Part of Milestones of the Last Quarter Century and Music City Mondays
Mon, May 25 at 8:00pm: Introduction from musician and Belcourt staff member Jessica Breanne | BUY TICKETS
Whither 2016. Popular culture mourned the likes of Prince and David Bowie. Here at home on the 8th of March, we began mourning the loss of Jim Ridley, a process that continues today. To assess the editor and longtime senior film critic of the Nashville Scene, his impact on Nashville’s film culture and the trajectory of our organization’s last quarter-century would and indeed did require an entire book.
In commemoration, and in conjunction with the Scene and with the input of family and a few good friends, the Belcourt paid tribute that September with Jewels and Jim: Ridley’s Believe It or Not, a weekend-long celebration of filmic fondness, Ridley faves and royal bangers. While many of us turn to THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG as remembrance (Jim wrote exquisitely on that film, most notably in an essay for the Criterion Collection’s Jacques Demy box set), we’ll opt this time for one of the bangers in honor of a curly head seen bobbing at shows all over town.
Of the Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film STOP MAKING SENSE, it’s only right we share in full what Jim wrote in the Scene’s 2014 Fall Guide issue:
“The first concert I ever saw was the Talking Heads’ “Speaking in Tongues” tour at Municipal Auditorium in 1983; it made me a concertgoer for life, but I’m not sure I got as much out of it live as I did reliving it through Jonathan Demme’s peerless performance film, STOP MAKING SENSE. There’s no dialogue or framing device — the conceptual arc of the show removed any need for that nonsense — but in some ways it’s the perfect expression of Demme’s career-long fascination with the building of communities and with performing troupes as families (and vice versa).
The director’s love of people and performers radiates from the film, and he caught the band at its joyous peak, from frontman David Byrne’s mesmerizing solo entrance to ‘Psycho Killer’ to his big-suit romp through ‘Swamp’ to a chill-raising ‘Once in a Lifetime.’ And the shared spotlight on Heads Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth (whose side project Tom Tom Club gets a sizable sidebar), as well as auxiliary members Bernie Worrell, Steven Scales, Alex Weir and Lynn Mabry, makes this a kind of anti-Last Waltz — a whole greater than the sum of its parts … and if you feel like dancing, we’ll allow it.”
