The Talking Heads kicked off their Remain in Light Tour at the Heatwave Festival in Canada on August 23, 1980, where they live debuted several new songs from their forthcoming album.

The Canadian music festival was unofficially being dubbed as the New Wave Woodstock as it boasted a line up of The Clash, B52s, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Rockpile and others along with the Talking Heads for the all day event at Mosport Park about an hour east of Toronto.

"As of now this is the biggest New Wave event that has ever happened," promoter Larry Weinstein said in a press conference before the show.

When The Clash backed out, organizers feared the walk up ticket sales would be affected. Tickets were $20 in advance and $25 day of show. The park's capacity was 100,000.

At 5pm, legendary festival promoter John Brower was doing a live interview with Blues Brothers harmonica player Dan Aykroyd.

When the actor, in his Elwood Blues voice, asked Brower that since it didn't look like the park would sell out, if it would be ok if he put the listeners on the Guest List, Brower strangely said yes.

15,000 people within 90 minutes appeared, according Music Gateway, demanding free entry. And they got it.

So when the Talking Heads first played "Once in a Lifetime" that Saturday night in Ontario, they did it in front of one of the biggest audiences they'd see.

For Remain in Light, the band had convinced frontman David Byrne to allow the entire band to contribute more to the creation of the songs.

While recording in the tropics, guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth, and drummer Chris Franz, laid down jams and created rudimentary loops that lead to the eventual grooves for the tracks that later Byrne would create lyrics for.

Byrne also wanted to experiment creatively and embrace the introduction of African polyrhythms and an expanded line-up of players to help foster his love of Sun-Ra and King Sunny Ade that was exhibited in "I Zimbra" from 1979's Fear of Music.

As important as "I Zimbra" was in bridging the band from the nerdy, quirky, art school quartet into a much more exotic group that would produce far more complex music in the 1980s, it had never been performed live before Heatwave.

It was also left out of the original cut of the Stop Making Sense film but then added to the expanded DVD version.

"When I first moved to New York, I caught Sun Ra and his Arkestra at the 5 Spot, a jazz venue that used to be at St. Mark’s Place and Bowery,” Byrne wrote about the influence Sun Ra had on him, in his book, How Music Works, “He moved from instrument to instrument. At one point there was a bizarre solo on a Moog synthesizer, an instrument not often associated with jazz. Here was electronic noise suddenly reimagined as entertainment!”

The Canadian festival goers were the first to see the Talking Heads with the expanded group of musicians: Adrian Belew (lead guitar, vocals), Bernie Worrell (keyboards), Busta Cherry Jones (bass), Steve Scales (percussion), and Dolette McDonald (vocals).

That new lineup added a level of funk and dynamics to the band's overall sound that they toured with the band through the year.

If the 11-song set looks a little thin, it was due to two reasons: the songs were elongated due to all the sweaty, booty shaking jams that were going on; and also because Elvis Costello was the headliner, not the Talking Heads.

So they were only able to live debut "Houses in Motion," "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)," "Crosseyed and Painless," along with "Once in a Lifetime" and "I Zimbra."

The Talking Heads will be reuniting in Canada in just a few weeks. Sadly there are no plans for them to play, they've been broken up for years.

The last time the band played a real concert was in 1984 and Byrne nearly left half way into it.

"David left the stage in the middle of the set, and I had to go get him and basically drag him back to the stage," Frantz told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "His excuse for leaving was he was 'sick of playing for people who had their feet in the mud.' It wasn’t even a particularly muddy day there. There might have been some mud in front of the stage. He just didn’t want to do the band anymore."

The group will be at the Toronto Film Festival celebrating the Stop Making Sense documentary 40th anniversary. They will be interviewed there by Oscar-winning director Spike Lee who directed David Byrne's American Utopia in 2020 for HBO.

Harrison and Belew however are playing the music of the Talking Heads.

Their Remain in Light tour will do a series of shows in California at the end of this year.

"Remain In Light is a high point in my career, Adrian and I had often discussed the magic of the 1980 tour and the sheer joy it brought to audiences. It is such a delight to see and bring that joy once again to crowds on this upcoming tour.”

The legendary LA band X will open.

Tickets available on the Remain in Light website.