![]() ![]() You disassemble its component parts and put it back together and occupy the song yourself. #Lyrics burnin it down how toWhen you’re a musician and you learn how to play a song, you step inside its skin. #Lyrics burnin it down fullWe stand in front of a completely full cafetorium. And now, in one fell swoop, the Black River student council president has made us something we never wanted to be: The Midnight Mists. All through our many brainstorming sessions, the five of us have been determined not to be a “The” band (why, I can’t quite tell you). The song makes you want to burst into flame. All around, tom-tom drums rattle and tumble, like rafters collapsing. A funky, percussive clavinet that groans and sputters and squeals, like it’s not sure what it wants to say but is frantic to be heard. What’s next?Ī keyboard solo erupts halfway through. You find yourself tripping over yourself. “Burning Down the House” is about combustion. I’m an ordinary guy, burning down the house.” What? Who is this dude? What is he talking about? Who invited him? “Watch out, you might get what you’re after. For the next four minutes, we are engulfed.īyrne sings like the awkward guest talking too loud at the party, telling a story without any prompting. A mighty drum fill ignites the tinder, David Byrne lets out an ascending sigh, and we’re off to the conflagration. As the friction builds, a ghostly synthesizer floats in, blowing smoke on the embers. It opens with a feverish acoustic guitar riff that sounds like two sticks rubbing together to make fire. “Burning Down the House” is the first track. Talking Heads released their fifth studio album Speaking in Tongues in 1983. On the other side of the curtain, I hear the student council president introduce us. I’ve assembled a new me for this middle school assembly. ![]() This is my attempt to look like a member of Duran Duran. I’m wearing white cotton pants, a billowy white shirt with vertical blue stripes, grey ankle boots, and, most importantly, a white fedora. ![]() Today, I’m the keyboard player in a rock band. I’m not the me then, or the me just before now. Today, however, upon my return to my old stomping grounds, I’ve decided to inhabit a new identity. High school has made me even more shy, more confused, more nervous. My shoulders still hunch, my arms remain twiggy, my acne endures. ![]() I am still tall, skinny, with long hair that falls over my thick eyeglasses and hides my face. I don’t look much different from when I graduated this place a year ago. So now I’m standing behind my keyboard waiting for the curtain to open. Inexplicably, our middle school made the bold (delusional?) decision to say yes. Our band had only been “jamming” for four months when we came up with the bold (delusional?) idea to write a letter to our former middle school asking if they’d like us to perform at an assembly-and if they’d be willing to pay us $200. And the only audience we’ve ever played to before now is the drummer’s mother-once, accidentally, when she was carrying groceries in from the car that she couldn’t park in the garage. I am in that rock band, which is really just a garage band, in the sense that up until this moment we have only played in the drummer’s garage. The captive audience sits in fold-out chairs facing the slightly elevated stage, listening as the student council president stands before them to announce the main event: a live performance by five recent graduates who have formed a rock band. It is a Friday afternoon in Chester, New Jersey, June 1985, and the entire student body of Black River Middle School has gathered for an assembly in the cafetorium. ![]()
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