Oct. 13, 1977: Rock forum with Clive Davis and Talking Heads

 


Buffalo State’s music programmers score a coup and stage a night that still lives on in the annals of local rock history. 

Oct. 13, 1977

Show Offers

Rock And

Role-Playing 

          Buffalo got its formal introduction to New Wave Wednesday night in a program appropriate to the academic setting – the poster-plastered Buffalo State College Student Center.

          First there was a talk. Then a panel discussion. Finally, there was the music.

          The talker was a music industry legend – Clive Davis, a lawyer who as president of Columbia Records built and merchandised the biggest rock acts of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Now president of Arista Records, he’s determined to do it again.

          Davis, in blue blazer and tie, spent most of his hour skimming through the successes he recounts at greater length in his autobiography, “Clive.” Nevertheless, scattered within the endless references to groups and singers were a few pearls of philosophy.

          For example, Davis termed himself and Arista “song-oriented.” He told one questioner that he doesn’t consider a rock group “ready yet if the material isn’t that strong.” Give him a performer who writes good and sings so-so and he’ll sign for the material.

          “The public adjusts to bad or ordinary voices,” he declared, “if the songs are great. See how they adjusted to Dylan? When Springsteen started, he just stood like this (Davis clapped his hands stiffly against his sides) for two years!”

          Davis stayed to be in the panel discussion with four of the nation’s top rock critics and Ken Kushnick, director of artist development for Sire Records. Sire, with its release of four New Wave albums this month, is atop a bandwagon.

          “This is a very bizarre and exciting event,” was how Gary Storm, host of WBFO-FM’s freeform 3 a.m. rock show, started the proceedings. Little did he know how bizarre it would get.

          The panel broke into two armies on either side of Storm. On one side were obstreperous freelance critic Lester Bangs, UB alumnus and Creem magazine record editor Billy Altman and Davis. On the other were Kushnick, the Village Voice’s feisty Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone’s smooth Dave Marsh.

          The panel seemed to agree that New Wave might be dead in six months, but would probably serve to introduce a number of bands that would be big in the ‘80s. Bangs added that the New Wave’s heavy nihilism would have to evolve into a positive philosophy.

          The best part of the evening, however, came last. It was the Talking Heads, the most intellectual and musically varied band in the Sire release. They seized the moment by pulsing through their two singles first.

          The Talking Heads got an enthusiastic encore call from the crowd of maybe 400 music aficionados – local music biz heavies in all their finery.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Talking Heads at CBGB in 1977.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: This symposium signaled Buffalo State’s arrival at the front rank of cutting-edge rock in the late 1970s. Many terrific shows would follow – Elvis Costello, the Pretenders and more.

          Plus this was a truly remarkable program, not just for its moment in time, but for all time. Clive Davis was an absolute giant in the music biz and to bring him around for something like this was extraordinary. The panel represented the absolute cream of the rock critics who had ascended and analyzed the music during the 1970s. To get them all together around one table was sure to generate heat, if not enlightenment.

And then there was the first local appearance by Talking Heads, freshly germinated from CBGB’s in New York City and just a month after their first album appeared on Sire. Since this write-up ends rather abruptly, I suspect I wrote more about them and it got sliced from the bottom because space ran out.

One of the Talking Heads tour history sites remarks that this was a “Vinyl Raps” program with Clive Davis and that tickets were just 50 cents.

There is no setlist from that night, but they stopped next at the Jabberwocky Café on the Syracuse University campus for two shows, the second of which was broadcast on an FM radio station there. Here’s what they played in their second set, courtesy of setlist.fm. There’s also a recording of it online: 

Love Goes to a Building on Fire

Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town

Don’t Worry About the Government

Take Me to the River (Al Green cover)

The Book I Read

New Feeling

A Clean Break (Let’s Work)

Stay Hungry

Thank You for Sending Me an Angel

Who Is It?

Pulled Up

(encore)

No Compassion

Psycho Killer

(encore)

I’m Not in Love

Love Is All Around (Troggs cover)

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