Remain In Light, Side 2

listening wind. by a trillion miles. seemed terribly adventurous as a lyric when i first heard it in about 2003, thanks to ILX come to think of it. gary mullholland has this to say about it in his book FEAR OF MUSIC:
"this is so far away from either punk or agit-pop it may as well have been beamed down from a distant planet. it wants to explain rather than berate and it does so with unlikely sweetness"
amen.

I really started to appreciate "Houses in Motion" after hearing the version on The Name of This Band Is....

Can't believe more people aren't repping for "Houses in Motion" - that's the hook, man

one the first records i ever bought was the 'Once In A Lifetime' 7", with 'Seen And Not Seen' on the other side. not having many records i played that b-side hundreds of times at an early age, so at this stage its embedded in my DNA or something. has no one ever looped up the start for a hip hop record?

SEEN & NOT SEEN

Seen & Not Seen

Love the atmosphere that song creates, and side 2 of Remain In Light is all about atmosphere.

Gotta go with "Houses in Motion," in large part because I'm gonna be stuck with it as an earworm for the rest of the day, now that it's been invoked.

houses in motion for sure.

does anyone know whose decision it was to put all the uptempo songs on one side and the slow moody ones on the other?

that was my idea

Houses in Motion is uptempo

Ooh so we're getting a sudden "Houses in Motion" resurgence here.

I wrote something about the second side once.

the beginning of houses in motion is begging to be sampled

my mistake, seen and not seen is the song i would sample for my balearic edit 12"

Wait, why is "Once in a Lifetime" not one of the poll options?

Haha -- I didn't even notice its absence!

lol whoops

yeah i just checked wiki and lo and behold OIAL isn't on the first side as i'd assumed. it was these four tracks i wanted to poll anyway.

i really can't decide. adrian belew, tho, damn.

That asymmetry, 3 and 5 instead of 4 and 4, is one of the things I always liked about the LP.

The final track on the album, "The Overload", was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of the band Joy Division. This effort was made in spite of the fact that no one in the band had actually heard the music of Joy Division. Rather, it was based on an idea of what Joy Division might sound like. [1]

you crazy kids

lol hey looks like someone went to art school

fyi my parents smoke p-o-t w/ tina n chris a few times in the 70s

"In this album was sewn the seeds of what would later become Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers."

Nice writing, Alfred.

"Does anyone listen to Remain in Light past "Once in a Lifetime"? I've heard "Houses in Motion" get some love, but no one (including me) has claimed much for the three dirges with which the album concludes."

This is one of my ten or so favorite albums of all time, and one of the best sequenced, and I ALWAYS play it in its entirety. Love all three dirges, voted "Listening Wind."

i had a stoned theory once that each track on this album was slower than the one before it, so it's the like the whole album slowly grinds to a halt by the end. er...it's not true.

Ha! Back in the height of my stoner days I came to that very same conclusion. I don't think I've listened to it in full since then to discover its lack of veracity.

Hard one.

I remember Xgau commenting on the second side evoking John Cale somehow. Not sure I ever heard it that way myself, given that the closest (Music for a New Society) didn't come out until after this.

Well, "Listening Wind" conjures the same gently accumulating menace of, say, Cale's "Guts," only it's never funny, and if it is, it'll be grisly (the bomb might explode, and Mojique's arm winds up in a baobab tree).

"Houses in Motion." I love the dry, slinky, off-center funk, plus it was my first exposure to Jon Hassell.

I remember Xgau commenting on the second side evoking John Cale somehow.

If he was thinking specifically about "Listening Wind" and "Venus in Furs" (esp the viola drone), I can see it.

Or hear it, rather.

houses in motion. the album really falls off after that imo

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i always thought that "the overload" sounded more like pink floyd than joy division (though i also hear the joy division influence too).

this is so tough, one of my favorite albums ever. i'd probably have to go with the overload just cause i think it epitomizes the vibe of side 2

TAKE A LOOK AT THESE HANDS!!

"listening wind" is my favourite of these but tbh i don't like any of these nearly as much as any of the first four tracks. it will be some rong madness if "the overload" wins though.

'listening wind' is my fave track on the album, and is generally the only section where i really sit up and start to take notice. the other tracks, up to that point, tend to zip by for me (albeit in a very assured, well-sequenced manner)

Houses in Motion needs more love. I watched last nigh that live perf included on the deluxe bonus DVD. So awesome

Houses in Motion

Yeah, "Houses in Motion" for me too

no way overload is gonna win, fule (xxxxpost), but some tru headz are gonna vote for it, no pun intended

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

One of the few polls whose results please me.

for some reason I am always surprised when I go back to this album and realize it was from 1980. It sounds like it came from several years later.

I had a stoner theory that each song gets faster than the one before. But I must have been reeeaally stonered.

goddamn the bass sounds in Houses in Motion so awesome

this is one of those records where I'd love a multi-disc "sessions" kinda box set, like the Miles Davis releases. So many layers and sounds to uncover.

what the fuck at "Seen And Not Seen" losing?

It really is remarkable how they nailed Joy Division's sound on "The Overload" without ever having heard their music.

i never believe that story. it can't be true

https://www.facebook.com/AdrianBelew/photos/a.10150340764179995/10151334736169995/?type=3&theater

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The Eno mix of Houses.. is still unavailable on CD; i can't understand why it wasn't on the Remain In Light reissue. 40 (!) years old this year;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2twY8YQYDBE

Ha oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=580i1YCnli0

XXP - Apologies, I was posting this news - https://www.loudersound.com/news/adrian-belew-teams-up-with-jerry-harrison-to-tour-remain-in-light

Be conservative : bring a $20 into the bar and that’s all you can spend.

