Song and Circumstance

If I ever need to remind myself what I was reading or mulling over at various points in my life I have only to look in this scrupulously researched and uncannily on-the-money book. Would that we all had references like this! It is for me a beautiful and narcissistically bizarre experience to re-experience my life through the series of ideas and the flow of connections I have made as they are reported and interpreted by Sytze Steenstra. The book is delightfully and unusually free of gossip and psychological assumptions and explanations (not that those don't also contain some truth); instead it focuses almost exclusively on what I've done, said or written-and comes to some conclusions that are (to me) surprising and unexpected. Sytze finds connections I wasn't aware of, and continuity and patterns where initially one might see randomness and chaos. This book makes me seem both smarter than I am and possibly stranger than I am. - David Byrne Like David Byrne, this is a very varied and colourful book. It covers all the artist's relative terrain, in such a way that's as equally as enthusiastic and passionate as he himself. Community College Campus News Song And Circumstance is an excellent read, of interest to the old school Talking Heads fan, perfervid David Byrne follower, or for readers of how music and philosophy work together. -KEXP Seattle 1000 word review in NRC Handelsblad, a prominent Dutch newspaper Sytze Steenstra's Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to Present is a book that will engage even the most informed fans of his work...Steenstra's book is well worth it for the fascinating insights it offers into Byrne's work. -John McLeod, Flagpole Magazine, July 28, 2010