I have been a lifetime explorer of music in most of its forms and genres. I am drawn to the shapes of sound, the sonority of words, the vibrations of air…and the vivid images that all this conjures in the mind and on screen. So, I have been a fan of David Byrne, ever since watching his video “Road to nowhere” on MTV, for the first time, around 1985.
There is something endearing about his exuberant demeanour on and off stage, and his wide musical interests. I rank his musical collaborations with the Talking Heads and Brian Eno, as well as his own solo work, in a similar experimental field as Björk and Kate Bush. Not in style, obviously, but in the intellectual curiosity they each display about eclectic sounds and how music can blend with visual arts. A good example for Byrne being the stage design and choreography of his concert film “Stop making sense” (1984).
Anyway, about the book. This first edition was gifted to me by a friend, when it came out in 2012, published by Canongate Books. It is a hard-back covered with a vinyl upholstery, in an usual format, the size of a computer mouse mat. Over 330 pages, David Byrne takes us on a buoyant celebration of the business of making and performing music through a look at various cultures. It is a rather ambitious project so rather than try to be a comprehensive description, the book reads like a memoir, loosely structured into 10 chapters.
Each chapter has a main theme like ‘analog’, ‘digital’, ‘recording’, ‘business and finances’, weaving together, in a non-linear fashion, various facts, recollections, hand sketches and pictures. This makes the book an interesting mixed-media summary of David Byrne’s own takeaways about his life in music.
The author shares with us an eclectic mix of autobiography, anthropology, technology, sociology, music theory and business experience, all with a dash of insightful introspection about his experimental thought-process into writing songs and performance.
The book provides useful insights into the depth and breadth of music as an art form. How does music work on the ear, brain, body and…wallet? How is it made and sold? How have the size and style of venues influenced the way music is performed and consumed? You will find intriguing nuggets along the way.
What could have been a daunting mix of information to tackle has been made easily accessible by the straight, conversational tone of the writing, which addresses the reader as a friend would. This is a book that you can read straight through but also dip in and out, as you would with a music record.
Ghosts of Sound 
Leave a comment