The Name of This POLL Is...- ILM artist poll #82 - TALKING HEADS - (voting is open until Sunday March 26, 2017)

agree tho speaking in tongues has grown on me a lot over the last couple years

they did pull up the roots as a first encore, before crosseyed & painless, for awhile on the 83 tour, wish that had made the movie

Pull Up The Roots is so good. I'd have loved a SMS version. Aztec Camera's 'Somewhere In My Heart' has a similar chorus and I wonder if they inadvertently ripped it off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbnQJmtFKHg this bootleg of it is great

I liked /Uh Oh/ a lot in 1992! I saw his tour on its Miami stop (he always stopped in Miami) -- one of the most thrilling shows I've seen, although I'll admit that I'd seen SMS for the first time only two months earlier and was thus ready to be blown away.

I'm still a fan of "She's Mad" and "Monkey Man," but I'm not sure whether this was ahead of its time, embarrassingly dated or both:

He is a boy
You are a girl
And you will always stay that way
But there are people
In this world
Who'd like to change what nature made

And if you take that decision
They they will made that incision ? down below

The birds and the bees
Are singin' for me
And this is the song I heard them singin'
Tweedle dee dee
Tweedle dee dee
But I never heard a word they're tellin' me

Oh little girl
Please understand
And listen to the words I say
I was your dad
Now I'm your mom
I hope you'll comprehend someday

I didn't mean to confuse you
And now I know that it's hard to understand

The birds and the bees
Are singin' for me
But I never heard a word they're sayin'
Tweedle dee dee
Tweedle dee dee
Freedom of choice is what they're bringin'

And when Columbus sailed
Upon that mighty sea
Well, we are just like him
Yes, we are pioneers

Into the great unknown
The wild unchartered lands
There ain't no turnin' back
Ain't gonna be no chains on me

Who would ever believe
Caterpillars like me
Turning into a butterfly
Well, I was suddenly free

The birds and the bees
Are singin' for me
And this is the song I heard them singin'
Tweedle dee dee
Tweedle dee dee
Freedom of choice is what they're bringin'

You know I'm man enough
Ain't gonna run and hide
My love is mighty tough
My love is mighty wild

I got a pair a wings
And I'm gonna fly away
Too late to turn back now
Tomorrow came today ? for me

It wasn't until some time around 2000 that I realized Talking Heads was the band behind "Swamp".

Always thought it was Webb Wilder or someone.

For a band I love as much as Talking Heads, I really don't like a lot of their music. I don't know why, but 77 and Fear of Music just does nothing. More Songs About Buildings and Food, though, I like the whole way through. Wonder why that is.

Fear of Music might be my favorite TH album.

after a preliminary ballot (I got up to 21 just from memory) I can see that More Songs is by far my least favorite of the first four.

I think the production on that is just more to my taste. Remain in Light my favorite by a long shot.

nearly 35 years down the road, speaking in tongues is still far & away my favorite talking heads album. that it was my entry point undoubtedly has everything to do with that. i recognize that they were taking much bigger artistic risks on fear of music and remain in light, developing their own musical language, but song-for-song, i just can't deny the tongues.

― Not raving but drooling (contenderizer)

i used to be one of those "eno or nothing" snobs but the recent reissue where all the songs are between five and six minutes long is just fabulous, they're all just monster jams.

"fear of music" i love because of the process. there are really interesting and different alternate versions of most of the songs, whereas with remain in light the results are great but the process was less freewheeling.

talking heads obscurities i want to rep for:

i zimbra - 12" eno mix - mostly similar but gets very weird in the last minute

dancing for money - i kind of think of this as talking heads' version of "aguas de marco", same kind of goofy vocal interplay between byrne and eno

questions for lovers - unissued th original played live early in '77

1, 2, 3, red light - great 1910 fruitgum company cover they did in '77

More Songs largely does feel like more songs from 77 that aren't quite as good on average, though I'm Not In Love is one of their very best

gah, never heard that I Zimbra remix, is it on the MP3 Spotify collection mentioned earlier? I can't check rn.

