TALKING HEADS
edith head
5,106 Posts
Ugh. sometimes they really really Frickin' annoy me and sound so smarty pants RISD art school pretentious and then somedays i can ignore all the stuff that annoys me and they sound really Frickin' good to me on a purely musical level. i hate/love them so much. please tell me you can relate.i'm listening to Fear of Music and Songs about Buildings and Food back to back.
Comments
I tend to feel the same way about Talking Heads. A bit too pretentious and art school for my tastes. I can only dig on them in certain moods. I tend to prefer early B52's if we're talking bout music from that era. They were all quirky and fun w/ cool beats and strange, beautiful harmonies.
I don't venture past Speaking in Tongues.
completely agree...then they do a song like "naive melody"- which absolutely blows me away!
so at the end of the day...maybe they are genius???
Embrace the fact that they are gonna be jagoffs every once in awhile and you will be happier with their music.
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I remember feeling a little disturbed the first time I saw the cover of Talking Heads 1980 release Remain in Light. With the red pixellated face paint covering David, Jerry, Chris and Tina's faces, and the upside down A's in the band's name, the album seemed to be commenting on so many things: technological breakdown, randomness and chaos in the world, the primitive/modern dichotomy of contemporary life...
I didn't have the legit album, but a bootleg cassette version from a small shop in Jakarta's Blok M area. One of the many things these bootleggers did that annoyed me was to change the track order of the album on the cassette -- I never figured out why this was done, maybe it was to squeeze in as many songs as possible on each 45 minute side of the cassette. As a result, the first song on my cassette version was "Crosseyed and Painless", but the actual first song on the album was "Born Under Punches."
This album was a revelation -- it was the first Heads album I had heard and it hit me right in the gut. I heard this before 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, and Fear of Music. I'd have to say Remain in Light opened up all kinds of worlds for me -- I immediately bought all their previous albums, including the live album recorded in someone's living room (!).
It was the first time I'd heard about Brian Eno, which led me to explore his solo albums and collabos with Robert Fripp. (And from Fripp I moved on to King Crimson.) On this album I heard the guitar genius of Adrian Belew with his bizarre electronic-sounding blips and bloops. And then there was the bubbling keyboard funk of Bernie Worrell which opened up the whole Parliament/Funkadelic experience. The fact that this album brought in so many crazily varied strands of music still amazes me today.
Overall the experience of listening to Remain in Light was like waking up on a different planet where the ancient and futuristic collide, and organized sonic mayhem ensues. With a heavy African vibe -- talking drums, call/response chanting -- layered in thick funk, the album sounds like four somewhat geeky white band members (with Eno as the mastermind) channeled Mother Africa into the mixing board to coax out the most otherworldly rhythms and melodies heard to date.
The other big thing about this album was the teaming of David Byrne and Brian Eno -- some people might claim they unfairly dominated the making of the album and alienated the rest of the Heads. Notwithstanding all that, Byrne/Eno went on to make the brilliant My Life in the Bush of Ghosts which was like Remain in Light meets Coldcut -- but more on this later.
Arent the B-52's pretentious Art School Athens Georgia cats?
i'm listening to Fear of Music and Songs about Buildings and Food back to back.
I tend to feel the same way about Talking Heads. A bit too pretentious and art school for my tastes. I can only dig on them in certain moods. I tend to prefer early B52's if we're talking bout music from that era. They were all quirky and fun w/ cool beats and strange, beautiful harmonies.
Arent the B-52's pretentious Art School Athens Georgia cats?
I think the distinction is that the B-52s emphasized fun and silliness over social significance. As much as I'd rather do away with the word "pretentious" altogether, it definately seems more applicable to the Talking Heads than the B-52s.
No, I don't think they were art school nerds. My understanding of their history is that they formed a band so they could play at local parties for their friends. They used to pack up their family station wagon and drive to NYC to play CBGB's. Regardless of all that, their approach to music is way more based on experimentation due to their lack of prowess on their instruments. Which gave way to accidentally coming up with riffs or song ideas. The end result is more loose and raw as compared to the careful construction of songs and lyrics by more trained musicians like the Talking Heads. They're both cool in their own way. I just dig the more raw approach.
even better
totally. i love Kate Pierson's voice though.
I gotta ask: is it the gayness?
yup.
Haha! What a douche....
I'm referring to this era..
For the record, I'm totally with you guys on this critique. I dig the girls' harmonies though.
indeedy. "52 Girls" is my shit
Awesome post!
I first got into the Talking Heads by borrowing my mom's casette copy of Stop Making Sense, which I listened to in my walkman in high school art class, so all the pretensious crap spoke to me, haha -- I thought I was the shit.
true stories was doo doo.
but ill ride for selected tracks right up to their last album. "nothing but flowers" with johnny marr guesting on guitar was a nice one.
The three albums that they did with Eno were awesome, and while it created tensions in the group I'm pretty sure that the tension led to Tom Tom Club. Tom Tom Club is all good all the way all day every day.
One other important aspect of Remain in Light--which is definitely my favorite--was that it featured Jon Hassell in his experimental trumpeting days.
the early tracks with female leads where Fred just
has a Flava Flav role can be pretty awesome. I'm not
all that convinced they were more experimental than
the Talking Heads, though. And they have some of the
most unlistenable "classic" radio tracks I can think
of, hearing "ROAM" in a supermarket sends me running
for the exit almost as surely as R.E.M. corpses like
"Losing My Religion" or "Everybody Hurts" ... those
Athens bands just did not age well.
do you go to art school?