Talking Heads

Certain Songs #2634: Talking Heads – “(Nothing But) Flowers”

June 9, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Naked
Year: 1988

. . .

“Nature is Healing.” For those of us who are terminally online, that’s one of the best meme jokes to come out of COVID. It dates back to those early days where everybody — not everybody, of course — stayed home for a couple of weeks. Almost instantly, people would sincerely post pictures of stuff like dolphins in the canals of Venice or birds in Central Park or some shit with the caption “nature is healing.” Because, you know, the humans aren’t around.

Certain Songs #2633: Talking Heads – “The Facts of Life”

June 8, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Naked
Year: 1988

. . .

After the singer-songwriter orientation that was the focus of both Little Creatures and True Stories, Talking Heads went back to the formula that created Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues for 1988’s Naked: a melange of Latin funk and Afrobeat based on band jams and run through David Byrne’s still-unique sensibilities.

And while Naked was definitely a step above True Stories and (maybe even) Little Creatures or Speaking in Tongues, it didn’t come anywhere close to the groundbreaking heights of Remain in Light, which is as unfair as it is true.

Certain Songs #2632: Talking Heads – “Puzzlin’ Evidence”

June 7, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: True Stories
Year: 1986

. . .

Because I lived in Fresno in 1986, I had to fly to London to see David Byrne’s directorial debut, True Stories (the film), in the theatre. Sure, technically, I was in the U.K. to be the best man at Tim & Jean’s wedding, but whatever with that, man: I was one of the first of my friends to see Byrne’s archly sincere film about a place he’d never live if you paid him. The film which, of course, landed him on the cover of Time magazine, which was still like a huge deal in the 1980s.

Certain Songs #2631: Talking Heads – “Road to Nowhere”

June 6, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Little Creatures
Year: 1985

. . .

One of the things about Little Creatures and the albums that followed it was that Talking Heads decided not to tour them. And, of course, when I say “Talking Heads,” I mean David Byrne, who had the True Stories project already percolating while doing press for Stop Making Sense. And as you’ve probably noticed, Talking Heads was one of the all-time great live bands, and I occasionally wonder what the songs from those records might have become in a live setting. Especially given that none of the Little Creatures (or True Stories, for that matter) songs were all that technically difficult.

So one wonders what a song like “Road to Nowhere” might have been in a live setting, even with just the original quartet playing it. Which isn’t to say that it’s not awesome in the studio incarnation, which begins with a gospel acapella.

Certain Songs #2630: Talking Heads – “And She Was”

June 5, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Little Creatures
Year: 1985

. . .

At the time, 1985’s Little Creatures was kind of seen as Talking Heads “back to basics,” a return to basic rock and pop after two albums of afro-funk. The truth, of course, was more complicated, as one of the things about most purported “back to basics” albums, from Let it Be to Some Girls to All That You Can’t Leave Behind is that you can’t unlearn all the things you’ve learned. And so Little Creatures sounded fuller than say Talking Heads ’77, because it was eight years later. Also, there was what seemed like a conscious lack of of danceable songs, focusing more on straight rock or even country rhythms and sounds.

Certain Songs #2629: Talking Heads – “What A Day That Was (Los Angeles 12-1983)”

June 2, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stop Making Sense
Year: 1983

Even though there was nearly a three-year gap between Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues, it wasn’t because the members of Talking Heads were sitting on their hands: in that period, David Byrne released two solo projects: the My Life in The Bush of Ghosts album with old sourpuss himself, Brian Eno — which was mostly recorded prior to Remain in Light — and Byrne’s soundtrack for Twyla Tharp dance project, The Catherine Wheel.

None of these were, of course, as nearly high profile as the other Talking Heads spinoff, Chris Frantz & Tina Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club project, which spawned the #1 dance single “Genius of Love,” which also made it to #31 on the pop charts, and has been sampled over and over and over ever since.

Certain Songs #2628: Talking Heads – “Slippery People (Los Angeles 12-1983)”

June 1, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stop Making Sense
Year: 1983

. . .

I’ve been dancing around it for a couple of weeks, but the time has come for me to express what is no doubt a controversial viewpoint. Which is part of two seemingly contradictory opinions. The first opinion is that by showing us how both the joy and artifice of live performance can lead to authenticity and transcendence — especially when your arsenal contains some of the greatest songs ever — Stop Making Sense is the greatest music concert film ever released.

Certain Songs #2627: Talking Heads – “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)”

May 31, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Speaking in Tongues
Year: 1983

. . .

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One of the rare artifacts that has survived the past 40 years of my life is a set of buttons that showed up at KFSR alongside Talking Heads 1983 album Speaking in Tongues. While I was known to wear buttons that that time in my life — I still remember how my The Clash on a mirror button got accidentally melted by an overly hot dryer — I never took those Talking Heads buttons out of their original packaging, figuring that they would “be worth something” in the future. This was the same impulse that that Tim & Kirk both had when they bought the limited edition — only 50,000 for the world — Robert Rauschenberg clear vinyl versions. Those went for $12.98, which was wayyy above my budget for an album that by definition I wasn’t going to play.

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Certain Songs #2626: Talking Heads – “Burning Down The House”

May 30, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Speaking in Tongues
Year: 1983

. . .

After putting out four albums between 1977-1980, it wasn’t until June of 1983 before Talking Heads put out another record, which might have been a recipe for disaster: even with The Name of This Band is Talking Heads to keep them in the public eye, three years was a long long time to be gone in the early 1980s, and whole movements had come around, gone away and been revived in that time. Instead, people had been catching up with them kinda like how Breaking Bad got so popular because it was on Netflix, and when Speaking in Tongues came out, the art/dance/pop/punk fusion that Talking Heads had helped pioneer was way more mainstream.

With Brian Eno gone, Speaking in Tongues was more straightforward funk than even Remain in Light, and you could definitely hear that in the opening song, the ebullient “Burning Down The House,” which actually opened with a bit of a feint: a swirling acoustic guitar, which soon meshed with synths — provided by Jerry Harrison, session guy Wally Badarou and Tina Waymouth on bass synth — and drums to provide the twitchy funk background over which Byrne sang.

Certain Songs #2625: Talking Heads – “Crosseyed and Painless (Cherry Hill 11-08-1980)”

May 25, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Name of This Band is Talking Heads
Year: 1980

. . .

So while I’ll admit that it’s a little weird that the version of “Crosseyed and Painless” on the Name of This Band is Talking Heads omits the slow funky jam that precedes it, I still prefer it to the album version and the Stop Making Sense version. I prefer it to the album version because Adrian Belew is on fire throughout, and I prefer it to the Stop Making Sense version because it contains that weird two-note bee-boop sequence during the verses. Because it’s from OUTER SPACE!