3 For Sale from $50.00

i don't spotify, but here it is on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgiHT8SVnXg

ah cool, thx

More Songs largely does feel like more songs from 77 that aren't quite as good on average, though I'm Not In Love is one of their very best

Psycho Killer
Sugar On My Tongue
Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
I Want To Live
I Wish You Wouldn't Say That
The Girls Want To Be With The Girls
Who Is It
With Our Love
Stay Hungry
Tentative Decisions
Warning Sign
I'm Not In Love
The Book I Read
Love --> Building On Fire
No Compassion

I'm listening to the downmix of '77 this morning and it sounds soooo good. I can't hear the beginning of "Who Is It" and not want to dance.

In the year or two previous my favorite band was Sparks, and '77 seemed to me to carry the torch for unusual vocals and literate lyrics in a de/reconstructed pop format. My gateway to new wave.

What's a good book on Talking Heads?

Love I Zimbra, though it always makes me think of this guy:

http://i.imgur.com/rDdEnUZ.png

ugh, thought i had my 25 and then i listened to speaking in tongues again. gotta make room for "i get wild/wild gravity." so good, can't believe i forgot about it.

xxpost - It's not strictly about Talking Heads, but David Byrne's How Music Works is great about explaining his philosophy and uses a lot of examples from the Heads' past.

xxp the sounds and arrangements on More Songs stand out way more to me than those on '77, which I've always credited to Eno (though that's probably unfair to the band). I could listen to the intro drumloop on Warning Sign all day. Would have loved to see what Eno would have done with '77

Fear of Music is the one I find the most difficult. I love some of the songs, but not keen on the dirginess of a lot of it.

Agree abt More Songs. It's fine but my least favorite prior to True Stories. "I'm Not in Love" and "The Big Country" stand out, and "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel" is a nice two-minute capsule of the sound they'd spend the next few years digging into.

Fear of Music is great, though.

i have listened the crap out of the first four, so my poll goal is to dedicate much more time to the run from speaking in tongues > naked

The Good Thing is the standout on More Buildings... pretty sure there was an ilm thread or at least a thread digression where this was widely agreed upon

nah, that one's a drag

ridiculous, "the good thing" rules

i kinda agree that more songs is the least of the first four though

xp - whatever the hook's supposed to be, it escapes my ears

I don't understand the appeal of "Remain in Light" at all. There is not one song I can get into. I would destroy it completely. "Fear of Music" on the other hand does not floor me but has some interesting songs like "I Zimbra", "Heaven" and "Mind".

The best book about Talking Heads, a culmination of years of expert Musician reporting, was published in 1985 or 1986. My library's got it; it's probably out of print.

David Bowman's book should be set on fire.

More Songs is the same album as the debut except the production is thicker and does away with the cute arrangements like the marimba in "Uh Oh Love Has Come to Town." That's not to slight the debut.

xxp lol of course you would think that

I feel like Paper is an underrated first four track.

"I'm Not in Love" has that beautiful synth outro, for which I've traditionally credited Eno but it slights Harrison. One of the things about that 1985 book I cited is how Harrison was always discounted: Eno got the credits for his keyboards and Byrne the credit for the guitars.

Maybe it's because More Songs was the first Talking Heads album I owned, but I think it's great all the way through, better sounding than the debut and more consistent than Fear of Music. As a full album I prefer it to Remain in Light (but I burned out on RIL long ago).

Not having heard them in ages, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Little Creatures and even True Stories. I've never knowingly heard Naked, so I intend to give that extra attention.

Just submitted. I got MTV in 1988, so so many of my favorite TH songs are on Little Creatures, True Stories and Naked

look at these guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imWnuirIL8o

I won't hear anyone slight LC. It's got a song mentioning a baby's peepee, a song that says "I've seen sex and I think it's OK," a song with a zydeco arrangement that could be an 1984 GOP convention anthem, and some ridiculous outfits on the sleeve. To me it's like Elvis C's Blood and Chocolate: a return to "simplicity" enlivened and reinforced by years of experiments.

