Seventh track (B2) on Stop Making Sense (1984). Originally a solo song by David, that appeared on the album Songs From "The Catherine Wheel (1981), which was a soundtrack to a dance performance piece by Twyla Tharp, whom David briefly dated around that time. This song was played with Talking Heads between 1982 and 1984.
Excerpt from The Catherine Wheel, with the choreography to What A Day That Was.
In What a Day That Was, from your solo album The Catherine Wheel, you sing “Who knows the difference between right and wrong,” and then, “We're going boom boom boom, that's the way we live.” What do you mean by that?
DB: “I couldn’t tell you,” (laughs), “because I don’t know myself.”
Is that song meant as a critique of the way we live in the West?
DB: “Not a critique, more a compassionate view.”
“Going boom boom boom” doesn’t come across very subtly.
DB: “Mmmm…” [OOR Magazine, 28 July 1982]
Tina could tell David was feeling really happy imparting a Bucky Wunderlick “erotic terror to the dreams of the republic.” David would do his dance to “What a Day That Was” (from The Catherine Wheel), and he’d hold a flashlight under his chin and look exactly like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Of course, the flashlight-under-the-chin trick was old hat. But it always worked. She loved watching David with his mouth open like a big hole. And now when he sang that song, he’d turn his face between each phrase and look directly at Tina and laugh his head off—a private laugh that only she could see. Then he’d turn back to the audience and the camera and be back to that stone-faced hole-in-the-head look. Tina found it wonderfully terrifying! (...) The only source of light appears to be coming up from the floor. It creates a mask of shadow on everyone’s faces. Tina saw it as Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Jerry thought everyone looked wonderfully ghoulish like the old Vincent Price movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes. But this is a Blade Runner moment. Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth created this effect—the band never looked this outlandish live. Cronenweth loved light as much as Robert Wilson. Perhaps more than Wilson. [This Must Be The Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century by David Bowman]
Harrison: On “What a Day That Was,” I’m behind Ednah and Lynn, and half my face is in the dark. It’s like the light’s coming up from the bottom to me. Sort of like up from the crypt in a horror movie.
Byrne: It looks like the camera’s going to go down Ednah’s throat.
Byrne: You’re just going, “Whoa. That’s a point of view the audience does not always get.” [The Ringer, 27 September 2023]
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