David Byrne // Current

THE BPA 'TOE JAM' FEAT. DAVID BYRNE & DIZZEE RASCAL

This video is over a year old, but it's still pretty cool.

TravG73
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Thanks to David Byrne, bicycle art goes mainstream

The bulk of bicycle-related art exists at the fringes of the mainstream art world and... more

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David Byrne peddles his philosophy worldwide

For 30 years, artist and musician -- and, oh yes, former Talking Head -- David Byrne has been getting around New York, his hometown, mainly on a bicycle. Nothing fancy, mind you. Just a sturdy, upright hybrid with handlebar-moustache handlebars and a firm saddle, which is actually less tiring than the cushy kind.

When he travels, Byrne packs a folding bike in a case, and from this two-wheel perch he has investigated cities the world over, jotting down in a journal the peculiarly Byrnesian musings and observations as he pedals through bombed-out Detroit, stately and orderly Berlin or, in an especially daring foray, car-choked Istanbul.

But don't let the faux-naif persona Byrne has so ably cultivated in his work fool you. The rock star who sang about burning buildings, highways and life during wartime turns out to be an acute observer of the urban condition, a veritable rolling philosopher. The evidence is in Bicycle Diaries (Viking, $25.95), his seventh book, a breezy, loosely threaded compendium of accounts of the places he sees and the people he meets in his urban bike-wanderings.

Byrne delivers pithy indictments of the damage wrought on cities by the onslaught of the automobile and planners' blind obedience to it, even as the artist in him can't resist admiring the strange grandeur of urban ruins like Buffalo and Detroit. And he extols cities like New York that have managed to nurture neighborhoods and find space for people on bicycles.

No proselytizer by nature, Byrne has found himself increasingly taking a public role as bicycle advocate, organizing a forum in New York that surrounded talks by planners with music, video and performance art. He spoke to The Miami Herald from New York on the eve of his departure for a mostly West Coast book tour, some of the stops on which will be public forums on cycling.

``I realized that a lot of towns and a lot of people are at the point where they're just about willing to accept this idea of the bicycle as a way of getting around,'' he says. ``It doesn't seem out of the question, where a few years ago that might just have seemed like a really strange or geeky idea to a lot of people.''

Read the article at the link for some questions and answers with Byrne.For 30 years, artist and musician -- and, oh yes, former Talking Head -- David Byrne... more

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David Byrne plays the Roundhouse, literally

Former Talking Heads lead David Byrne has transformed London's Roundhouse into a... more

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David Byrne calls out U2

Those stadium shows may possibly be the most extravagant and expensive... more

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David Byrne on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos

David Byrne is one of the most creative all-around artists alive. In the early '70s,... more

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David Byrne's "Bicycle Diaries" -Cycling Through the Cosmos

Bicycle Diaries is "panoramic window on urban life over the past 20 years—a big window positioned at bike level, that looks out on a dense man-made landscape." Filled with postcard-like black-and-white photos, Bicycle Diaries is a first-person account of former Talking Head David Byrne's experiences biking through various cities around the world, from London to Istanbul to San Fransisco and, of course, New York. The book is due out in September.

At The Daily Galaxy we're hoping it will be a Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance type view of the cosmos in the 21st century. With a highly personal mixture of humor and intense curiosity, his publisher Viking writes, Byrne records his thoughts economics revealed in shop fronts and history in door frames, on globalization, world music, urban planning, fashion, policy, architecture, cultural dislocation. Byrne explains why efforts to increase bicycle use may solve some of the world's pressing transportation and energy concerns

On his website, Byrne has posted personal comments on music and, occasionally, on the impact of the Internet on the recording industry.

Elsewhere, on his website Bryne's writing foreshadows the intense insights we'll see in his diaries, where he shows an intense pyschological awareness and probing, painful questioning on a series of psychological/emotional portraits of Bryne as a doll: " Myself calm as I go up in (mental?) flames. A happy man drowning in love?"

"Making a doll of oneself is an act of real psychological healing and of possible personal danger. To be liberated from one’s own appearance — to see and feel what one always feels to be a part of oneself, one’s own looks embodied in an outside thing, a little homunculus, separated from one’s own flesh and blood, out in the world — brings a sense of freedom, and with it, some feeling of imminent danger. A little plastic offspring… in love, in pain, pissed off, ecstatic. I want to help him, but I don’t know how. And I don’t even know what to call him. I hope he’s all right. Maybe he will do the things that I’ve always dreamed of… and maybe he’ll suffer the accidents of fate that I’ve avoided."
"Bicycle Diaries" is coming out this fall in hardcover and on CD.Bicycle Diaries is "panoramic window on urban life over the past 20 years—a big... more