talking heads talk of talking heads (and one talks about making a talking head a talking head)

better than me blogging about being bored in front of my computer, its...part of my thesis:

Informant 4: Diane is a 32-year-old comedian from New Jersey, who has been a fan since the early 1980s, because, “It was innovative, it was different. I really liked how wacky he was, he’s really eccentric and there wasn’t really anyone, any band, any performer quite LIKE David Byrne at that time, especially in the big suit era.” By wacky she meant, “I guess it’s not so much lyrics, but his persona, his performance style. They way he presents himself, the way he moves. Definitely the Once In A Lifetime video, I remember that really well. I was watching MTV in 1981 when it was first broadcast and so I saw all that stuff. That was probably my first ever glimpse of the Talking Heads was that video.”
“David Byrne’s such an icon and I’ve never seen him.” She knew about Byrne’s hand in making the cover of More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978) but “that is the only thing that I could point to and say ‘David Byrne did that.”’

Informant 5: Jeffery is a 30-year-old singer-songwriter from Astoria, Queens, who has “been a fan since I was kid.” “I think he’s a visionary. He’s totally influenced me. He’s an inspiration and I’ve never seen him live. I’ve always seen the DVDs and the videos so this is the first time I’ve seen him live.” He was inspired by Byrne because, “I’m an artist…I’ve very outside of the box, and for someone to make a career, and be not what the norm is, and to be a real, genuine commercial success, and still stick to his authenticity, and be a visionary, and to stand out from the crowd head and shoulders is to me, inspiring. It’s very rare.”
He does not consider himself a visual artist, but considers himself a “singer-songwriter and actor, playwright kind of person,” who loves Byrne’s “storytelling, I love the visual and the music and sort of how he doesn’t just stand there. He’s a real, live, live performer.” He would also put “David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Prince and you know, Bob Dylan even though it sounds kind of odd” into the category, “visionaries.” After the recorded interview, Jeffery told me that he had attended a performance art camp in the 1980s where he studied the work of Byrne and contemporary Laurie Anderson. He said he was “developing a one-man rock opera about my dysfunctional Jewish family from 1980s Cleveland. So that sort of musical styling definitely inspires me very much.”

Informant 7: Chris is a 32-year-old television producer who has been a fan since about 1986, when he first saw, “Stop Making Sense. When Little Creatures came out was when I was heavily into music and it the first time that I really recognized him in the band.” He was drawn to Byrne because “he’s got a great combination of music and lyrics. I think his music is very fun and interesting and different and I think his lyrics are also different in a way – metaphorical and ironic, sorry…I’m trying to give you some sound bytes here, and yeah, I think he’s got a very interesting way of looking at the world and people on it, and what we do it and that kind of stuff.” He was “somewhat but not heavily” aware of Byrne’s art background, but added, “We’re actually producing a TV. show and we wanted him to host, because it was an art show.” Chris plays acoustic guitar – “some jazz and some rock.” He takes landscape, portrait and “some architecture” photography