The film Cease Making Sense constitutes an plain excessive for Speaking Heads. The Jonathan Demme-directed documentary of the band’s 1983 stage present, with its stark lighting, energetic staging and hyper-focused portrayal of a band at work, gained justified acclaim as probably the greatest live performance films of all time. Even seen in YouTube-sized fragments, it has sustained the band’s recognition throughout 4 a long time, though Speaking Heads performed precisely one three-song efficiency for the reason that finish of that tour. 

The album of the identical title, nonetheless, is extra problematic. Since they’d already launched a double stay document in 1982, they selected to not signify the whole present on wax or tape. The songs they chose caught to hits and up to date stuff, they usually had been ruthlessly edited. Most sadly, the LP took the tune order—a rigorously drawn arc of the unique live performance that constructed from a solitary illustration of awkward alienation to a grand celebration of neighborhood, joyously dancing—and tossed it out the window. So, whereas the unique album did properly commercially, it was hardly a creative success. In 1999, a fifteenth anniversary reissue restored among the lacking materials by offering a monitor record that corresponds to what was within the film’s DVD version. Nonetheless, should you caught the band on that tour, as I did, you knew that there was nonetheless one thing lacking: the “Massive Enterprise/I Zimbra” medley, which was one of many live performance’s highlights. 

Talking of huge enterprise, 2023 marks 40 years for the reason that tour that yielded Cease Making Sense, and a big anniversary is at all times an apparent time to stir the business pot. So, this fall, the movie goes to be re-released in theaters, and the album has been redone as a double LP. The medley and one other lacking tune, “Cities,” have been restored in order that the tune sequence lastly corresponds to the 1983 tour’s set record. And the edits have been undone, which unintentionally demonstrates that among the cuts had been really fairly canny; keyboardist Bernie Worrell’s quotes from “The Star-Spangled Banner” on “Making Flippy Floppy” and “The Little Drummer Boy” on “I Zimbra” may have stayed on the slicing room flooring. However these moments are over in a flash.

Taken as an entire, this re-creation of Cease Making Sense lastly does justice to the tour’s still-startling sequencing and captures the band at a business and performative peak. Whereas later data had their moments, Speaking Heads would by no means be this good once more.

—Invoice Meyer