After the show I was talking with a man wearing a t-shirt that said Stop Making Sense. I thought about a time in the 90s, maybe it was Rolling Stone Magazine and David Byrne said something I found unexpected when he was asked something like who was the most important person of the last 10 years. A music business answer was assumed, like who’s the most significant performer or something like that, but he addressed Gorbachev and Glasnost. The impenetrable wall of the Soviet Union developed cracks, then suffered destruction and a free for all, the wild wild East, people swallowing as much power as they could stuff down their pants and blouses. The transition was into complex poverty or so it seemed from the outside while Reagan took credit for destroying an imbalance of power and seemed pleased to isolate Gorbachev. The ascension of Yeltsin, meant the ascension of Putin. No one knew exactly how things would go down but I liked David Byrne’s perspective, that a great opportunity for advancing good will and exchange internationally had come and gone and he credited with Gorbachev for having the guts to take the chance. He’s challenged my thinking a lot in his the continuity of ideas throughout his catalogue. We’re on A Road To Nowhere comes to mind as does Heaven is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens.