Page 1502 – Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Ghost of Bush

Columns & Opinion

Bohemian.com

Oct 1, 2008

10.01.08

Brian Eno is not a household name, but anyone who has started up a computer with Windows 95 has heard his music. Eno, a 1970s British prog-rocker-cum-ambient-guru, was commissioned by Microsoft to write the operating system’s four-second piece of startup music. Eno made 84 songs, and picked the best one. Though Windows OS startup music has changed over the years, Eno’s is probably one of the best, if not the best, an epic ambient instrumental in miniature.

David Byrne may not be a household name either, but Talking Heads are. Byrne, his Heads and Eno collaborated on three Talking Heads albums from 1978 to 1980, and then Eno and Byrne got together for the landmark collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Released in February 1981, it represented the most experimental, but compelling, meeting of the minds between the two. It was rereleased in 2006 with a few new tracks and interesting studio moments added, marking what for 25 years had been the album’s growing and deep influence on genres diverse as world music, hip-hop and experimental.

The album has been credited with being among the first recordings to fully embrace and utilize sampling, a now common practice that we don’t even bat an eye at in the work of, say, Beck, Ministry or Aphex Twin. David Byrne and his band play Oct. 8 at the Wells Fargo Center. (Unfortunately, the reclusive Eno is not joining the tour.)

The idea of taking a piece of audio—an inflamed radio caller, a backpedaling politician caught in a mea culpa, a Muslim chanting the Koran, a freaky Irish priest performing an exorcism, what have you—and resituating it into a piece of music it originally had no initial connection to was revolutionary at the time, and it was exactly what Byrne and Eno derived creative inspiration from. The results of Bush of Ghosts—named after Amos Tutuola’s novel based on Yoruba folk tales—were surprising, sometimes jarring and often otherworldly beautiful, as on “The Carrier,” where Eno’s floating ambience collides with Byrne’s straightforward rock approach, supplemented by out-of-context Arabic samples.

It can even be argued that rapping was brought into the public consciousness as much by Byrne on Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (listen to “Crosseyed and Painless”) as it was by the Sugarhill Gang or the griot tradition of the Africa diaspora. Two rather wimpy, arty white guys, Eno and Byrne, were laying groundwork in sampling and rapping that would influence generations of artists to follow; Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy has publicly praised Bush of Ghosts as a seminal inspiration.

Almost three decades later, Byrne and Eno have collaborated again to make 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which Byrne has flatly stated is “not Bush of Ghosts II. ” He is very right. The album sounds more like a David Byrne solo release (Talking Heads disbanded officially in 1991) with occasional tell-tale signs of Eno’s signature off-kilter piano or narcotic, cinematic ambience. “A lot of the music I’ve done you can’t even imagine there being a performance of it, you can’t even imagine it done by particularly human beings,” Eno stated in a Bush of Ghosts&–era interview, which may explain his absence from the current tour.

Byrne is focusing performances on “the music of David Byrne and Brian Eno,” which spans the three Talking Heads albums and now two Byrne-Eno collaborations. Given how different the three Heads’ records involving Eno are, and the three decades between Bush of Ghosts and Everything That Happens, it should make for an interesting grab-bag of material for Byrne to pull from live. Last time Byrne was at the Wells Fargo Center, he concluded the night by having the Extra Action Marching Band play in the aisles as he sipped a beer, the eternal ringleader keeping people on their toes.

While Byrne may be viewed by some as megalomaniacal—always the clear leader of Talking Heads, and now performing by himself songs that he, the other Talking Heads and Eno wrote equally—his talent, range and breadth of ideas cannot be denied. Unrelentingly creative, he, like Eno, is a person never content to laurel-rest but to always seek new horizons in sound.

David Byrne performs on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the Wells Fargo Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 8pm. $55&–$65. 707.546.3600.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

Bohemian.com

Oct 1, 2008

10.01.08

Clouded Judgement?

I am both amazed and astonished by the lack of attention and editorial integrity by your investigative staff (“Evil White Rain,” by Brodie Jenkins, the Conspiracy Issue, Aug. 27). The issue of aerial spraying and the government data of high levels of heavy metals in our residential water supplies and soil should be of great alarm, I would think. Yet your paper chose to minimize over four hours of interviews with Rosalind Peterson and me, and publish the article in the “Conspiracy Issue,” which we both asked Brodie to not use as a term in the article. Why?

We did nothing to warrant the title “Evil White Rain” nor did we make any accusations to elicit a notion of conspiracy. We did however, give Brodie years of government documents and research which showed extreme spikes in heavy metals in our soil and drinking water supplies throughout Northern California, and documents identifying at least 60 weather modification programs across the Western United States, many of which use heavy metals in their spraying and seeding of clouds or creation of clouds.

We do not deal in conspiracies. We gave Brodie government documents and research. We asked only that your paper print the truth and the facts given. This is a much bigger issue than the little article you so feebly published. We were led to believe you and your paper cared about this issue, as it affects all of our community’s health. The issue is complicated and of grave concern.

I am completely puzzled by your lack of concern. We came to you because we believed in your investigative reporting on important issues. I have now lost faith and belief in that idea.

I would ask that you reconsider a much more detailed article on this issue and dig a bit deeper into research. Many people in Northern California are very concerned and receiving no information. We see the jets, we witness and film the contrails, we watch as our bright blue skies are covered in white, poisonous clouds.

Have you ever taken a look at our once clear Sonoma County hills and asked yourself, “What is all that white haze, day after day, and where is it coming from?”

Len Greenwood

Cazadero

‘White Evil Rain’ is a lyric line from a Beck song titled ‘Chemtrails,’ not an indictment of your work.

To Have ‘Erred’ is Human

Wondering ultimately what to do with my mother’s ashes, which I hold at home, I was thrilled to read Gretchen Giles’ article “Dying Art” which embraces this question (Sept. 24).

I recall poet Randall Jarrell’s statement that a poet uses more of the word than most readers are accustomed. I refer here to Giles’ conscious or unconscious use of the word “undeterred” at the beginning of the third paragraph from the end of the article. If “interred” means “buried,” and if “deterred” could be a creative alternative for “disinterred” meaning “unburied,” mightn’t the word “deterred” have a double meaning and also mean “unburied”? Following this bit of linguistic logic, perhaps it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to conclude that “undeterred” once again could mean “buried,” as in “Perhaps it would be best were my entire subject to be undeterred.”

Thank you for the article and your indulgence.

Ed Coletti

Santa Rosa

In Favor of Family Farming

Talk about the Big Lie! The article on the Drake’s Bay Family Farms (“Shell Games,” Sept. 17) ends with a quote from Neal Desai of the National Parks Conservation Association saying, “By protecting Drakes Estero, we are protecting all other wild lands from commercial development coming into it.” The Drake’s Bay Family Farms is not Standard Oil or a commercial development company, it’s a family farm. And it’s not “coming into” anywhere, it’s already there, and has been already there for years. Family farms are what made this nation great. Extend the lease, keep family farms alive!

Jerry Werzinsky

Novato

&–&–>