[tiahnaparisart]

STOP MAKING SENSE

Stop Making Sense is a Talking Heads concert film directed by Jonathan Demme (you may know his some of his other work, including 3x Oscar winner Silence of the Lambs) featuring the debut of the Big Suit as a soon to be cultural institution spoofed and styled for decades to come. I love Talking Heads and their particular brand of New Wave absurdism is very much up my alley and a great source of inspiration.

These illustrations are available for purchase, either on merch at redbubble (link also in bio) or by DMing me for a digital copy! I have found some of the official merch to be lacking the creativity of the show it promotes, so the goals with this one were to make something as fun, loud, and loose as the music!

[whataboutyouisamascot]

Perhaps my fondness for Espera originated from

Them

[strathshepard]

Ednah Holt "Serious, Sirius Space Party" (West End, 1981) mixed by Larry Levan. Flyer for Valentine's Day party at Paradise Garage, NYC, 1982

[void-flesh]

Ednah Holt and Lynn Mabry performing with The Talking Heads

[widespot]

Edwin and Delwina do get out of the house. It's only to the library, but what better destination could there be, really? Edwin thinks he could pick up some much-needed cash if he went busking at the park, but then who would keep an eye on Delwina?

Roxanne grows up all nice and neat and taking after her mother, at least in the nose department.

"Get used to this, honey. Learning is a lifelong thing and this is the first and most important lesson."

Ednah takes a wee bit longer. Edwin sure hopes she's not got any development issues.

"There we go! Whee!"

"Mommy is going to hate that outfit, but she'll survive it. And what a beautiful nose you have!"

[roadworkaheadyea]

Edna/Ednah/Eden/Edith/Edwina whatever YALL call her

Charles coming soon

Also the cancellation just proved Edwin right the cases (and their own deaths) don’t matter (throwback to that beautiful scene in the first episode) 😭

[charlierosewriting]

This viewing of Stop Making Sense, in a cinema I went to alone, did two things: it ruined every other time I'll ever try to watch this film again in my life, and revealed itself to be what it has been this whole time. Anti-performance anxiety propaganda. It also cracked me wide open.

I've always seen Stop Making Sense in one of two modes - communally on a TV through it's built-in speakers, or on my phone alone with my big chunky noise-cancelling headphones. I pick whether I want to hear it with others but sacrifice the sound quality, or to hear it at its most beautiful but by myself. In a mostly empty cinema, Stop Making Sense becomes both at once. I can't be sure if it's the A24 remaster or just hearing it on a capital everything SOUND SYSTEM, but the entire experience feels warmer and human this way. Tina Weymouth's bass playing is clearer than ever before, the synths taking a bit more of a backseat to its rumble, and the percussion of both Chris Frantz's drums, David Byrne's boombox and (most transformatively) Steve Scale's set-up hit almost with the force of actual, unshielded, live drumming. After each song, the couple behind me cheered and whooped (half-ironically), and after the midway point I joined in (completely earnestly). It's still not perfectly analogous to a live concert, even then. The audience noise is near immersive in surround sound, but it still feels as distant as the band does all the way over up on that stage. When the songs end and the crowd noise begins, the cinema experience feels strange and hollow and disconnected. I love this way more than a perfect Disneyland imagineered recreation of a Talking Heads concert.

That last point is actually where the most magic is found in seeing Stop Making Sense in a cinema, and what really started to pierce into me; the craftsmanship is more visible. These are small chips in the paintwork you can't see until you get your nose right up to the masterpiece, and every one of them adds more texture and beauty to the whole.

It's easy to be swept away by the sheer magic of Stop Making Sense in any of my usual viewings, because it's already perfect. In Crosseyed and Painless, the camera pans between Alex and David as they trade absolutely cracked guitar solos, and it is a frontrunner for my favourite shot in any film. The whole thing feels effortless and fluid from beginning to end, a document of a band in their peak, beautiful moments of improvisation and genius popping up from both the performers and the cameramen, something divinely ordained.

But when Tina Weymouth is 20ft tall, you notice her lips don't quite match the audio track on Genius of Love, and remember that the film was shot over four nights, not one continuous concert. It isn't a gift from the goddess of music, it's a team of creatives sweating in a studio with probably not great A/C to make something that feels cohesive. When David dances with Ednah and Lynn on Burning Down The House, they perfectly match his strange movements and mimic the guitar playing, and when they're 20ft tall you remember that there must-have been a rehearsal. You remember that the physical CD of Stop Making Sense you own includes a booklet, in which every movement and stage direction is documented, and you wonder if that was written before or after the performance.

