As Videogum pointed out, Sean Penn has a new movie. What Gabe didn’t mention is This Must Be The Place is a mumblecore remake of Edward Scissorhands featuring new original music by David Byrne. NJ Underground notes the film also includes Arcade Fire’s cover of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place,” hence the kid at the end of the following trailer, a clip that features Byrne performing onstage, among other things:

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It happened last night (4/14) at an after-party at Bar Secreto in Sao Paulo following the final show of the band’s South American tour. Bono does “Psycho Killer” (with the assistance of Larry Mullen and Muse drummer Don Howard on percussion), the Edge handles “Let’s Dance” and “Miss You,” and Mullen offers his star turn on “The Wild Rover.” We have two videos: A montage plus Bono and his sunglasses in full:

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Crowded House just finished a three-night run at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. Last night was their final night, and as a very pleasant surprise, David Byrne came on stage to sing “Once In A Lifetime” with the band. He almost trips on a water bottle as he walks to the microphone. Almost!

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Less than a year after Jackson Brown successfully sued John McCain for using “Running On Empty” without permission, David Byrne is suing Florida Governor Charlie Crist for using Talking Heads’ “Road To Nowhere” without asking anyone if it was OK. True, politicians don’t learn a thing: The 1985 Talking Heads song was featured in an ad attacking Crist’s Senatorial opponent, Republican Marc Rubio. It appeared on Crist’s website and, therefore, YouTube. Byrne, who found out about it from a friend in New York, is seeking $1 million, an estimated value of the song’s licensing rights. Warner Bros. contacted Crist’s people, who stopped using the ad, but as Byrne told Billboard:

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Here’s another clip from Our Show With Elliot Aronow, the downtown-arts web series nailing the alternageist by framing fringe-culture heroes in off-beat poses: There was Das Racist covering their wit-rap forefathers Beastie Boys with Hishaam Bharoocha, Ted Leo and Max Silvestri talking anonymous internet assholes, and most memorably Kyp Malone reviewing films on a five-burger scale. (Watch ‘em all here.) Here’s some more of Kyp letting his afro down, the Rain Machinist introducing his cover of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” saying “A lot of people told me this is their favorite Talking Heads song and not to shit on it, but I’m just gonna do what happens, it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.” What it’s gonna be is not as epic as an Arcade Fire take, though it’d be a naive melody to think it could be — Harsh Toke back him admirably with that iconic four-bar loop, Kyp shows some footwork he doesn’t usually bust out for the TV or the radio, and the Das Racist dudes seemed to enjoy it plenty.

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We’ve spoken about Scratch My Back, Peter Gabriel’s anticipated Bob Ezrin-produced orchestral covers collection featuring reinterpretations of Radiohead, Arcade Fire, the Magnetic Fields, Bon Iver, Elbow, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Regina Spektor, David Bowie, etc. In a couple of interesting, intimate-seeming podcasts, Gabriel gives plenty of background and insight into the project. In the first installment you hear bits of the Bowie, Paul Simon, and Elbow. (He calls Elbow’s “Mirrorball” “a bitch to sing” and says it reminds him of singing some of the old “awkward” Genesis melodies he wrote.) The second installment offers discussions and snippets of Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Arcade Fire, and the Magnetic Fields, a band Gabriel tried unsuccessfully to sign to his label and who Eva Longoria apparently loves. He regards Arcade Fire as a “self-contained universe,” though he doesn’t quite make an even more poetic connection between this “self-contained universe” and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which he brings up in relation to “My Body Is A Cage.” He also talks briefly about the Scratch My Back tour (Europe is announced; US/Canada to come) and Reed as love poet. We offered you an “alleged” tracklist at one point. Now we have the real one. Take a look at that and then have a listen. And remember: “Giving an artist total freedom is castrating them.”

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David Byrne’s still going strong. The forthcoming 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Edition of Stop Making Sense reminds you he’s been around longer than you. Talking Heads were clearly more than Byrne, but he’s often at the forefront of the action in the Jonathan Demme-directed concert film, which captured the band live over three nights at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood in December 1983 while they were promoting Speaking In Tongues. You know, “Psycho Killer,” “Burning Down The House,” “”This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” “Life During Wartime,” “Heaven,” “Once in a Lifetime,” and that giant hard-to-miss white suit. Stop was remastered for a re-release in 1999, and the Talking Heads — Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison — did a press release at the time. There are clips floating around, but the Blu-ray release, remastered in high definition from a 35mm interpositive, includes the 90-minute conference in full. It also comes with two bonus songs “Cities” and “Big Business/I Zimbra,” the video short “David Byrne Interview … David Byrne,” storyboard/staging comparison, and trailers?. Going back to my original thought: This never-before-seen bit from the press conference gives you a sense of the band dynamic as they talk about their music’s funkiness and the fact that it didn’t seem especially ’80s or dated in 1999. Same goes for today.

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Yeah, and if there’s even a shred of truth to this Simon story the Lobos is telling about the Graceland sessions, then Paul really is the world’s greatest dong. But first, the happy good times: David Byrne joined Paul Simon for one night of his month-long BAM residency last week. The video has surfaced, and as promised, we are sharing. So without further ado, here’s David (although you can call him Al, RIMSHOT):

Next up is “I Know What I Know” which clearly Byrne was born to perform.

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The signs of a hipster reappraisal for Paul Simon have been apparent. Now with Paul’s Byrne/Grizzly Bear-powered BAM residency, the moment is in full bloom. And Time Out New York is all over it for the mag’s residency preview piece, nabbing affectionate quotage from David Byrne, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, and Grizzly Bear’s Dan Rossen.

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Take our ink-stained hands and join us at the OldStand, where Jon McMillan goes to remind everyone what an honest-to-goodness music magazine is supposed to look like.

A hirsute James Taylor gets the Leibovitz cover treatment for RS #255, alongside Linda Ronstadt and super producer Austin Powers — er, Peter Asher. Seriously, ask your parents. Or ask the immaculately named Ben Fong-Torres, whose mammoth article/interview with the cover three is J-school (if not museum) quality, and a great reminder of why music fans used to live and die for this stuff every week. Proto-Klosterman Greil Marcus checks in with a post-gonzo take on Graham Parker, and Cameron Crowe gets all-the-way-famous with the mystery men behind Steely Dan. Donald Fagen is a golden god!

A review section includes Clapton (Slow Hand), Billy Joel (The Stranger), and The Ramones (“Rocket to Russia is the best American rock & roll of the year and possibly the funniest rock album ever made”). Dave Marsh’s catty takedown of a lame Rod Stewart gig at Madison Square Garden makes for much better reading (“Phil Chen, the diminutive Jamaican bassist, is so cute you’d like to punch his face in or sell him back to the Bee Gees.” What? Zing!), as does the “Random Notes” bit about Peter Gabriel trying to sing his way out of a Swiss prison (perhaps unsurprisingly, it didn’t work).

After the jump: RS critics picks for 1977, Pat Metheny’s transcendent unibrow, and perhaps the best (indie-rock free) cigarette ad copy of all time.

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