“The follow-up tour [was] captured in Jonathan Demme’s phenomenal concert film Stop Making Sense.” ^TL “Recorded over three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre in December 1983, …the usual four-piece lineup was supplemented by Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales, guitarist Alex Weir, and backup singers Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt.” ^GP

The show opened “with David Byrne alone onstage with a boom box” ^GP performing such “early selections [as] Psycho Killer…as bare renditions.” ^GP The performance continued by “gradually adding musicians until the show was a full-on psycho-Afro-disco frenzy.” ^TL

Included are “full-band funky versions of such later hits as Life During Wartime, Burning Down the House, Once in a Lifetime, and Girlfriend Is Better.” ^GP

“Even with some of his more memorable tics edited out, Byrne is in fine voice here: Never before had he sounded warmer or more approachable, as evidenced by his soaring rendition of ‘Once in a Lifetime.’” ^MH

“The band makes room for one of Byrne’s…hard-driving, elliptical What a Day That Was)” ^MH from his 1981 Catherine Wheel album and, on the Special Edition, “Genius of Love by the Tom Tom Club, a side project of drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth.” ^GP

“Purists…found [the original] Stop Making Sense slickly mixed and, worse yet, incomprehensive. The nine tracks included jumble and truncate the natural progression of frontman David Byrne's meticulously arranged stage show. Cries for a double-album treatment…were sounded almost immediately…[but] until a 1999 ‘special edition’ cured the 1984 release’s ills, fans had to make do with the Stop Making Sense they were given – which is, by any account, an exemplary snapshot of a band at the height of its powers.”^MH “One of the greatest live albums ever…A quintessential purchase.” ^GP