David Byrne: Live from Austin, TX
Byrne continued to attempt to unite his band through their dress and choreography as he got older and left Talking Heads. Besides notable deviations in the 1990s, for his 1997 album Feelings, for example, he had many costume changes and was the clear focal point, Byrne has continued to work towards erasing himself into his band onstage. For his 2001 tour, he decided to attempt to form a collective by dressing his band all in the same shirts, designed like those that mechanics and other manual laborers wear. Featuring Byrne's label's name, Luaka Bop, and each band member's name embroidered on the chest, the shirts created a literal uniform for the band as they played throughout the tour. The shirts were in various colors, but the band remained unified even when they were wearing different colors, just as the workers at an auto shop are unified through their dress. However, Byrne did not anticipate clothing women when he came up with this concept, and all of the women string players do not have mechanics shirts. The men in the orchestral section have the same shirts as the rest of the band, but the shirts that Byrne had made did not fit the women correctly, so they are dressed in black as they would be if they were performing in a traditional orchestra.
While Byrne's own efforts to form a collective almost work out here, as he established a uniform for the band, he is thwarted not only by his inability to dress the female string players in the same shirt as the rest of the band but also by the cinematography of the film. The cameraman does not take wide shots of the entire band and mainly focuses on Byrne or a select group of his band members. Rather than creating a collective, the camera creates small groups and a frontman in Byrne. The production value of this concert is considerably lower than Byrne's other concert films; even though Talking Heads financed Stop Making Sense on their own through Demme and his Hollywood connections, the filming was professional and focused on what the band should look like. Here, the concert was filmed for television in Austin, Texas, where the concert took place, and the cameraman does not have any incentive to show Byrne's vision of a collective. Once again, he ends up as the front man of the group rather than a part of a collective in Austin, TX.