When I find something that I like, I want to tell others. That urge seems to come from a desire to share the pleasure of the experience, but perhaps also from wanting somehow to get credit for the discovery, or to raise your status by association with something cool. That feeling is particularly strong for me when the experience in question has not yet discovered by the public at large. Right now I am a fan of the Falafel Shop in Adams Morgan, DC—see if you agree.

But I want to call attention in this post to something that is well-known and already justly famous. It is the awesome 1984 Talking Heads movie Stop Making Sense.

Since the early 1980s Talking Heads has been my favorite band. It is hard to put a finger on why. I guess it is a combination of great music and associations with formative times. The first time I heard of them, in high school, I did not think much of the band name. But then I got cassette copies from a friend of Remain in Light, Fear of Music, and later Speaking in Tongues. Burning Down the House played everywhere. And their music was on all the time the summer I canvassed for CoPIRG. My freshman year in college we programmed to Psycho Killer in the basement of Bingham Hall. (Another student mocked the lyrics as “Psycho Chicken Bawk-bawk, bawk, bawk-bawk.”)

But the movie really sealed the deal for me. I first saw Stop Making Sense in Boulder when it came out. I love the way it builds from song to song, starting with David Byrne, a boom-box and an empty stage. If programmers could dance, they would dance like he does. When we exited the theater, I surprised my friends by how effusively I praised the movie, because it was not like me to be so demonstrative. Later I saw the movie again with a girlfriend in a Chicago theater and confirmed my original impression.

Stop Making Sense: simply a brilliant film and a transcendant more-than-a-concert movie. Let me know if you agree.

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