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Talking Heads... universally loved even on Barbelith?

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:01 / 24.06.02

I've recently rediscovered David Byrne's "Feelings" album. Which in turn has reminded me that, no matter what social situation I find myself in, somebody there will agree with me on the Basic. Fundamental. Truth. That. Talking. Heads. Are. Ace.
Especially "Life During Wartime". Never was that song more appropriate than now.
Having said that... I was really happy at about 7 this morning, when I found out Byrne was playing in Hackney next month...
then I was really pissed off when I found out it was sold out.

17:08 / 24.06.02

I've always considered them to be massively overrated, myself. Pleasant enough sounds, competent musicianship, but to my ears insufferably twee, always and forever.

Then again, Sonic Youth gives me hives, so what the fuck do I know?

17:33 / 24.06.02

I've had an aversion to them ever since the 4th grade (one of the many kids that picked on me was fond of wearing a "Speaking In Tongues" t-shirt). To be fair, I haven't really tried to like them, but from what I've heard on the radio & seen in videos, I'm not impressed. Absolutly loved David Byrne's "True Stories" though.

17:42 / 24.06.02

Talking Heads are ace.

(Here: this'll show you how old I am. I saw the Talking Heads open for The Shirts (!) at CBGB. Anyone else ever hear of The Shirts?)

09:04 / 25.06.02

I kind of like them in theory .. I approve of what they do, and when I'm in the process of listening to them I enjoy it, but, um, for some reason I never seem to have much motivation to listen to them. I've got three of their late-70s albums (all secondhand, one on CD, one on LP and one on tape, oddly) and I don't think I've listened to any of them more than 3 times.. I really don't know why that is, cos it's all good..

The Natural Way

09:22 / 25.06.02

Yes indeed they are.

'True Stories' is fabulous, as is 'Remain in Light' ('Seen and Not Seen' is my favourite song ever....I once listened to the whole album on a beautiful moonlit night whilst walking my dog and tripping on mushrooms. Unforgettable - the fields glowed!), 'Fear of Music' rules, 'More Songs About Buildings & Food' is just sooo fabulous (esp 'Warning Sign', 'The Good Thing' and 'Stay Hungry' [for the fab guitar bit at the end]) and '77'....spikey, Psycho-Killery goodness.

They are not overrated. Jack Fear is wrong.

Actually..."Twee"? What the fuck?

11:46 / 25.06.02

Twee. Overly precious. Cutesy. Self-consciously wacky. Gratingly faux-naive. Irony disappearing up its own arse.

And cold, cold, cold. Listen: the Heads have made me smile now and then, have made me tap my feet--but they have never, ever moved me emotionally.

Boy in a Suitcase

01:59 / 26.06.02

Despite a fondness for "Stop Making Sense" I had in junior high, I always thought Talking Heads were kind of the most biting-on-aluminum-foily arch-bourgeoisie stealing-third-world-music super-rich-yuppie bullshit. Good musicians though. Don't see why people lump them in with punk other than they used to play at CBGBs... every time I think of them it's in the same part of my brain that contains Bret Easton Ellis and Patrick Bateman and horrible 80s pseudo-African "world beat" graphic design.

The Natural Way

10:31 / 26.06.02

I know what you mean about "world beat", but on closer inspection it means nothing. It's all about the tunes....and Talking Heads' worldbeaty moments are some of their best: 'Remain in Light' and 'Papa Legba' spring to mind. And, Jack, that's the other temptation w/ Talking Heads, to describe their music as the product of "ironic distance" - to describe their sound as emotionless and cold, and, yeah, sometimes they are (the 70's were the decade when people got sick of songs about "love"), but no-one can tell me the joy and all out this-is-yr-life-from-aboveness that suffuses 'Once in a Lifetime' and 'The Great Curve', the brooding menace of 'The Danger Zone', the frantic urgency of 'Warning Sign' or the sad guitars of 'heaven' aren't choca with big, big feeling. Sometimes Byrne and co. go for little stabs of balls-out emotion, only to reign it all in before the listener can so much as blink.....I think that makes that inseey taste even sweeter, personally.

12:46 / 26.06.02

Don't see why people lump them in with punk other than they used to play at CBGBs...

Point of order.

The name of the club in question is not "CBGBs", but "CBGB", or if you want to be pedantic about it, "CBGB (OMFUG)".

In case anyone wondered, it stands for (believe it or not) "Country Blue Grass Blues (Or Music For Ur Gastronomy)".

15:21 / 26.06.02

Runs:

... no-one can tell me [all these bits of various Heads songs] aren't choca with big, big feeling.