One I noticed long before I saw it in the cinema was during the objective pick for best Talking Heads song, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), when David enjoys watching the lamp he dances with wobble back into place for just long enough that he misses his cue to sing, and is back at the microphone just half a beat AFTER he starts singing on the audio track.

This is not nitpicking. This is revelatory, this is beautiful, this is the best the film has ever been. This is the autism of Stop Making Sense.

Like Stop Making Sense, I am profoundly autistic. I have been autistic all my life, and I will continue to be autistic. If you asked me if I'm proud to be autistic, I'd say yes, but at the same time I'm sadly not sure if that's true. I have masked so thoroughly and for so long that removing the veneer isn't freeing. Taking it off doesn't let my skin breathe, it exposes raw flesh so tender that it is stung by the air. Some people never have experience with air, tell you not to worry about it, but I think that David Byrne has.

He writes more songs about buildings and food, he dances either like a marionette or like a panic attack, he sings like he is bearing his soul or like he's having a panic attack, the polyrhythms the band finds are joyous grooves or they are panic attacks. Talking Heads is sensory overload about sensory overload, confusing music about being confused, failing radio transmissions about badly communicated emotions.

The difference is, Talking Heads will express that feeling, that disconnect, that hellish radio static in the back of my mind, and make it listenable and funky and fun. When I'm overwhelmed, I'll storm out and cry alone, when David Byrne is overwhelmed, he writes Born Under Punches. When I'm happy, I smile and, if around no-one but my girlfriend, maybe giggle and flap like I wish I could more often - before regaining control and putting the mask back on. When David Byrne is happy, he releases Don't Worry About The Government and the world listens to it.

I want to write songs about buildings and food! I want to write songs about Garak and Power! About the career of Ahmed Johnson! Let me! But I won't, and I don't. I don't think I can right now. But then there's Stop Making Sense.

Stop Making Sense takes every complicated, negative emotion in the discography of Talking Heads, and does something amazing with it; it makes it a party. In its original studio form, Life During Wartime is midtempo and reverby and distressing. The groove is there, but feels intentionally shot in the shin, only allowed to lope in a way that brings out the tension and danger of the lyricism. Then it Stop Making Sense it SKYROCKETS!!! The panic is still there, that essential tender skin of autism, but it is transformed into one of the most bracing and captivating performances of the whole film. Rather than monotonal, almost krautrocky guitar solos, it is given ecstatic synths and almost double the tempo. The studio version of David feels cramped in his situation, the film David runs in place! He wriggles! He sprints laps around the entire stage! The crowd claps and screams! I clap and scream!

This is Stop Making Sense in minutia. The tension and overload of autism is constant, it is pervasive, but what is present is the joy and not the pain. When I stim around my girlfriend I feel completely free momentarily, Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense feel completely free for eighty-eight minutes, and it's infectious.

Masking, at least for me, is performance anxiety. I have an ideal self in my head and, despite my constant trying to change this, she doesn't openly present as autistic yet. I want to perform my best, ideal self, and I need my autism to be part of that, but revealing myself that much to the world is terrifying.

But, once again, here's Stop Making Sense, and its perfect flaws.

The version of Tina we see sing Genius of Love isn't the version we're hearing, but she is beautiful, and I love her. David misses the cue to go back to the microphone, but I still hear his wolf howls and I smile. Chris beams like a headlight at all times, he's having the time of his life. Ednah and Lynn are always so ON that they feel more like Energizer Bunnies than people sometimes, and I wish I could be more like either of them. Jerry is consistently serious looking and kinda wooden, and he's doing so damn well up there. Alex seems to only know one dance move, it's to kick about as high as his chest and look to the right, and it's the coolest thing I've ever seen every time. Bernie looks so self serious at all times, which makes his basic ass solos on Making Flippy Floppy so much funnier and better. Steve Scales, on top of having the best name ever, keeps looking at the crowd like a kid whose parents have come to see him in the school play, and I love him. I love them all.

They are and were real people with interiority and darkness that I'll never know or comprehend, they all did bad things to good people at some point in their lives, and the version of themselves that was captured across these four nights and painted into this eighty-eight minute gasp of euphoria are my family and they are my friends.

