POX: Talking Heads

peasy

These are off the top of my head (wouldn't have it any other way):
Born Under Punches (i think i've mentioned before that this is the greatest song ever recorded)
Pulled Up
Mind
A Clean Break
The Great Curve
This Must Be the Place
Nothing But Flowers
Stay Hungry
Girlfriend Is Better (live)

Incidentally, I really love Talking Heads, and I'm deeply saddened that few share my love for the greatest song ever recorded :(

Although I can't not mention Crosseyed & Painless, Psycho Killer, Drugs, I Zimbra, And She Was, Wild Wild Life, Nothing But Flowers, Mr. Jones, Girlfriend is Better, The Good Thing, Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place), Swamp, Heaven, Cities, or The Overload, that would just be wrong.

Which song is that, Adam? (I really love the Heads too, btw, one of my favorite favorite groups.)

Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
Once In A Lifetime
Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town (esp. if I mishear it as "shit crap is on the ground")
Found A Job
Drugs
Pulled Up
Mind
The Big Country
Love Goes To Building On Fire
Born Under Punches

What a great band. Never talked about: David Byrne's ability to occasionally write the saddest song in the world. Witness my top three.

BORN UNDER PUNCHES

11, sorry

"Pulled Up"
"Take Me To The River"
"Heaven"
"Life During Wartime" (I prefer one of the live versions, thanks)
"Crosseyed & Painless"
"The Great Curve"
"Once In A Lifetime"
"Girlfriend Is Better"
"Road To Nowhere"
"And She Was"

the recent new you tube stuff has got me back into these guys again. hard to 'do the pox' though.

making flippy floppy (stop making sense version)
born under punches
found a job
(nothing but) flowers
slippery people (stop making sense version)
burning down the house (stop making sense version)
the girls want to be with the girls
life during wartime (stop making sense)
with our love
the great curve

I was positive that there was already a Talking Heads POX thread. Turns out I was half-right:

Talking Heads - Pick Only 5

"Memories Can't Wait"
"Warning Sign"
"Psycho Killer"
"Burning Down the House"
"Life During Wartime"
"Love -> Building on Fire"
"Heaven"
"Sugar on my Tongue"
"Don't Worry About The Government"
"No Compassion"

Seriously - too hard - can we have 'tie entries?' - 'Cause "This Must Be The Place" and "Crosseyed and Painless" and "Pulled Up" and "Making Flippy Floppy" and "The Great Curve" and "I Zimbra" should get in there too ... I'm going to ilxor hell for suggesting additions to a POX list, aren't I ...

Burning Down the House
Psycho Killer
Life During Wartime
I Zimbra
Heaven
Wild Wild Life
The Lady Don't Mind
Road to Nowhere
Once in A Life Time
Love For Sale

1. "Love --> Building on Fire," the live version on The Name Of This Band Is...

I'll have to think about the other IX, but WATCH THIS NOW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVIKF03KkVM

"Born Under Punches," live in Rome, 1980. AMAZING. "I'm not a drowning man! I'm not a burning building!!" Adrian Belew in full effect.

Went on my first TH deed dive after listening to a seven hour Bandsplain. Man, I’ve really been missing out.

Don’t Worry About the Government
The Book I Read
Girlfriend is Better
Tentative Decisions
Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
Life During Wartime
Once in a Lifetime
The Big Country
Crosseyed and Painless
Warning Sign

Nothing after 1983?

With my unaccustomed ears the dryer production of the earlier stuff really struck a nerve. The band functions like like a drum set on the first few albums with each instrument hitting individual beats and I don’t like all the additional layers applied in the later stuff when it gets all wet.

Those are a couple of terribly composed sentences but you get what I’m trying to say.

Those are a couple of terribly composed sentences but you get what I’m trying to say.

Those are a couple of terribly composed sentences but you get what I’m trying to say.

I was a little put out at the Bandsplain dismissiveness towards The Overload. Sure, it’s not the best thing on the album but it totally fits. It’s like…. someone who’s been attacked by all of these sounds and visions is now approaching a catatonic state, like the tail end of psychedelics where you don’t want anymore input but you can’t sleep. A perfect ending.

It's especially unsettling after the Naipaul-esque terrorist narrative "Listening Wind."

Yeah I enjoyed the Bandsplain overall, but it was oddly light on Remain in Light, focused more on all the albums around it. And I agree, I've never thought The Overload was out of place. Not an album highlight as a standalone track, but works with the mood of the whole.

I did not know about Eno wanting co-billing on the album. He's obviously crucial to it but that's still a bit of chutzpah.

