I recently found myself mischievously giggling at a bar with a friend as we conspiratorially agreed that David Byrne was not as clever as all that!

I have spent the last three decades (so, well after high school's absolute reverence) proudly standing by Talking Heads. I briefly abandoned them for all their post Speaking in Tongues LPs; that excellent album came out right before my senior year of HS (the earlier Remain in Light, of course, is their masterpiece). But I enthusiastically returned to the 1977-1984 set sometime in the late 1990s as a zealous advocate, counting them as one of the very few artists from my era that actually mattered anymore; Prince seems like another? (It's funny, in high school, I wrote and recorded a song with the lines: "I dig the Talking Heads/they might not stand the test of time/But remember, remember, remember." I'll suffer the cringe factor and link it. )

I've even affectionately nicknamed one of my Seattle bestys "David Byrne"—not only is he a quirky, urbanist planner who bikes everywhere, but he looks like Byrne! Handsome fellow. (He also has the same initials.)

However, over the past year, with the real David Byrne's crafted & gleeful socially awkward personality taking center stage as he continues to produce and produce and produce THE SAME THING (and with all the Stop Making Sense anniversary hoopla), I'm finding I'm finally tiring of his 1980s comedic cynicism (Stephen Colbert is the modern apotheosis of the Byrne shtick).

And so, I recently found myself mischievously giggling at a bar with another cherished Seattle friend, Charles Mudede, as we conspiratorially agreed that David Byrne was maybe not as clever as all that!

How wonderful to see my incorrigible pal go public with his contrarian take in which he topples Byrne (“the soundtrack of gentrification” !) while simultaneously honoring his affinity for him. "If David Byrne had been on our City Council, he would have lost last week," Mudede writes, lamenting this month's conservative backlash.