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

Ah, but Ed Stasium sez:

This will be brief...I want to set the record straight about Tina playing on TH77. At the sessions Bongiovi would show up once in a while and when he did he would proceed to the lounge and read airplane magazines. Lance was there most of the time, I was the only person involved in the recording of the project who was there for every minute of the process. Tina played bass on the ENTIRE LP, Bob Babbitt did come in and overdub on one or maybe two songs but at the mixing stage I did not put Babbitt's bass up in the mix and the "producers" knew none the better! I seem to recall that I may have "Ghosted" Bob on the chorus (for effect) of "Love Has Come To Town" under Tina's bass for alas, I was WAY on the band's side.

http://www.electricalaudio.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=46055

yeah everything I hear on later records leads me to believe that Tina is playing on 77

she kicks ass on live recordings from that era imo

oh good another man saying a woman can't play an instrument

I feel early Byrne is skimming the surface of things in faux-detachment, underneath he's shitting his pants to have to get really involved, both as songwriter and singer. You know - like, yamming too much about style (styles of living; styles of acting), until he starts singing for real, and writing real, heartfelt songs about SOMETHING...

...I was a couple years too young to be able to experience the 'idiot glee' early 80s style period first hand - early Heads, but also Gang of Four, Wire before them, Eno's vocal albums, and the like. ...what I'm hearing is young people with guts, but also "im-mature" i.e. too young yet to write something of real substance

― Max Florian, Monday, March 20, 2017 4:06 PM (thirty-one minutes ago)

i get that you're only describing what you hear and feel, a reflection of your personal tastes. on that level, you aren't (and really can't be) wrong. i agree that overtly cerebral music produced by angry/snarky young people all but inevitably lacks a certain emotional complexity and perspective on life. for that kind of thing, we typically turn to more "mature" artists. compounding this, the post-punk & new wave music of the late 70s & early 80s is often deeply cynical about the value of emotion and even humanity itself.

but none of that really applies to talking heads, at least not in a negative sense. early on, byrne, like most of his peers, does seem to place himself in subversive opposition the pop romanticism of the 60s counterculture. and yeah, his lyrics often come armored in layers of baffling, pokerfaced irony. but he's not a nihilist. even at his most seemingly detached, he's making an earnest attempt to describe the texture of modern urban experience. what's it like to be one among many, to work, reside, think and couple not as some promethean/dionysian lone wolf art-hero, but rather as a module: citizen, friend, lover, peer.

nor does his perspective seem to have changed all that much by the time we get to naked. while byrne's lyrics may be a bit warmer and more politically direct, he's still wryly observing styles of living & acting ("mr. jones"), still framing the human condition as an exercise in systems theory ("the facts of life").

yeah everything I hear on later records leads me to believe that Tina is playing on 77

Better yet, listen to the 1975 CBS Demos and you can't deny how great Tina is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3HVf0-BIRE

btw i really liked true stories (the movie)!!!!

yeah me too, although i've never made it all the way through

xposts - Tina Weymouth is p much the single reason I decided to buy and learn how to play bass guitar

“We’re not the same as we used to be,” David Byrne tells the crowd at Ontario, Canada’s Heatwave Festival in the summer of 1980. He sounds nervous—but then again, he pretty much always sounds nervous.

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1309-talking-heads-road-to-remain-in-light/

voted

Been listening to a bootleg of that Heatwave show a lot lately. First Remain in Light show right? They sound great, Belew on fire, Tina screams WOO! into the mic every 10 seconds, extremely flat backup vox during Once in a Lifetime. they sound coked up - i remember reading one of their backing musicians (maybe it was Belew) saying that they walked into the dressing room and saw all the Talking Heads doing lines of coke off the backs of the necks of their guitars.

FWIW, I've always thought of Tina the same way I think of Paul Simonon, a guy of modest talents but ample enthusiasm who really grew into his role. It's Chris Franz who I don't rate much, though of course he is the right drummer for the TH (the same way, say, Harrison's Modern Lovers co-hort David Robinson was right for the Cars).

Relistened to the whole discography plus Tom Tom Club for the poll and enjoyed all of it, but it mostly confirmed my existing preferences. Remain in Light is my favorite thing they ever did by a substantial margin, even though there are songs I love from every album. I wish there had been at least one more album in that vein before they moved on, but maybe it's the kind of thing you can only really do once. My album ranking is more or less a bell curve, with only '77 and Naked excluded from my top 8 (top 7 + Tom Tom Club).