Ah, but I just did.

Whatcha gonna do about it?

Jack The Bodiless

17:50 / 26.06.02

He's baiting you, Runs... go get him, tiger...

18:13 / 26.06.02

Jack The Bodiless

18:41 / 26.06.02

I assume that's a gun you've got there, Mr. Fear. Or is that why they call you Mr. Fear?

20:49 / 26.06.02

talking heads are THE band for me. When they reunited for their induction into the hall of fame along with the ramones and played a stage 18 years after their last tour together I cried tears of joy and felt such bliss..the estranged family members got together again and talked!!!

I know what jack fear thinks, I know how people can get these reactions, I know other people who feel the same way. I can only tell you that for me TALKING HEADS are

simply undescribable. the ebst medicine I ever took. gold. I LOVE their music, it opens up my soul, erases the dark spots in my brain and floods my body cells with living light. their music is so uplifting and kicks so much ass in such a hyperswinging sexy way, they cover so much new ground in any song and it always seems so fresh to me. their music keeps changing and I play their songs in my head all the time. TALKING HEADS makes me wanna go naked, it melts the walls in my room, it has the truest words, they played the clearest tunes. and chris frantz is one of the most creative and ingenious drummers in rock history.

you know, when somebody implies their music is fake, I feel hurt FOR THEM. all I can tell you is give it another try - if you want to. six years ago I discovered what music really can do after having been a music addict my whole life. plus listening to "speaking in tongues" convinced me that life is good and that i would put my depression behind me cause I saw the light inside that naive melody.

guess they sometimes get labelled punk because they supported the ramones in 77 or 78 and used to be a cbgb house band. then they got labelled new-wave, then funk but no label will ever describe what they are about. it´s all about the groove.

21:58 / 26.06.02

or if you want to be pedantic about it, "CBGB (OMFUG)"

you know, being pedantic about the core beating heart of punk rock is pedantic squared; i spent like 8 years going to that joint to see music and never once did i ever hear anyone call it anything *except" CBGBs with the "s", and further when they answer the phone there they say "cbgbs" or even "CBs" and whenever you read interviews with people talking about the place, they pronounce the "s". no, it doesn't make sense. but that's how things go.

oh, um, yeah, the talking heads are, uh, very nice.

Jawsus-son Starship

21:40 / 18.02.06

Reharnesing this old thread so I can ride it back to the top of the board, I think talking heads might be the best thing to ever happen to anybody at any time anywhere. Someones down? Fucking give them Stop Making Sense, that'll put 'em right. Hell, if we could only get Talking Heads to do a comeback tour, no need even for new material, I truly believe that the world would just stop exisiting just after the encore performance of This Must Be the Place and everyone will have suck a large smile on thier faces, that even though we don't exist anymore we don\t care, becuase for eternity we can remember that cool jaunty song.

Also, Life During Wartime is so scarily prevelant to the current global climate I think Burne's must have invented a time machine, travelled foward into time, seen the aftermarth of 9/11 and gone - "That'd make a really good song."

We're got computers/we taping phone lines/Know that that ain't allowed...

Bush's wiretapping crimes recognised by a pre-cog 20 sum years ago or what!?

--

02:29 / 19.02.06

I dunno, Talking Heads moves me.... I especially like "(Nothing But) Flowers". Maybe because it's quoted in "American Psycho" (I don't care what anyone else says, Bateman had some good music taste, except for his love of "The Return of Bruno". Now THAT is inexcusable). I got the big box set for Christmas that collects all their albums in remastered format and it's really sweet... I love "I Zimbra".

12:44 / 19.02.06

*vague threadrot*

Yuh-huh, a new convert to the heads and Mr. Bryne. Shit, I even liked his soundtrack to "Young Adam". And, uh, the film which most people seem to hate (a friend of mine still claims to have been scarred by the custard/jam sequence).

m

17:43 / 19.02.06

I just got a copy of newly remastered and expanded The Name of the Band is the Talking Heads, and it is really, really great. I've always been a little confused as to why this record has been so overshadowed by Stop Making Sense, because I think the former just blows the latter right out of the water all the way. Some of the songs on the first disk rock twice as hard as their studio versions ever did, and the whole band's performance on the second disk is just head and shoulders above their later performances on Stop Making Sense in terms of energy and excitement.

04:49 / 20.02.06

With JF in 02 on this - they're essentially just mannered art-rockers, the *Heads,* aren't they? It doesn't seem to happen anymore, but some bands deserve to be forgotten. I await the forthcoming Eurythmics revival with a feeling that is quite close to dread.

