What: Stop Making Sense, Jonathan Demme's stunning documentary of Talking Heads' 1983 tour:
Why: Stop Making Sense united the most creative band with the most creative director for a song-by-song document of a Heads concert. (Actually, it's three Heads concerts, which you can't tell except for bassist Tina Weymouth's subtle costume changes.) But it's mostly notable for what it doesn't contain: no shots of the audience till the end, no backstage antics, no onstage dialogue, no jumpcuts, no diversions whatsoever from the day at hand. And what a day that was: The concert begins with singer David Byrne and a boombox performing a creepy "Psycho Killer", then the band coming out one by one for new songs until the main foursome (Byrne, Weymouth, guitarist Jerry Harrison, and drummer Chris Frantz) is onstage for the mind-bending musicianship of "Found a Job". The stage continues to be built around them, and new musicians file in until all nine touring members are onstage to perform the driving "Life During Wartime". The band morphs into Weymouth and Frantz's side project The Tom Tom Club for the sprightly "Genius of Love", to give Byrne time to change into his signature outfit: the big suit needed for "Girlfriend is Better".
Impact: The film solidified the band's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-worthy credentials, showing they were more than an arthouse delicacy. The band showed how playful they could be; they always seemed to be having fun, notably because they were pulling off some very difficult musical maneuvers. Just as importantly, the film gave Demme a platform from which he could direct two Academy Award winners, The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.
Personal Connection: For my high school newspaper the Garfield Messenger, I reviewed three movies. One was dreck (Supergirl), but the other two had awesome soundtracks. One was Stop Making Sense, which I recognized as a cinematic masterpiece at the tender age of sixteen. The other was Heavy Metal, whose soundtrack will undoubtedly show up in a future Most Beautiful Thing.
Other Contenders: U2 giving all the 9/11 victims a sort of homecoming at the halftime show of the 2002 Super Bowl; LL Cool J and a fusion band knocking 'em out on MTV Unplugged; James Brown on the TAMI Show, same tape I've had for years; Freddie Mercury leads the Wembley crowd in a clap-along in Queen's performance at 1985's Live Aid; Pink performs "Glitter in the Air" in the air at the 2010 Grammys; Peter Gabriel gets in a hamster ball on Growing Up Live (and saying there's a Peter Gabriel concert in town is one of the two surest ways to get me off of the couch, the other being the words "Dude, the couch is on fire").