David gets to the microphone too late and I hear the wolf howl and I smile, they all continue the song together and I clap, and then I squeal and then I shake and I flap my hands and the mask falls to the ground, and there are two people behind me who can definitely see me right now and they can definitely tell, they can so definitely tell, but this must be the place (naive melody) is the best song ever so I dont really care and the song ends and i find there are tears in my eyes and they dont fall, and before i can reach to pick up what i dropped the synth arpeggios of once in a lifetime start and i no longer have time so i sit theere and i watch and i listen and david dances and now hes wearing glasses and I'm just an animal looking for a home and, share the space for a minute or two! And I'll love you 'til my heart stops! Love you until I'm dead. Eyes that light up, eyes that look through you. Cover up my blind spots, hit me on the head! Awoo!

Postscript:

I tried writing this once on my phone, but the app crashed and deleted my progress and I almost had a panic attack lol. Glad I rewrote it, I want to put this somewhere, but it is somewhat more masked and less raw than the original version. Oh well, it's probably better written.

The one concert movie I've seen that REALLY goes into exposing how it's a construction over different nights is Beyoncé's Homecoming which is a masterpiece in its own right. The way it blatantly shifts outfits and colour schemes across shots is wonderful, people need to talk about that more. Probably shouldn't be me though lol.

[popentertainmentmusic]

STOP MAKING SENSE (1983)

Featuring David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, Steve Scales, Lynn Mabry, Ednah Holt, Alex Weir and Bernie Worrell.

Directed by Jonathan Demme.

Distributed by A24. 88 minutes. Rated PG.

“And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’”

How did the world get so lucky to see Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads film that is arguably the best concert movie of all time – at the very least, it’s in the top handful – anew on an IMAX screen with spectacular remastered sound? Particularly after decades of having to watch it on small TVs or computers or pads or (shudder) cell phones?

Brought back into theaters in honor of the 40th anniversary of the film, seeing Stop Making Sense on the big screen again after so long is (once again) a revelation. We see the majesty of the vision of Talking Heads and director Jonathan Demme in which they make what can be the most static and dull of film genres – the concert film – suddenly come alive with magic and whimsy.

It doesn’t hurt that the music is jamming (this was from the tour for the band’s biggest hit album Speaking in Tongues), the playing is oh so tight, and the choreography is off the hook.

This is one of those rare concert films that not only makes you wish that you were there for the show – but it makes you feel like you were there.

And considering that this was from the last extended tour by Talking Heads – they released three albums over the next five years after this, but never again toured before sort of unofficially ceasing to be in 1989, (they never really officially broke up, but never got back together other than a few occasional one-offs over the decades) – this is about as good as it is going to get for people who want to watch this pioneering band live.

Which is good because Stop Making Sense is sort of a deconstruction of a traditional concert. The four band members come on one at a time, with each of the first four songs. The roadies and lighting and sound techs are still onstage building the sets as these early songs are being performed. This puncturing of the fourth wall is undeniably fascinating, not only enjoying the performances but seeing the magic behind the curtain.

Lead singer David Byrne starts things off with an unhinged acoustic guitar and boombox performance of their earliest single, “Psycho Killer.” Then bassist Tina Weymouth joins Byrne onstage for a gorgeous take on “Heaven.” Chris Frantz comes up with them for the third song, “Thank You For Sending Me an Angel.” Jerry Harrison comes up for song number four, “Found a Job.”

By the time the group hits the wildly soulful “Slippery People” and the band’s biggest hit “Burning Down the House,” all of the other live performers – including the legendary funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell and some shockingly good backing singers, are filling the stage, mixing wild choreography with some spectacular singing and playing.

And of course, you can’t forget David Byrne’s big suit.

The music and wild dancing slay, including the quirky jogging in place movements of “Life During Wartime” (Byrne actually eventually jogs around the stage multiple times) and the deep South blues of “Swamp.” There is the sweet romantic optimism of “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Medley)” and the neo-evangelical favorite “Once in a Lifetime” and even a throbbing version of Frantz and Weymouth’s side project Tom Tom Club’s hit single “Genius of Love.”

By the time the show climaxes with the spectacularly soulful “Girlfriend is Better” (the song that lends this film its title, the group’s quirky rethink of Al Green’s gospel favorite “Take Me To the River” and a wild “Crosseyed and Painless,” the band and the audience are in a sweaty fervor.

Sorry for the superlatives but Stop Making Sense is pretty much perfect.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2023 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 22, 2023.

[sugaronmytonguedotmp4]

never realized that during the flashing light dance sequence of Genius of Love Ednah and Lynn are pretending to snort coke