And I think Chris and Tina are an ace rhythm section, but it's also true that a lot of the band's funk comes from Byrne's rhythm guitar.

no idea how someone could put True Stories above 77!

the closest thing they did to Remain in Light afterwards is definitely the fantastic live Catherine Wheel tracks, but I wish they had explored that sound a bit more, especially the Seen And Not Seen/Listening Wind vibe. It took me a long time to really get into anything else after starting with Remain in Light because of how different it is really.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct-Ne0a1zCk

just stumbled across Mind live from 1982, some nice jamming & advert samples, never knew they performed it with the expanded line-up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmrAsIefl58

another curiosity from that era - the band playing Jerry Harrison's Slink

aw hell yeah, "mind" is one of my fav songs

anyway i think my ballot is done. sending it in shortly

live versions of "drugs" make me think man i should've voted for "drugs"

aw hell yeah, "mind" is one of my fav songs

otm

for those about to otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOiDdXwdLH8

sent my ballot!

"Drugs" is sweet. Kind of forgot about how cool it is until after I submitted my ballot. so it goes

I voted for 'Drugs', it was one of the last additions to my ballot. My regret is forgetting 'Pull Up the Roots' so I'm hoping that doesn't get shut out.

Good to see the love for 'Mind', when I first heard Fear of Music that was my instant favourite, love the way all the instrumental parts answer each other.

Man, the more I think about TH these days, the more I think Remain In Light is massively front-loaded, FOM is patchy, and the first two albums are unimpeachable. This is quite a turn around from my opinions at the height of my fandom.

Also, I listened to Naked all the way through last night and I liked everything on there. I don't understand the hate. It's easily better than True Stories and Little Creatures.

maybe agree about Remain in Light but I don't think Fear of Music is patchy at all! I love every single track on that album, it seems like the most focused of all the TH albums

I think Cities and Life During Wartime are as an effective one-two punch as Once In A Lifetime and Houses in Motion (and they occupy the exact same slots on the respective albums!). Those four tracks are the quintessential TH to me

the lyrics of Cities are so perfectly unhinged

Indeed, i started a thread about them once and was soundly scoffed at for my troubles, but they still baffle me

Has David Byrne even *been* to London?

lol I completely forgot to consider "Life During Wartime" for my ballot, good thing I have a few days

RIL frontloaded? no
FoM patchy? yes

^^ funny I think the opposite of both opinions

I mean RiL is front-loaded in the sense that the first 5 are the best tracks, not because the last three are poor or anything

I've never been able to really get into RiL beyond the two big songs (I am assuming, for whatever reason, that "Crosseyed and Painless" has a rep outside of the album), whereas I think that there are only like one or two songs on FoM that are anything less than awesome.

if only there was a way to sort out all these differences we have between ranking talking heads tracks :)

what's the other "big" song on RiL? once in a lifetime and...?

well "Houses" was released as a single, that and Crosseyed are the other high-profile ones from my pov

oh, now I see that "Born Under Punches" was also released as a single, there is a promo 12" of "Crosseyed" also

Crosseyed had a video too, their first proper one!

wasn't there a thread about albums you love that you really didn't get when you first heard them? that was remain in light for me

now ofc i realize that nothing sounds like it and every song is its own world

well the first three tracks on RiL sure sound like an epic Moby Dick of a side giving a distinct identity to the whole album, so I can see how it can sound frontloaded. one must work harder with the rest, I think (OiaL excepted, being the hit).

xxxxxposts -

i get that you're only describing what you hear and feel, a reflection of your personal tastes. on that level, you aren't (and really can't be) wrong. i agree that overtly cerebral music produced by angry/snarky young people all but inevitably lacks a certain emotional complexity and perspective on life. for that kind of thing, we typically turn to more "mature" artists. compounding this, the post-punk & new wave music of the late 70s & early 80s is often deeply cynical about the value of emotion and even humanity itself.

but none of that really applies to talking heads, at least not in a negative sense. early on, byrne, like most of his peers, does seem to place himself in subversive opposition the pop romanticism of the 60s counterculture. and yeah, his lyrics often come armored in layers of baffling, pokerfaced irony. but he's not a nihilist. even at his most seemingly detached, he's making an earnest attempt to describe the texture of modern urban experience. what's it like to be one among many, to work, reside, think and couple not as some promethean/dionysian lone wolf art-hero, but rather as a module: citizen, friend, lover, peer.

nor does his perspective seem to have changed all that much by the time we get to naked. while byrne's lyrics may be a bit warmer and more politically direct, he's still wryly observing styles of living & acting ("mr. jones"), still framing the human condition as an exercise in systems theory ("the facts of life").

― The sandwiches looked quite dank. (contenderizer), Tuesday, 21 March 2017 01:58

terrific post, all true and said so well. duly noted.

This poll is impossible. I've only determined that Heaven-Animals-Electric Guitar is my least favorite run of songs on a good TH album.

what's the other "big" song on RiL? once in a lifetime and...?

Yeah, I meant "Crosseyed and Painless."

that's a fact

Animals is great, I love how angry he is on that song

"Drugs" is OK.

you're ok

I'm so-so
if one can grasp it

Drugs has such great background stuff - the respirator/hisses, treated vocals, and those weird bird sounds