?! wow, I bet that detail is in Rip It Up And Start Again, but I had forgotten it

Supposedly he got talked out of it on the grounds that if the album was credited to "Talking Heads and Brian Eno" he'd have to tour with them in support of it, which he didn't want to do.

Loved the part about George Clinton allegedly inducing Tina’s labor by placing his hands on her belly.

Remain On Light is tremendously front loaded imo

*in

did not know about Eno wanting co-billing on the album. He's obviously crucial to it but that's still a bit of chutzpah.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, September 10, 2023 4:28 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglin

I think he deserves it tbh

He sort of had his way years later with Wah Wah. James on the proper case but James/Eno on the sticker.

Found this Tina quote, apparently from an old interview with Bass Player:

Were David and Brian responsible for the cut-and-paste approach to bass on Remain in Light, where multiple bass tracks were recorded and then pieced together during mixdown?

Tina: “Yes, those lines were created by Eno, purely with the studio. Both Brian and David were constantly playing bass during those sessions, and I encouraged it. But whenever I would show up to the studio in the morning, before the two of them had arrived, the engineer would take me aside and say, “Look, this is really bothering me. These guys keep missing beats.” So he’d have me replay what they had recorded the night before.”

So once again, ironically similar to what people said about replacing *her* parts early on.

So many egos involved, so many different accounts of the same events ...

Eno and Byrne do get bass credit on RIL too.

The bassline on “Born Under Punches” (studio) is even weirder than the already-weird line Tina plays (live). Tina hits the downbeat solidly every four bar phrase, but in studio, it kinda tumbles down over the phrase and misses the downbeat. (Sorry to keep obsessing over this bassline, I literally transcribed it at one point bc I found it so fascinating)

You should try figuring out where the "one" is in "Once in a Lifetime."

"once in a lifetime" doesn't really come across as ambiguous to me, there's the same groove the whole way through but the chorus starts on the 'one-and', very likely because eno wrote the chorus melody and he'd somehow ended up with a different understanding of the groove

so i guess the chorus is a bit more ambiguous about where the 'one' is but the rest isn't

I think it may depend on which instruments you are tracking, and where you start counting. Drum loop is weeeird.

Musicians I know that have tried covering it faithfully have struggled, like doing "Black Dog."

the kick and the start of the bassline are both on the one, and the snare is on the two and the four (as well as a few other places). the drums aren't really that weird. the bass puts a lot of emphasis on the first two eighth notes, and sometimes there's a kick on that second eighth note too, which is what causes a bit of an ambiguous feel when most of the chorus elements are heavily syncopated and start on that second eighth note. eno did re-record the bassline to remove the initial bass notes in some bars to make it more ambiguous (and then weymouth had to re-record that) but that doesn't really do much on its own.

the drum accents and crashes are in pretty unpredictable places as well.

yeah that's the actual weird part about the drums, i have no idea how frantz came up with that. the basic groove is straight-forward but all the tom hits and crashes are in very weird places

“Lifetime” is deceptively simple, you don’t notice that there’s something weird going on until you try and cover it. There’s just an added 2/4 bar at the end of every verse and chorus: “how did I / get here? Letting the / days go by”. But Tina stays locked, so the choruses effectively reposition her bass line. It’s very cool! Can’t remember where I read either David or Brian enthusing about that little innovation but I’m sure I did

And yeah Frantz is just the best drummer imaginable

oh that's super cool xp

'deceptively simple' is frantz's whole deal, he's not a very flashy player and seems to just keep a steady groove but then all the accents he adds in are completely bonkers when you actually pay attention

Also he’s always smiling!!!!

I don't think that much of his playing is nearly as weird or interesting as some of those grooves on "Remain in Light," and I think that's because his simple playing was largely chopped up and spit out of the Eno machine. That's not a bad thing, it's right for the band and helps keep some pretty strange song structures together. Staying out of the way is an underrated skill for any player. Ask the Ramones, who never had a drummer quite like Tommy, and that wasn't because he was particularly *good*, just perfect for the band.

Frantz also drummed on Robert Palmer's "Looking for Clues" and I can tell it's him within seconds.

I've been a big fan of them since I was a child, but Frantz is easily my least favorite part of the band and I do not buy the hidden complexity argument regarding his drumming

lol according to wiki Franz is credited on "Looking for Clues" with "bass drum."

