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

*revisits debut*

*finds it difficult to not vote for every song on the debut already*

haha i think 3 of my top 5 are from 77
subject to change of course :)

are the songs from it that Talking Heads performed on the Stop Making Sense tour eligible for both they solo & band track polls then?

― ufo,

The Catherine Wheel is essential if you're a Heads fan imo

i'm trying to put together a list of side projects/solo albums to listen through. somehow i missed "bonzo goes to washington" all these years. lyrics by the Gipper!

Lifetime Piling up is a great outtake. So is Sax and Violins.

How will the poll differentiate between studio and live versions? Cause the Name of This Band version of "Houses in Motion" stomps all over the studio version.

Do these polls ever differentiate between studio and live versions?

"Sugar in my Tongue," "Sax and Violins," "Lifetime Piling Up," "I Want to Live" would make any list I'd write of essential outtakes.

looking forward to this one.

was going to say re live versions. the SMS versions of the Speaking In Tongues songs being a different league to their studio mixes etc. but i guess it can't be done.

For those that don't know about them, the 5.1 mixes are absolutely worth checking out

― Isi

yes, and if someone would be so kind as to PM me with the 5.1 Downmix version of "Life During Wartime", it was corrupted in my DL and my OCD brain craves it

Way more excited about "Drugs" on Name Of This Band than on FOM

― that's not my post, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 1:18 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

I overlooked the debut when I first got into TH cos I was more interested int he mid-period stuff but yeah it's all-killer no-filler that one. As far as songs are concerned, Speaking In Tongues is a fantastic album overshadowed by the fact the live versions are better, but I like the reggae-tinged moments on that one a lot.

A little disappointed that the solo/side project stuff is a side poll because I really need to know where "Genius of Love" would end up if that stuff was allowed in the main poll.

Anyone else think the first two albums are 100% ruled by their second sides, even if you take the hits out of the mix?

New Feeling and especially No Compassion are faves off the first one. And shit, 'Warning Sign' and 'Found A Job' both amazing. So no.

yeah not at all. the second side of 77 is really killer though

New Feeling and especially No Compassion are faves off the first one. And shit, 'Warning Sign' and 'Found A Job' both amazing. So no.

wd agree, but even so

No Compassion - I mean, for a 'punk' band's first album, there's an incredible amount going on in that song if you sit down and pay attention to it.

A little disappointed that the solo/side project stuff is a side poll because I really need to know where "Genius of Love" would end up if that stuff was allowed in the main poll.

― cwkiii, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 10:28 AM (seventeen minutes ago)

Agreed, I'd like to be able to place solo stuff in the main poll (on a ballot expanded to 30 spots, say).

I don't have to prove... that I am creative. I DON'T HAVE-to proooove that I am creative

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.

Controversial opinion: I don't like "Genius of Love," I think it is one of the most annoying songs ever made. And even if you disagree with me, and most of you probably do, there is no question it absolutely kills the momentum when integrated into "Stop Making Sense."

I've had almost every one of the TH albums be my favorite at one time or another, but not the first one and not "True Stories."

i like genius of love but the chris frantz interlude is just too much for me. it's just so fucking stupid that it ruins the rest of the song, which is brilliant.

i can imagine byrne listening to it at the time it was released, getting a little nervous that his bandmates might have outshined him, but then when it gets to the "james brown! james brown! james brown!" part he realizes that he can never have a serious conversation about music with chris frantz ever again and he immediately feels better

otm

I think More Songs was my first TH album. The Tina and the Typing Pool bits in "The Good Thing" are my earliest memory of loving this band.

i can imagine byrne listening to it at the time it was released, getting a little nervous that his bandmates might have outshined him, but then when it gets to the "james brown! james brown! james brown!" part he realizes that he can never have a serious conversation about music with chris frantz ever again and he immediately feels better

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 12:32 PM

then he opened up Billboard and read that Tina and Chris were getting a gold record before he was.

it's a fantastic song! and at least on the radio there's the option of fading it out before frantz completely ruins it.

it also ruins SMS

specifically, the chris frantz interlude. god damn that is a terrible interlude

Wait so just so this is clear: we are not voting for "Name of this Band is version of..." or "Stop Making Sense version of..." or "album version of..." tracks separately, or even specifying which version of the song we're voting for, just voting for the song full stop? Where the ranking is implicitly understood to mean "ranking of my personal favorite recording of this track?"

I believe that would be consistent with past polling practice

aww i love the james brown part of genius of love

Just vote for the songs. Why complicate things?

aww i love the james brown part of genius of love

― neva missa lost, wednesday nights on abc (voodoo chili), T

he is the Godfather of Soul, y'all!

voodoo, i want to understand, i want to love, i do

I don't feel particularly strongly about the Frantz parts. They're just part of the song. They're worse on the live version though.

I am intimately familiar with the first four or so albums and love them dearly--I need to dig a little deeper into the '80s for this poll, but I could prob make a 25-track ballot with just those songs.

aww i love the james brown part of genius of love

me too. same way i love the "knight in shining armor" part of emotional rescue.

Bohannon! Bohannon! Bohannon!

The Naked thread I started years ago has whatI thought was a fascinating discussion about the quickness with which the Heads' rep crashed after 1986 when they were, before R.E.M., the biggest college band in America.

as someone who was following them at the time, True Stories was considered a huge letdown among nearly everyone I knew

people were mostly still on board for Little Creatures

Coming of age in the 90s, I never heard anything about Talking Heads at all. It's like they'd been wiped from the collective memory. It wasn't until X-Press 2 and the whole DFA thing that I guess they came back into favour. Naked is a decent album. It's the ones before that that kind of suck a bit.

LC is their biggest-selling studio album iirc. My AOR station was all in on "And She Was" and "Road to Nowhere."

for a while it looked like "Road To Nowhere" was gonna eclipse "Naive Melody" as their best-known iconic tune, but I think that moment has passed

Coming of age in the 90s, I never heard anything about Talking Heads at all. It's like they'd been wiped from the collective memory. It wasn't until X-Press 2 and the whole DFA thing that I guess they came back into favour. Naked is a decent album. It's the ones before that that kind of suck a bit.

^^^ my experience too. When I dug into the catalog after nearly wearing out Sand in the Vaseline in late '92/early'93, they were verboten.

I made a Spotify playlist of all of the non-album material I could find, minus live versions and demos of songs that otherwise appear in album versions. Am I missing anything crucial?

yes!! this should be fun

also raising my hand for sand in the Vaseline being my first TH record, featured selection of the month/week whatever at columbia house

Ha, I got that one through Columbia House too.

VOTING IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED

all ballots have been accounted for, everyone should have received an email confirmation,.

i just sent off the results to pplains. i'm sort of blown away right now, these results are absolute incredible. all i can say is that we are in for a treat.

sounds awesome
cheers for sorting this guys!

don't you miss it, don't you miss it
some 'a you people just about missed it

POLL Me Up Up Up Up Up Up Up Up – TALKING HEADS – ILM Artist Poll #82 - (The Results Thread)