Somewhere in between June 1st, 1983 when the album Speaking in Tongues was released and December, 1983 when “Stop Making Sense” was filmed, Talking Heads and their extended band went on David Letterman to perform two of their songs: “Burning Down the House” and “I Zimbra”.

If you are a fan of the film, you’ll enjoy these two performances. Already you can see echoes of what will you will see in the show. Indeed, other than Dolette McDonald being replaced by Edna Holt, everyone on stage at Letterman appears in the film.

That was televised in the beginning of July, one month after the record was released. Already the band is pretty tight. They had months of shows to do before Jonathan Demme started filming. No wonder the performances in the film were superb.

As for “I Zimbra”, if you think you hadn’t seen it in the original concert film, you’d be correct. The band did perform it, and it was intended to be in the film, but it was taken out. Good news, it is included in the recent rerelease of the film (which I wrote about, here).

Here’s “I Zimbra”

and here’s “Burning Down the House”