08:00 / 20.02.06

TALKING HEADS... i think you gotta adore these guys for being so fuck out there with their irony and not giving a piece of flying bungle whether or not it makes sense or not. to me that was always the essence of all things TH - well, at least up until (and including) "speaking in tongues"... "little creatures" and the rest that followed just bites. i think it takes some real guts to be a group of arrogant, heady, spoiled art brats and go out there and stand in the middle of the "underground punk scene" and just say: "damn, we can do that and we can do it good and we mean it!" - and damn right did they do it good! isn't that really punk? to not care for conventions, nevermind if these conventions are mainstream or fringe.

TALKING HEADS rank very high on my list. always enjoy listening to their albums.

THE SHIRTS? "empty ever after" and "lonely android"? those THE SHIRTS?

10:43 / 20.02.06

I was listening to Talking Heads this morning- a brilliant band- sadly I own all their albums on Vinyl which looks nice but makes them un-ipodable! gah technology eh! So what i have on my ipod is a mishmash of tunes i've downloaded- but no whole albums.

my favourite record is their live album 'The name of this band is Talking Heads' - for the simple reason that when you hear this record you know how good they were live- from the start when it was just 4 of them they rocked. Listen to 'Pulled Up' and 'Don't Worry about the Government' to see what i mean- Good deadpan intoductions from DB too!

I've never seen 'Stop Making Sense- and thought i should buy it after reading this thread- any thoughts on it from peopIe? i always understood it's pretty good- but I was put off it by the rather stupid thinking that as i prefered the record 'TNOTBI...' to 'SMS' i wouldn't like the film... silly Copey...

13:22 / 20.02.06

Bush's wiretapping crimes recognised by a pre-cog 20 sum years ago or what!?

I'm pretty sure that song is about anti-gov survivalists or somesuch.

I'm checkin' 'em out
I'm checkin' 'em out
I got it figured out
I got it figured out
There's
Good points
Some bad points
It all works out
Y'know, I'm a little freaked out

TH are absolutely the ace-est. I was introduced to 'em at a young age, and they've just kinda always been with me. I even remember roller-skating to "Making Flippy Floppy" at the local roller rink. Ah, youth! I'm not what you'd call their greatest fan as I've only ever owned a couple of their box sets, but I love 'em to death. I wore out two pair of the greatest hits tapes of 'Sand in the Vaseline' in college and that, more than anything, finally decided the whole "switching over to CD" debate. Just got the expanded greatest hits "Once in a Lifetime" recently and have been playing that with regularity (I put disc 2 on just now for atmosphere). It's a nice collection. 3 CDs and a live DVD (which I have not watched yet) and a lovely, arty package that doesn't fit real well on any shelf. A nice metaphor, I think.

Hold up. 'Life During Wartime' just came on. I dunno. Could be a gov spy POV, but

Got thru the roadblock
We blended in with the crowd

makes me think more of survivalists/terrorists than it does the MiB. But then it is art, isn't it? One viewpoint's as valid as another.

Are TH punk? I dunno why, but I thought they were more a part of the No Wave scene, along with Sonic Youth and Glen Branca. Suppose it's a grey area.

13:55 / 20.02.06

I love Talking Heads, not just a little bit, but in a deep down in my bones kind of way. They're fundamentally built into the patch work of my musical appreciation (if that makes any sense), so, as you can imagine, I have difficulty summoning up any objectively when I talk about them.
Sure, I don't like all their music, and some of favourite tunes are a result of collaboration with other artists, and I wouldn't say I'm always in the mood for their sound, but they've been with me since I was about thirteen-years-old - seventeen years - and I'm not getting at all tired of them. In fact, I can't envisage ever getting tired of them.

As for whether they're pretentious art rockers, well, I'm not sure whether I care, although I've certainly never read Byrne that way. The man seems genuinely eccentric to me, which, to my mind at least, minimises the possibility of him being a poseur.

One of these days I should read a biography.

14:02 / 20.02.06

As for whether they're punks. As I understand it - and my understanding was afforded to me by Jon Savage's bloody brilliant history of British (and a smattering of US) punk and the Sex Pistols, so I think it's not half bad - punk was originally more of an ethos than a sound, and a far more varied scene than it became. Talking Heads were part of that scene, so I consider Talking Heads early work to be punk.

Not that it matters particularly.

16:35 / 20.02.06

Thought I'd share this little gem with you all.