Don't know where this Robert Palmer quote comes from, exactly, but: "I'd been experimenting with a prototype sequencer, a cheap yellow and plastic effort called a Wasp and Spider. The rhythm has an almost academic syncopated figure and Chris Frantz from Talking Heads plays the foot drum. I must have found it pretty easy to write because there are an awful lot of verses."

from Addictions, Vol. 1

https://www.synthfind.com/category/edp/spider/

The Wasp was a very cheap, weird little synth (infamously the sound of Whitehouse!), they weigh like nothing, a band I played with used one for some overdubs and its like a kid's toy

I feel like from 1980 onwards Frantz was the straight-up-the-middle timekeeper from whom the other players could hang behind, and make all their individual sections swing so well.

The push and pull between the rest of the rhythm section and his simple style is what makes TH funky and taut at the same time, if he had been a more consciously swinging drummer the band may have been a lot more formulaically 'funky' and maybe much less interesting.

I've always liked how 'Stop Making Sense' progresses in a really fun way (chronology aside) at the start, quite martial and uptight, but by the time the other players appear, looser and looser. Like a slow, musical zooming out.

Speaking of Talking Heads, credits and Eno, anyone else notice that Eno is credited as "assistant engineer" (along with a half-dozen other engineers) on "The Name of This Band is Talking Heads"? I wonder what he had to do with it. I think at least some versions of "Stop Making Sense" have some tweaks and edits and clean-ups, maybe even some overdubbing. I wonder if "Name" does, too?

i'll never remember where i saw it, but i remember reading an interview or quote somewhere where Byrne mentioned doing overdubs to fix vocal flubs on "Name". every version of SMS is filled with edits and studio overdubs, i'm sure they didnt have reservations about tweaking stuff on "Name", probably not the extent of SMS, but still

I knew that about SMS but the things on Name are at least partly radio broadcasts, I doubt those were in multi-track. I'd be surprised if there were any actual overdubs

Eno might have gone out on the road with them and had something to do with the live sound on the later recordings (shades of David Briggs going out on Neil Young tours)?

The bandspalin on the Talking Heads mentions Eno not wanting to tour so I doubt it.

I do remember reading once that Eno did the live sound for some shows in that period. Some of the 1980 stuff on Name is from New Jersey and NYC, and if they were planning to record with a live album in mind, it wouldn't have involved him going on tour with them.

The expanded CD version actually draws from nine different shows. Assuming Eno was on hand for one of them, I wonder what he did, since Eno is not that knowledgable about the nuts and bolts of engineering, which is why he always pairs himself with someone highly capable on the tech side of things. Conspicuously he's listed in the credits as an *assistant* engineer, and I doubt he would be that useful in a mobile recording scenario.

BTW, a lot of great shows at the Capitol Theatre were captured on video, including legendary sets by Springsteen and the Clash. While the 1979 Talking Heads set doesn't seem to be posted anywhere, a 1980 set is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFvgWguaC9g

I think the Psychedelic Furs opened.

that is fucking awesome, thanks!!

Oh, and btw, you get an *awesome* view of what both bassists are up to during "Born Under Punches"!

Whoa, that is fascinating, on "Born Under Punches": Tina skips a beat at 49:34, gets a quarter-note ahead. The next choral entry, it's staggered because some people followed Tina and others did not. Busta and David look over to Tina and "get low" to seemingly get her attention and hopefully make the correction. It doesn't work. There's 45 seconds of offset messiness. Then Busta takes a bass solo, one that is super aggressively simple, playing off Tina's new groove to effectively corral the entire ensemble. Everyone follows and the song ends perfectly.

Nope, my mistake, Tina picks up on it and makes the correction. Well done Busta

the section where they're all out of sync for a bit is quite disorienting in a cool way and is the sort of thing they could have based a whole song around as a deliberate trick

Out of sync, but still totally in the pocket!

just multiple pockets

Loads of killer footage of the original quartet just prior to the expanded live group in this South Bank Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5EzLDD1D_Q

I wonder if the unnamed "Eagles/Ronstadt-style" song on Fear of Music described by Frantz in that above doc was "Heaven", since it's a propulsive yet melodic ballad.

Yeeesh, Jerry clavinet and David guitar just locked as they are on "Life During Wartime", beautiful

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/talking-heads-reunion-2023-stop-making-sense/

New Pitchfork interview with Talking Heads members (or has this been discussed on another thread)

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1200623785/talking-heads-stop-making-sense-interview

they're doing lots of interviews and they've all been pretty interesting. certainly better than that initial toronto q&a.

the interviews are _really_ interesting, the way they complement each other. i think a lot about what david byrne said about the CBGBs scene in "how music works", which harrison kind of recapitulates... the idea of the affordability being what brought people together. but harrison also talks about "a homogenous unit of creative people" and that's something i hadn't thought about, in regards to the CBGBs scene.

