We’ve brought you Talk­ing Heads shows from New York’s CBGB in 1975, Dort­mund, Ger­many in 1980, and Rome that same year. Now we’ve got one more valu­able live find from that for­ma­tive, busy era for the David Byrne-led, Rhode Island School of Design-forged new-wave band: their Novem­ber 1978 per­for­mance in Syra­cuse. The exact venue? Per­haps some­where at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, per­haps not, though a col­lege per­for­mance space would make sense, giv­en how many insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion they played in 1978. The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert His­to­ry blog has a com­plete list, and the total num­ber of shows in that year alone comes in, aston­ish­ing­ly, at over 130, a fair few of them at schools like NYU, Brown, Berklee, Berke­ley, UCLA, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona. “It was real­ly an edu­ca­tion for us,” the page quotes drum­mer Chris Frantz as say­ing of the 1978 tour. “I’m afraid we bit off more than we could chew. We thought that we could play every night, and we found that after four months we were feel­ing pret­ty unin­spired.”

Yet this Syra­cuse gig, which came ten months in, sounds pret­ty inspired to me. It looks it, too, at least from what I can dis­cern from the lo-fi footage. What the image lacks in crisp­ness, though, it makes up for in tech­no­log­i­cal inter­est; it has the sig­na­ture look of the Sony Por­ta­pak, one of the very ear­ly portable con­sumer video record­ing sys­tems beloved of the 1970s’ video ama­teurs and video artists alike. Who­ev­er manned the Por­ta­pak for these 92 min­utes in Syra­cuse cap­tured a valu­able chap­ter in the Talk­ing Heads sto­ry, one the band spent work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble — which, of course, meant play­ing as hard, and as often, as pos­si­ble — and refin­ing their inim­itable sound and sen­si­bil­i­ty in con­cert spaces that, while often low-pro­file, nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ed them with excit­ed and appre­cia­tive audi­ences. Col­lege stu­dents and oth­er­wise, came eager to hear some­thing new — and giv­en that the 70s, that decade of slick dis­co and smooth rock, had almost come to a close, some­thing a bit askew. The Talk­ing Heads, as we see them here, could glad­ly deliv­er.

Set list:

1. The Big Coun­try
2. Warn­ing Sign
3. The Book I Read
4. Stay Hun­gry
5. Artists Only
6. The Girls Want to Be with the Girls
7. The Good Thing
8. Love Goes to Build­ings on Fire
9. Elec­tric­i­ty
10. Found a Job
11. Take Me to the Riv­er
12. I’m Not in Love
13. No Com­pas­sion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The lega­cy of Rick James, who died in 2004, may be for­ev­er entwined with Dave Chappelle’s insane imper­son­ations and MC Hammer’s use of “Super Freak,” but there is anoth­er major star whose one­time asso­ci­a­tion with James has been obscured in music his­to­ry. I’m talk­ing about Neil Young, who once played gui­tar in a Toron­to R&B group called The Mynah Birds, the first most­ly white band signed to Motown Records in the mid-60s. The band’s lead singer? A young AWOL Amer­i­can sailor who went by the name of Ricky James Matthews, lat­er Rick James. Before James went full-on funk and Young invent­ed folk-rock, the two con­nect­ed in this pro­to-super­group that includ­ed, writes rock his­to­ri­an Nick War­bur­ton, “sev­er­al notable musi­cians who lat­er found fame with the likes of Buf­fa­lo Spring­field and Step­pen­wolf.” “It would be a gross over­sight,” writes War­bur­ton, “to view the group as mere­ly a foot­note to Rick James and Neil Young’s careers.”

It would also be a mis­take to con­sid­er The Mynah Birds a minor league out­fit. As you can hear above in “I’ve Got You In My Soul” (top), “It’s My Time” (above—co-written by Young and James), and “I’ll Wait For­ev­er” (below), this was seri­ous rock and roll, with a loose, garage-rock jan­gle and raw, soul­ful vocal melodies. The Mynah Birds were also, accord­ing to Jim­my McDo­nough, seri­ous show­men. McDo­nough describes their onstage pres­ence in his Neil Young biog­ra­phy Shakey:

The Mynah Birds—in black leather jack­ets, yel­low turtle­necks and boots—had quite a sur­re­al scene going…. Those lucky enough to see any of the band’s few gigs say they were elec­tri­fy­ing. ‘Neil would stop play­ing lead, do a harp solo, throw the har­mon­i­ca way up in the air and Ricky would catch it and con­tin­ue the solo.’

This is a far cry from the scruffy, earnest Young of Har­vest or CSNY or even the Les Paul-wield­ing jam-rock­er of Crazy Horse and his 90s grunge revival peri­od (and more recent Psy­che­del­ic Pill). But the folky leads in his gui­tar work with James’ band hint at his lat­er incar­na­tions.

