We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: The Name of This Band is Talking Heads
Year: 1979
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The second side of The Name of This Band is Talking Heads featured five songs from their 1979 tour supporting Fear of Music, all recorded on the same night at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, and is definitive proof of just how great they’d become, even before they added the extra people in 1980.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2617: Talking Heads – “Artists Only (Passaic 11-17-1979)”
Album: Fear of Music
Year: 1979
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Another thing that set Fear of Music apart from the other two albums Talking Heads recorded with Brian Eno was that rather than recording at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, the basic tracks were recorded at Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth’s loft in New York City. Also, it was basically a brand-new batch of songs, to boot — the songs on the first two albums went back to their earliest days — which might account for Byrne’s lyrics about war, animals, drugs, memories, not being able to change someone’s mind, and how air is bad for you. Or might not.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2616: Talking Heads – “Heaven”
Album: Fear of Music
Year: 1979
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Fading in with sirens rushing at you from a distance — one of the more universal sounds you encounter when you find a city to live in — “Cities” is kinda sorta the Talking Heads paying Brian Eno back for “Kings Led Hat” while also looking forward to Remain in Light.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2615: Talking Heads – “Cities”
Album: Fear of Music
Year: 1979
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The second album of the trilogy that Talking Heads made with old sourpuss himself, Brian Eno, 1979’s Fear of Music, isn’t quite held in the same highest regard as the albums that surrounded it, More Songs About Buildings and Food and Remain in Light. So, in that respect, it’s kinda like The Two Towers. But that might be because it’s easily the darkest of those three albums, which is understated in the title: music is just one of the many many many things to fear on this record.
If Byrne’s persona was normally kind of a bemused joy, that often goes right out the window on Fear of Music, where nothing seems to satisfy him — not even breathing or eternal life, as we’ll see — and he’s at war with the entire world, opening the record spouting gibberish and ending the record tripping balls. So it’s a dark masterpiece, which might even secretly be their best album. So, in that respect, it’s like The Empire Strikes Back.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2614: Talking Heads – “Mind”
Album: More Songs About Buildings and Food
Year: 1978
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While Talking Heads did covers in their early live shows — in Chris Frantz’s recent book, Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina, he helpfully sprinkles in early set lists so you can see that they covered things like “96 Tears” and the Troggs’ “Love is All Round” (later covered by R.E.M.) — the only song they ever covered on record was, of course, Al Green’s “Take Me to The River,” making it an outlier in their recorded output.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2613: Talking Heads – “Take Me to The River”
Album: More Songs About Buildings and Food
Year: 1978
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When I first bought it, More Songs About Buildings and Food affected me differently from just about any album I’ve ever owned: I knew I enjoyed it, maybe even loved it, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I kept playing it for two reasons: to get to the bottom of it, and to differentiate the individual songs on it. The opening gallop of “Thank You For Sending me An Angel” and the closing chill-out of “Take Me to The River” and “The Big Country” were easy to wrap my head around, but all of the songs in between — with their tempo changes, weirdly funny lyrics, and spaced-out instrumental sections — were hard for me to distinguish for a long time.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2612: Talking Heads – I’m Not In Love”
Album: More Songs About Buildings and Food
Year: 1978
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Very very few Talking Heads songs featuring David Byrne swearing, so the opening of “Found a Job,” which comes at the end of side one of More Songs About Buildings and Food, is extra startling, as he yells “Damn that television!” with the rest of the band starting right up with him as he continues: “what a bad picture!”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2611: Talking Heads – “Found a Job”
Album: More Songs About Buildings and Food
Year: 1978
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Back in the late 80s/early 90s, it was a running trope in our social circle that the girls all went to the bathroom together becausue that were they were serviced by the Greek gods who hung out there. Why the greek gods hung out in the womens room of the Wild Blue in Fresno was never explaned, but I have to assume that it some kind of metaphysical thing, not to be understood by the likes of me. But thinking about it now, I have to assume that another reason was that they instinctively knew it was bad to leave any of their number alone with the boys, of whom even the sweetest, most intellectual, non-handsiest probably still had his thoughts dominated by two things: when he was going to eat next, and when he was going to have sex next.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2610: Talking Heads – “The Girls Want to Be With The Girls”
Album: More Songs About Buildings and Food
Year: 1978
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It’s probably not a coincidence that my favorite Talking Heads album, 1978’s hilariously-tiled More Songs About Buildings and Food, opens with the complete blast of unfettered joy that is “Thank You For Sending Me an Angel.” From the start, the entire band is galloping full speed ahead, led by Chris Frantz’s roiling tom work and the scratchy guitar interplay of David Byrne and Jerry Harrison, over which Byrne acts as if he’s just discovered love.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2609: Talking Heads – “Thank You For Sending Me an Angel”
Album: The Name of This Band is Talking Heads
Year: 1977
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One of the reasons I preferred some of the live versions of Talking Heads songs to the studio versions were part of the basic reasons live albums exist in the first place: the songs were faster and rawer, and bereft of extraneous instrumentation. At those first two were definitely why I prefer the live version of “Pulled Up” to the version on Talking Heads: 77
Which isn’t to say that the studio version of “Pulled Up” is wimpy at all: indeed, they thought enough of it to have it end the album, putting it after the nearly unfollowable “Psycho Killer.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2608: Talking Heads – “Pulled Up (WCOZ 11-17-1977)”