but this idea of _something is happening_ in a time and place... well, i had that sense with usenet, and it was true, something _was_ happening, it just wasn't... i don't know. what it turned into is pretty awful. and even at the time... the early days of ilx are valuable in that they _survive_ and usenet, in a meaningful, readable form, doesn't, really.

portland now... portland isn't what i'd call "affordable" but for different reasons, there's this same sense of... a certain sort of people all congregate here. i see these stickers around town that say "NEW PORTLAND SUCKS" and yeah it's expensive and gentrified. the thing that those stickers miss out on though is that new portland is _incredibly fucking queer_. i don't know. maybe it's more weimar. i've heard the only other place nearly as trans as us is right now, funnily enough, berlin, where it all started...

and people here are creative because we're desperate, what the fuck else can we do? i work a "straight" job, but most of us don't. everything we do are these one-person projects... trying to get shit together, nothing ever really seems to happen, or it happens for two weeks and then everything falls apart again. we're all kind of fucked up. byrne can write a song like "life during wartime" and perfectly capture the essence of it, but there must have been more going on in 1970s new york because he has plenty of other songs, about other things. here in portland, we're less here because we're looking for something, it's more often a matter of what we're trying to escape... i don't know. patti smith, tom verlaine, chris frantz, how much time did they spend just trying to survive? how many fights did they have over... the 1975 equivalent of $20?

but it's not just that, it's also the isolation, that's more important for me, i don't get into fights over $20. it's the isolation. covid casts a long shadow. in the NPR interview they talk about that, responding to the bleakness of john mellencamp, of all people, saying "we're all trapped in our own skin, all basically alone". and weymouth cosigns on that but frantz doesn't, and i'm more on the frantz side here. i'm not really alone, it's... like, i'm sorry to bring up capitalism, but it's this lie we're being sold, that we're all basically alone, that there is no such thing as society, really... and right now there almost isn't, but it's not our _nature_, the state of nature _isn't_ the war of all against all. it's something people like john mellencamp were taught their whole lives. a lot of people of his generation are dying alone and miserable.*

and byrne... this is kind of the essence of the band, he kind of navigates the tension between those two views, doesn't _state_ but _suggests_ what i said above, the idea of punishment, torture... even while enjoying solitude the way weymouth does. he thinks other people _think_ he's miserable, "this poor, lonely fellow". he doesn't think he's miserable. but then, why does he put this thought into the eyes of the people watching him?

frantz calls himself "the happiest man in the world". steve inskeep asks if any of them feel like they're different people and weymouth's response is "well, i was a lot cuter". there are these things we're taught about ourselves, these extremes. because another part of this tension is weymouth closing the p4k interview by saying "i love you too, jerry".

i really appreciate inskeep circling back on byrne talking about his relationship to ASD. it's, like, parallel development, i'm not sure that byrne knows anything directly about neurodiversity today... he talks about "aspergers" in the NPR interview, which isn't a word we use today, it's not part of the clinical landscape, but in so many ways he just gets it, gets the self-diagnosis aspect of it in particular, gets how it's an _identity_. that he has the _right_ to it. frantz says in the p4k interview "I identify as a Talking Head" and out of context that's cringe but in context it's not, he's seriously talking about who he is and that, again, he has the _right_ to it... you don't become an "ex-Talking Head" any more than you become an "ex-alcoholic" or an "ex-President".

what's really interesting is what Andy Cush says about Weymouth in the p4k piece... "Weymouth, who is the type of person who takes an interest in things like library ladders, soon ascends the one in the back of the room and begins telling us about its manufacturer." i know lots of the type of people who take an interest in things like library ladders. david byrne says he's writing a song about moisturizer. again, the whole band has a really interesting dynamic. i like them a lot.

* i used to feel trapped in my own skin... right now i'm listening to "seen and not seen" and think about how accidentally prescient byrne was again... it's not a metaphor, my face has literally changed like that.

Maybe they imagined that their new face
Would better suit their personality
Or maybe they imagined that their personality
Would be forced to change to fit the new appearance

i'm not sure which happened with me. but one way or the other, it did.

also, it occurs to me that "stop making sense, but only when tina weymouth is on screen" is basically rose hobart. which i appreciate.

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in SF is going on now, and the performances are streamable after the fact (I'm watching it now).

This seems to be the most current TH thread, sorry if it's posted in 10 other TH threads.

https://hardlystrictlybluegrass.vhx.tv/videos/2022-jerry-harrison-adrian-belew-remain-in-light

And, I just noticed this was last year (oops), but still good, and they're touring this now, I think?