Just watching the version of Crosseyed and Painless from this show. Belew's solo around the 4-minute mark. Fucking hell. What a band.

📹

Long interview with Jerry Harrison about upcoming RiL shows and other stuff

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/talking-heads-guitarist-jerry-harrison-remain-in-light-tour-936665/

I just heard about those shows this morning. Cool, but:

Are you playing the album straight through in sequence?

I don’t see a reason to do that. I don’t think that the order on the album is the order that I would want to play it live... Let’s just say we don’t feel obligated to play every song.

Since we’re playing festivals, we have maybe 45 minutes to play. We definitely want to give Turkuaz a chance to play a couple of their songs. I think Adrian and I both probably want to play something of our own, too.

So a 45 minute set featuring some Jerry Harrison solo songs, some Adrian Belew solo songs, some songs by this band Turkuaz, and a few songs from Remain in Light? Good for Jerry but I might take pass tbh.

Great interview though. What a wonderfully weird guy: I’ve co-founded a company that’s trying to create an antidote to snakebites. Basically, mosquitoes kill the most people, humans kill the next most people and then snakes.

is THAT why Byrne still gets Old-Fashioneds with him

xps I LOVE that "Houses In Motion" remix, a whole extra verse at the end

and yeah, never reissued, just like the cool early version of "New Feeling" here:

https://www.discogs.com/Talking-Heads-Love-Building-On-Fire-New-Feeling/release/1168619

So a 45 minute set featuring some Jerry Harrison solo songs, some Adrian Belew solo songs, some songs by this band Turkuaz, and a few songs from Remain in Light? Good for Jerry but I might take pass tbh.

Cross eyed and Painless
The Overload
Oh Daddy
Band Intro Vamp
Cherokee Chief

Did not know about either of those alternative versions. Could go for a roundup of all Talking Heads odds and sods, anyone have a list?

Giving it a few listens last week, it struck me that segments of the jam part on the Isley Brothers "Live It Up" kinda remind me a bit of the grooves on Remain in Light.

The Live in Rome versions of some of these tracks are outrageously good.

Did not know about either of those alternative versions. Could go for a roundup of all Talking Heads odds and sods, anyone have a list?

― Gerald McBoing-Boing

no but there's some interesting stuff, there's the 5.1 mixes which are good and significantly different (even the downmixes of them circulating are great), the eno 12" version of "i zimbra" (this is the one frankie knuckles would spin at the power plant), the longer cassette mix of "speaking in tongues", the version of "psycho killer" with arthur russell...

"Life During Wartime" with Fripp shredding over it as well

never heard that Eno 12" version of "I Zimbra" or the Arthur Russell "Psycho Killer"... YSI? Youtube link?

I think we owe it to ILM to compile these

those downmixes are so great. as said re ril, there's bits and lines you can't really even hear in the original and they fit well

yeah agreed, they are pretty much essential for fans

here's the eno i zimbra remix:

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

and here's the arthur russell psycho killer (this was a bonus track on a 77 reish)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoclXuB6JOU

fuck yeah, thanks Tyler!

Tyler is definitely the guy to compile TH rarities and post it on his blog. Please and thank you! ;-)

ha! this thing pulls together some bits n bobs: https://www.amazon.com/Bonus-Rarities-Outtakes-Talking-Heads/dp/B00122REJU

I’d always thought of them as a band that did t leave much on the cutting room floor bc other van that houses in motion remix they were pretty stingy with their b-sides. But there’s a surprising amount of alternate versions and outtakes that have come out over the last 10 years from all the various reissues, the box set, greatest hits and etc. Not many of them are very revelatory imo, not many fully-realized unreleased songs, but a lot of fun listening just the same.

^typos, posting from the bar, etc etc

That Arthur Russell mix is an interesting historical artifact but it is p bad tbqh

yeah, it's kinda neat but it sounds more like an overdub than a remix

I've waffled on this before but it's funny how the non-extended cuts from the vinyl LP of Speaking In Tongues are pretty obscure now too; the CD copies all used the extra long mixes from the original cassette. Some are a minute longer, some almost 2 minutes.

Also weird; you can only get Storytelling Giant as part of that 2003 box set, there's still no other proper vids compilation.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51gCb0C1zmL._SX355_.jpg

I got it on vhs in my attic if anyone wants to come over and check it out

On my way

The 5.1 downmix of Houses in Motion >>>

personally i prefer the long mixes but i guess i would...

Listened to this for first time in a long while - historically have played S1 far more but S2 genius really unlocked for me this time - just incredibly sequenced album

Anyway Seen and Not Seen - struck me as having a real Robert Ashley thing going on - like pretty specifically re vocal mannerisms - has Byrne ever copped to a direct influence/tribute here? Like I guess he def woulda been across Ashley’s thing - or was it just more that this “detached anthropological observer of humanity” vibe was common in NYC art scene of the time?

Heads albums have some really strong sides. This one, and side one of Naked come to mind.

Side one of Fear of Music also.

The final track on the album, "The Overload", was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of the band Joy Division. This effort was made in spite of the fact that no one in the band had actually heard the music of Joy Division. Rather, it was based on an idea of what Joy Division might sound like. [1]

As opposed to the reality of what "I Remember Nothing" sounded like? Yeah, right.