cool there are other heads lurking here. if you´re not familar wiht Talking Heads expect a highly unusual music that´s trying to bring the body, the mind, the heart and the soul together, making it all go crazy and free in one elegant uplifting moment of insight and activation. I saw the walls melt while listening to their msuic. Chris Frantz is one of the best fucking drummers this world ever saw and the musical interaction between the four heads is very energetic, quirky and unique. a quick run down of their music: minimal sweet-sounding yet a bit disturbed rock without any genre stuff, their topics were more about real life than glamour and macho-rock, also they didn´t give a fuck about rock´n´roll romance and revolutionary punk rock rebellion status. their moto was just to be themselves which can be heard on their debut "77". then they got introduced to more crazy, experimental recording techniques via their producer brian eno (MORE SONGS ABOUT BULINDINGS AND FOOD) and they also discovered that afro-funk was in their blood, they went for it! their third album, FEAR OF MUSIC features multi-instrument tracks with heavy percussive groooves and beats net to stark, minimal, semi-electronic experimental tracks exploring the secret, shamefilled aspects of modern existence.
remain in light is their forth record and an explosive culmination of their non-melancholy progressive rock music mixed with heavy electronic synth influence (basically defining a lot of what is cool about today´s electronic music, less pink floyd but more dance-oriented) and heavy afro-inspired funk and percussion. they expanded their live shows to a group of up to ten musicicans going from minimal rock to the other extreme. they later refined the concept and recorded a wonderful album, with a less edgy, more polished pop sound while keeping the ethnic and electronic influence firmly intact(SPEAKING IN TONGUES) and a great live show which mixed modern art-dance, kabuki theatre and religious ecstatic craziness as can be seen in the greatest concert film of all time: STOP MAKING SENSE - here the transformation of a nerdy stuck up white guy is made visible, in the end his clothes are a mess, he´s sweating all over and laughing and dancing his ass off, liberated from all these rhythms, all delivered with breathtaking performances from all heads.
later they made a perfect pop album, LITTLE CREATURES with ROAD TO NOWHERE and AND SHE WAS as some of their biggest hits, their most accessible one. then they did a version of the soundtrack for their singer´s film TRUE STORIES, which shows traditional cajun and country influences and which must have come as a total shock to their early punk audiences from CBGB where Talking hHeads first establsihed themselves (they supported the Ramones in the late seventies, often convenienly labelled punk but they could hardly be called that). their last album was NAKED in 88, with newfound biting political themes and also a sense of surrendering to the spiritual world with very poetic, dream like songs mixed int there as well. musically they completely reinvented themselves exploring latin american sounds and rhythms and fusing them into their urban funky pop stuff way before it was considered cool. they disbanded becuase they couldn´t stand each other anymore.
their music is always pretty different on every album because they never liked to go back and they never did what you expected them to do. there are some consistencies; it´s all about the groove baby! their music is more percussive, freaky, noisy and non-linear, an incredible mix of a thousand styles which always succeeds and works, because these people were no showoffs, they did what served a song best always going for maximum effect in their listeners. very rhythm, chord, groove, vibe-oriented and with lots of great touching harmonies and little melodies thrown in to create a wonderfully strange, vehemic yet subtle music. they were a mindblowing live band, full of energy and natural funkiness (you can hear that even when they were playing rock on their first record, there´s this nervous slightly bewildered quality that they always had, but it´s far from the torment of the punk scene). hardly any solos, no pathos. no crap! "quirky, honest, political grooves". lyrically they went from detached observations on our disturbing modern lifestyles to spiritually inspired off the wall random associations (incredible stuff!! - check out SPEAKING IN TONGUES) to very complex and refined poetry (NAKED). they sang about evrything from terrorism to sexuality. musical labels they had to put up with: art rock, intellectual pop, punk, minimal, new wave, world music, funk rock. in truth their music is somewhere in between all of these things and becomes so much more.
and their the best fucking band I ever had the pleasure to listen to - so far!
www.talking-heads.net |
