That was one of the first thoughts that came to mind soon after David Byrne and company took the stage for the first of two shows at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. It stemmed from an announcement having come out just one day earlier that Corbet, the director of “The Brutalist,” had already shot shows along Byrne’s long-running tour, in 70mm, for the purposes of a feature film. The proper first response to that news was delight, that one of the most striking tours of all time, now coming to a close, was going to be captured for posterity by a visually inventive filmmaker.
And the inevitable second response should have been: Yes, but how can he? At the Bowl, you might have been tempted to make a fleeting mental game out of how a show with this many moving parts — which is to say, constantly moving humans — might be wrassled to the ground for a satisfying screen experience. But ultimately that was too distracting a thought experiment to pursue for very long when, before your eyes, you had one of the greatest shows on earth, and what surely has felt to everyone who has seen it across 140 or so dates like a you had to be there experience.
Viewers have come away from the “Who Is the Sky?” shows over the past year like glassy-eyed cultists, suddenly feeling, as corny as it sounds, like it’s good to be alive. And to cut off one letter to reduce that thought into Pollstar terms: It’s good to be live. For anyone who hasn’t been caught up on the conceptual conceits of this particular tour, a thumbnail description goes something like: “‘American Utopia,’ but better.” (Sorry, Spike Lee, helmer of the previous tour’s pretty good film rendering.) Byrne had started reinventing the concert wheel a long time ago, in the “Stop Making Sense” days, but he really gave things a revolutionary twist with the 2018 tour that rethought how musicians could be made to be seen behave on stage, essentially as sort of free-range chickens, untethered to any visible wires or technology or anything except adherence to brilliant choreography.
But “American Utopia” was a monochrome affair, all grey suits and static, beaded curtains, which was a decent enough way of framing the players. Life and Lyndsey Buckingham aren’t fair that way.) The Trojans, who took up too much floor space on the Bowl stage to do any marching, per se, were themselves preceded by Stroll Groove, a small dance troupe that specializes in the slightly nostalgic art of stepping. Something both these openers have in common is a sense of self-containment, that you could set them down in any amphitheater or park and they could do their thing, even if Byrne’s production is too high-tech to really be that movable a feast.
But in some sense, booking the USC band was a sly way of giving away the magic trick, almost. Byrne and his dozen musicians and dancers are a marching band, too, in all of their glorious mobility and wirelessness. There is no quick and easy way to summarize exactly what it is this talented crew is doing, when that is constantly changing, but it always involves constant changes in where people are located on stage and what they’re up to, and even whether they are moving together in close formation or allowed to be funky and free for a few moments before the choreography tightens up again.
Even the instrumentation is constantly shifting, and there’s a constant sense of happy disbelief that the full arrangements we’re hearing are actually emanating from the relatively few dancing musicians who are interacting with the singer-hoofers. (If we can count on anybody not to cheat on that, it’s probably Byrne.) It’s as if every instrument you ever imagined was somehow adapted into being the equivalent of a key-tar. But, obviously, marching band and first-line directors have been dealing with these issues since time memorial, so Byrne is innovating as part of a fine tradition. Not enough can be said in praise of how, in a world where LED screens are ubiquitous on every big tour, Byrne’s design is especailly well-thought-through.
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