Maybe my favorite concert I’ve ever attended was when my friend Bill dropped in to my Chicago studio around dinnertime one night in the early 90’s and asked if I wanted to go try to get tickets to David Byrne’s symphonic performance across the street. I had no idea David Byrne wrote or performed anything other than Rei Momo type stuff, and doubted we’d be able to score any seats I could afford an hour before the show started, but I needed some air, so I put my brushes in turps and went along for the walk.
Not only did we get tickets, we got them from the box office, for like ten bucks apiece. I figured we were in for some really shitty shit if there were still seats available at that point. But my curiosity was piqued, and I had ten bucks.
The concert was amazing. The stage was filled with vocalists, but not one of them sung anything comprehensible. Byrne and his group performed The Forest, from start to finish, over the course of about an hour. It transported me to another world.
Not a world where I was a decent painter, but one where I was happy to continue trying.