Is it a stretch to imag­ine James fronting a band of white Cana­di­an rock­ers? Young remem­bers the dri­ven Amer­i­can singer—who crossed the bor­der to avoid his draft assignment—as “a lit­tle bit touchy, dominating—but a good guy.” He also told McDo­nough that James was drawn pri­mar­i­ly to the sound of the Rolling Stones, and brought the rest of the band around: “We got more and more into how cool the Stones were. How sim­ple they were and how cool it was.” James had them play “Get Off My Cloud” and “Satisfaction”—before the braids, cocaine, and sequins, Rick James “fan­cied him­self the next Mick Jag­ger.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the band, U.S. author­i­ties caught up with James, Motown shelved the tapes, and they were nev­er released. Discouraged—Young told MOJO Mag­a­zine in 1995—he “moved instead towards acoustic music and imme­di­ate­ly became very intro­spec­tive and musi­cal­ly-inward. That’s the begin­ning of that whole side to my music.” Young got in his hearse and head­ed for the States, James did his stint in the Navy, and the rest is, well, you know…. But the sound of The Mynah Birds lived on, per­haps, in at least one Neil Young song. His 1967 “Mr. Soul” with Buf­fa­lo Spring­field, below, is clas­sic six­ties rock and soul with a riff lift­ed right from the Stones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Sto­ry: How Neil Young Intro­duced His Clas­sic 1972 Album Har­vest to Gra­ham Nash

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

John Lennon was an invet­er­ate archivist of sound and image, doc­u­ment­ing his life in what­ev­er medi­um he had avail­able to him and leav­ing behind acres of tape for friends and fans to dis­cov­er. Lennon’s tapes com­prise hun­dreds of hours of song sketch­es, full demos, con­ver­sa­tions, jokes, and, as Yoko Ono puts it in her intro to The Lost Lennon Tapes, some “pret­ty per­son­al stuff.” The Lost Lennon Tapes was a radio series that aired between 1988 and 1992, pre­sent­ing over two hun­dred hours of archival Lennon audio in 219 episodes. Host­ed by Lennon’s friend Elliot Mintz, the series gave lis­ten­ers an inti­mate look into John’s cre­ative process through demos like that above, a 1966 series of sketch­es that would become Revolver’s “She Said, She Said.”

In this record­ing, Lennon, alone with a jan­g­ly gui­tar, works out the now-famil­iar chord pro­gres­sions and vocal melodies of the song in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent iterations—and with some quirky lyri­cal vari­ants (“She’s mak­ing me feel like my trousers are torn”). We get to hear the song evolve in sev­er­al stages, from its boun­cy two-chord begin­nings to its final, East­ern-inspired form. The demo also pro­vides evi­dence of the song’s con­cep­tu­al ori­gins; in the first cou­ple ver­sions, you can hear Lennon sing “he said” instead of “she.” The “he” refers to Peter Fon­da, who inspired the song by freak­ing Lennon out dur­ing an acid trip, utter­ing what became the song’s first line, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”

Just above you can hear sev­er­al dif­fer­ent 1966 home demo takes of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” with John singing over a lone elec­tric gui­tar. Lennon stops and starts sev­er­al times, then, at 1:55, finds his groove and plays the whole song through. Next, we hear a run-through with added Mel­lotron, that odd ear­ly pro­to-syn­the­siz­er that lent the final George Mar­tin-pro­duced ver­sion so much of its dis­tinc­tive sound. Final­ly, at 6:15, hear one of the very first demo record­ings of the song—a beau­ti­ful solo acoustic ver­sion record­ed in Alme­ria, Spain. In the promi­nent gui­tar, we hear the strange, ser­pen­tine chord pat­tern that gives the song such a haunt­ing feel. Lennon began com­pos­ing the song in Spain while film­ing his scenes for Richard Lester’s How I Won the War.

Paul McCart­ney once called Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down” a “gen­uine plea” to Yoko, inter­pret­ing the song as John say­ing “I’m real­ly just let­ting my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be seen, so you must not let me down.” The Bea­t­les record­ed sev­er­al ver­sions of the song for the Let it Be ses­sions and released it as a B side to the “Get Back” sin­gle in 1969, though Phil Spec­tor even­tu­al­ly dropped the song from Let it Be. McCart­ney restored it to his re-release of the album, Let it Be… Naked, in which he stripped the songs of Spector’s stu­dio effects. Above, hear “Don’t Let Me Down” at its most stripped-down in a 1968 home demo. Just Lennon with his acoustic gui­tar, qui­et­ly strum­ming out his bluesy love tune, a stark con­trast to the scream­ing rock­er the song would become.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.