
Talking Heads were part of the first wave of New York City punk rock, but their angular, jittery grooves were a long way from the full-throttle assault of the Ramones or the Dictators. Their interest in funk and African rhythms eventually started moving forward, peaking on the extended jams of 1980’s Remain in Light before connecting with a pop audience on Speaking in Tongues in 1983. On the follow-up tour, captured in Jonathan Demme’s phenomenal concert film Stop Making Sense and its soundtrack, the band recreated its journey — opening with David Byrne alone onstage with a boom box and gradually adding musicians until the show was a full-on psycho-Afro-disco frenzy, and “Burning Down the House” wasn’t just a song title, it was a manifesto.