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

yeah, esp disc 2

I really need the expanded version of that, only have the 2LP

I'd easily rank him as one of my top 50 rhythm and lead guitarists. Check out his lead playing in the SMS "Crossyed and Painless" or well he does the rhythm chink-chink thing.

The main reason Uh Oh enthused me at the time was a return to a more freewheeling eh-fuck-it Byrne guitar mode, after years of restraint.

Another really funny bit on that DVD is this excruciating US TV performance/interview where the host (probably someone famous but who I don't know) asks a load of closed questions like 'Would you describe yourself as a shy person?'(To which David simply says 'Yes I guess so') and keeps referring to TH as 'You people'

Wait, you're not thinking of the bit where he interviews himself?

No no it's a sparkly Letterman-style show from the late-70s/early-80s. The interviewer is wearing a smart spangly suit. I couldn't tell you who he is because I don't know my US TV hosts very well but my god he's a terrible interviewer. All closed questions. Tina treats him very icily and the rest of the band are just baffled and awkward as anything.

Here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2PblNCo1Ok

it's just ugh.. like how do you mess this up worse?

lmao that interview is great. "organically shy" is a great fake talking heads song title

'Organically shy' sounds like a description of Aspergers I guess.

In other news 'Blind' off of Naked came on the radio while I as driving the other day and it sounded FANTASTIC

Finally listened to True Stories - dang, not bad! I think it's on a level with Little Creatures, with less high highs. "Dream Operator" is really pretty. Hilarious to hear that "Radiohead" isn't one of their weird moody songs a la "Warning Sign", but more like something They Might Be Giants would have cooked up

xxp - From Bowman's book:

In March, the band appeared on that old warhorse American Bandstand to play “Take Me to the River.” They didn’t exactly play it. David sang the song, but Talking Heads pantomimed at their instruments.
(...)
When Talking Heads finished “playing” “Take Me to the River,” Dick Clark padded over to chat with David, but the singer went somewhere else inside his head. He froze up.
The show was live. Now Dick Clark could do a back flip and land on his feet. He didn’t let David’s freeze-up freeze him. Dick Clark passed the microphone over to Tina.
She was shocked. No one ever talked to her. Dick Clark asked, “Tina, is David always this way?” Tina answered immediately. She remembered something Yann’s girlfriend, Julie, had said about David—David was “organically shy.” So that’s what Tina said, “David is organically shy.”
That broke the ice.

That Bowman book is sadly horrible. I couldn't make it much further than the first couple of chapters. The whole book is written just like that passage. It almost reads in Dick Clark's delivery.

The show was live.

American Bandstand hadn't been broadcast live since the early '60s.

I was thinking the same thing. It certainly wasn't live when I watched it at 11:30 on Saturday mornings.

I won't be doing the poll as it seems complicated with sending ballots etc but I feel my picks would be different to most anyway.

Briefly:
best TH album - Naked
celebrated TH album I don't care much for (in fact half of it irritates me very much esp. lyrically) - Remain in Light
Byrne better solo than in Talking Heads? - indeed, as I hear it he grew considerably better both as songwriter and singer in the '90s, but no one ever talks about any of those solo records, or songs.
best DB albums for me - Feelings and davidbyrne, plus Rei Momo. Both accompanying tours outstanding as well.
I stopped following his career around 2004, would like to resume checking out his output one day.

Damn.

you should vote, max!

If you can send an email, you can vote. Nothing complicated about it.

whoa that sure is an opinion max

If your first TH-associated album was Rei Momo and your third was Naked, which was my case, you'd be forgiven for being shocked with the first five albums.

I stuck Naked in the car yesterday -- woof. "The Facts of Life" sounds like a boomer experimenting with technology (think John Fogerty or Graham Nash). The second side is unforgivable except for "Cool Water" (maybe).

^^^ otm. I'm old enough that T Heads were one of those bands where I was on board from album one. I'm sure appreciation or irritation with certain parts of the chronology depends in large part on where you started. xp

Huh, I like a lot of "Naked." But it definitely has more in common with "Rei Momo" than anything that came before. I wonder what the rest of the band really had to do with it? Anyway, "(Nothing But) Flowers" is all-time, as is the anecdote in Sand in the Vaseline that they went to pick up some hot shot African guitarist to play on the record but accidentally picked up some other random African guitarist, who turned out to be great.

the live "born under punches" is a brain melter

hi, Brad

"Born Under Punches" - Yeah, I rarely make footnotes on my lists, but Bee's gonna see a big asterisk and "THE LIVE VERSION, NOT THE OTHER ONE" on my ballot.

both are irreducible knots but the live one's a little looser gets this kind of "how are they holding this together" aura

"crosseyed" is probably where i'm gonna insist on live versions

and i know it's not allowed but i feel like voting for "new feeling" and "a clean break" together

I won't slag too much on the post-hiatus material, but I will say I liked the band better when it was a contemporary of Television rather than They Might Be Giants.

"New Feeling" ended up surprisingly high on my first run-through

what post-hiatus material?

Heads album?

I reviewed it for my college paper, after which I poured gasoline on the promo copy.

sand on the gasoline

"post-hiatus" = Speaking in Tongues onward? Three years between records was a long time for a band that had been putting out a record a year.

"Lifetime Piling Up" is as good as any Heads single and is on my ballot.

The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads needs to win the albums poll.

alfred is correct about "lifetime piling up"

I stuck Naked in the car yesterday -- woof.

I loved this record when it came out. Going back and relistening, side 1 still sounds great. Side 2, uh, not as much.

Listening to SIT. I never realized how much "Swamp" reminds me of ZZ Top

i liked "swamp" at the time, but it hasn't aged well. the band's first smirky pastiche of a familiar pop style, harbinger of decline.

XP I read an interview once with Billy Gibbons wherein he heaped praise on the 'Heads and said the shot in the "Burning Down The House" vid of Byrne's face projected on a road (with the white lines conveniently running up his nose) summed up the 80s in one go.

speaking in tongues has risen up my talking heads power rankings. it's tough to beat that closing trio

I remember at the time feeling let down by Speaking in Tongues overall after the brilliance of the first 4 albums

....will have to listen to it and the later albums again

I listened to all albums and the result is: they did not have 25 good songs. With a lot of stretching of my personal quality criteria I can scramble together 22 tracks. And I am quite generous there. They made a lot of awful music.

fped ;)

i liked "swamp" at the time, but it hasn't aged well. the band's first smirky pastiche of a familiar pop style, harbinger of decline.

― The sandwiches looked quite dank. (contenderizer), 17. marts 2017 22:21 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know, there's a bunch of segments on MSABAF that sounds like muzak/commercial music to me. They just leave the style quickly, while Swamp is bluesy snooze all the way through. I kinda like it, but probably not enough to vote for it.