They should have stopped in 1985, but then we wouldn't ahve gotten "(Nothing But) Flowers."

"Blind" is dope too

Also, if they stopped in 1985, Radiohead would be called "Tomviolence"

The Good Thing is the standout on More Buildings... pretty sure there was an ilm thread or at least a thread digression where this was widely agreed upon

― sciatica, Thursday, March 16, 2017 1:51 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah, that one's a drag

― contenderizer, Thursday, March 16, 2017 1:55 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ridiculous, "the good thing" rules

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Thursday, March 16, 2017 1:57 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i kinda agree that more songs is the least of the first four though

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Thursday, March 16, 2017 1:57 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whatever the hook's supposed to be, it escapes my ears

xp - whatever the hook's supposed to be, it escapes my ears

― contenderizer, Thursday, March 16, 2017 1:59 PM (sixteen minutes ago)

if there is a thread i would love to see it. i think i've barged in to proclaim my love for that song several times over the years.

i realize the song could be interpreted many ways, but it really spoke to me in grad school (public policy) and working in the govt. it seemed to be about the internal struggle between a technocratic mindset and an intuition-based artistic process. technocratic is a bit of a loaded term, but i just mean the belief that most things can be measured and quantified, that models can be built that incorporate those variables and which can be iterated according to new data, and that this kind of analysis can and should be the basis for public policy and making decisions. when i was in school i was especially attracted to this line of thinking, and of course as i hit real life within the govt i began to understood where it falls short, the caveats and impossibilities of trying to measure some aspects of human nature. i didn't end up getting to work on anything related to climate change, but it's a perfect example. on one side you have the data and modeling which helps us to understand how it's occurring and how it will unfold in the future, and on the other you have the struggle to make changes in the real world, to change the behavior of knuckle-dragging climate change denying fuckfaces, or at least persuade them not to stand in the way of change.

so a struggle emerges that's probably common to a lot of people - trying to figure out how to balance heart and mind, intuition and logic.

A straight line exists between me and the good thing
I have found the line and its direction is known to me
Absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction
Any intrusion is met with a heart full of the good thing

for me the essence of the song is in the incredible catharsis of the ending when the entire band shifts. this is peak talking heads for me:
So I say:
I have adopted this and made it my own
Cut back the weakness
Reinforce what is strong

Watch me work

it's a triumphant acknowledgment of compromise, a tribute to the iterative possibilities of data-driven thinking (or to extend that, a logic-based approach to life) that still has room for intuition. and it's goddamn catchy as fuck as well.

i didn't express that very well (shocker) but hopefully some of you know what i mean. "The Good Thing" is more than a song to me, it is a song-shaped encapsulation of the essential struggle in modern life

as an expression of my own compromise between quantification and the gut, i rate it 11 out of 10

^^ everybody. get. in. line.

I definitely prefer More Songs to the debut, which is fine and has some great moments but feels kind of monochromatic by comparison.

deja vu-- karl i'm pretty sure it was you interpreting those lyrics that made the discussion of the good thing i'm thinking of so memorable! i think there was some maoism in there too, re the straight line verse. and the maniacal WATCH ME WORK to send us into the coda...

I won't hear anyone slight LC. It's got a song mentioning a baby's peepee, a song that says "I've seen sex and I think it's OK," a song with a zydeco arrangement that could be an 1984 GOP convention anthem, and some ridiculous outfits on the sleeve. To me it's like Elvis C's Blood and Chocolate: a return to "simplicity" enlivened and reinforced by years of experiments.

They should have stopped in 1985, but then we wouldn't ahve gotten "(Nothing But) Flowers."

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 16, 2017 2:40 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Xgau concurs in his Blood and Chocolate review:

Like Little Creatures, it's a return to basics with a decade of growth in it

Anyone know why they didn't tour after Little Creatures? I get why they didn't tour after True Stories (Byrne didn't really want to make the album in the first place) and Naked (they broke up), but were there reasons given at the time for not touring in '85?

Byrne's movie.