I heard David Byrne play this live, searched for it, and couldn't find it. Years later, I got inspired to search again, and ended up getting a copy of his Austin City Limits appearance mailed to me by a bootleg trader in Sacramento.

All this, then, just to get my hands on David Byrne performing a cover so brilliant that I won't spoil the surprise.

20:27 / 20.02.06

That cover is utterly glorious - effaces the cheese of the song without losing any of it's poppy verve and charm.

Not sure where I stand on Talking Heads though, always thought they were a good singles band - Psycho Killer, Once In a Lifetime blablabla...

Is this cover to suggest that more lies beneath? (In the same vein at any rate)

Jawsus-son Starship

21:35 / 20.02.06

makes me think more of survivalists/terrorists than it does the MiB. But then it is art, isn't it? One viewpoint's as valid as another.

yeah I get that idea. I always think that as a story, life during wartime is a great piece of narrative, you get what the characters talking about and its catchy as fuck.

People who don't get talking heads don't get the reason you'd have sex with that crazy chick who could stab you any second but is so hot that the danger makes you cum like a freight train. It's like trying to stab yourself in the face with a piece of cake. It's like jumping into the middle of a fight just to kick all there asses. and thats the bottom line. listening to talking heads is like getting a good kicking, walking away from it and feeling new.

Or some such.

This is such good shit. I'm throwing out This Must be the Place as the best th song. opinions?

22:23 / 20.02.06

I love 'This Must Be The Place' (also worth hearing Arcade Fire's cover of it- i'll try and put it on a link tomorrow)but how can you single this out as their best track? lets not forget Psycho Killer, Once In A Lifetime, Burning down the house, And She Was, Road To Nowhere, Memories Can't Wait, Zibra, Life During Wartime- actually all of fear of music- so many great tunes...

My favourite Talking Heads memory is being at a friends wedding about 7 years ago, the place was due to clear out and the bar staff told a friend who was DJing- make this the last song. so we got an entire side of Remain in Light- he put the record on and walked away- culminating in 'Once in a Lifetime'- all very cliched and corny but it was also very special- the first friend to get wed, growing up and all that. We got an extra 20 minutes of drunken dancing. I also really liked the fact that many new friends who were also at the wedding seemed to like Talking Heads as much as me. In fact i remember discussing talking heads with Boboss- who i had only met once or twice before- he also recommended I listen to the modern lovers cos they had the same guitarist... good advice!

00:26 / 21.02.06

Psyco Killer is the song of my teenage years. Me and my buddies always played it and sung along when we got together for the booze/weed fest we used to call "barbecues", and, to this day, I can't hear it without geting that aching feeling deep in my chest of times long past, never to come back - nostalgia, they call it, but the word hardly begins to describe it.

And I'm not talking about some passing friendship we lost touch when we grow up. I'm talking about a bond that shall endure many incarnations - in fact, us guys made a vow to meet in the afterlife once the last one of us dies, for one last barbecue at the sound of Talking Heads before our judgment - and God an blood well wait.

[sorry if I sound too emotional. I just came back from the U2 show and man!, those guys rock real hard. Is there a thread on them around here???]

btw, I love Burning Down the House just as much, but that is a bit obvious, ain't it

02:13 / 21.02.06

I can't let this pass...

People who don't get talking heads don't get the reason you'd have sex with that crazy chick who could stab you any second but is so hot that the danger makes you cum like a freight train. It's like trying to stab yourself in the face with a piece of cake. It's like jumping into the middle of a fight just to kick all there asses. and thats the bottom line.

So: People who don't dig Talking Heads are not hilariously overwrought poseurs, essentially?

Excellent.

05:51 / 21.02.06

Talking Heads, are, to my mind, quite a long way removed from the kind of crazy rockist antics described above.

In fact, that description doesn't map across my Headslove in any way whatsoever.

Jawsus-son Starship

07:21 / 21.02.06

So: People who don't dig Talking Heads are not hilariously overwrought poseurs, essentially?

Excellent.

But they do have an arch sense of irony.

13:12 / 21.02.06

I love Burning Down the House just as much, but that is a bit obvious, ain't it

It is, but that also lends it to easy Karaoke Night availability. Which is a fine, fine thing indeed.

In fact, that description doesn't map across my Headslove in any way whatsoever.

Nor mine. Are you thinking of GWAR, D-Math?

The best TH tracks? I'd have to nominate 'Cities' for the gradual build-up of unease and paranoia in Byrne's voice. And 'Sex and Violins', which is just beautiful beyond words. I might have to drop that in "Lyrics O' Yr. Life", 'smatter o' fac'.

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