Talking Heads- Classic or Dud?

My favourite TH album is 'The Name of this Band is...." Holy jack-in-a-box, Adrian Belew ****ing rules, especially on "Born Under Punches", which I've only listened to about.... 38 times? I love that song.

well, it would make sense you liking 'SMS' and 'SIT' above the other eno-era material. of the three eno albums i'd rate 'em: 'fear' best, then 'more songs', then 'remain'.

Yes, really really good stuff. For me the jury's still out on Belew - I much prefer the twin Fenders of Byrne and Harrison on the earliest stuff. The playing on New Feeling and especially A Clean Break is terrific - crisp and sparkling. I'd love to know on which trax (studio and live) Byrne uses a Jaguar. NF and ACB sound like a Strat/Tele combination to me.

Life During Wartime
Swamp
Once In A Lifetime
Crosseyed And Painless
Psycho Killer

I thought you said "emo-era" instead of "Eno-era", and I was, like, "WTF?" Me and my stupid eyesight.

http://www.discogs.com/release/157172
http://www.discogs.com/release/424908

Although Remain in Light's probably my favourite Talking Heads album I really like Johnny Marr's guitar on Nothing but Flowers from Naked, I think that's a great pop song. Classic.

Lifetime Piling Up is my favourite Talking Heads song. Anyone know why it didn't make it onto any of their albums?

They had other things to do.

"Naked" is actually an amazing album. I will fite u ifn u say no.

also i heard luke slater play a dance version of i zimbra - what is this called?

it's probably the Peter Black remix.

http://www.vinylrecords.ca/talking-heads-zimbra-peter-blackjezebel-spirit-p-60.html

lifetime piling up was made after naked, I believe. I agree that it's one of their best songs, along with sax and violins. I kind of feel like if they'd managed another album it could have been completely classic, based off just those two tracks. anyway I guess these songs AREN'T bonuses on any of the reissues which is a bad oversight and makes the 'sand in the vasoline' collection absolutely necessary.

are there enough hip hop and house songs that have sampled TH to warrant their own thread?

xpost Weirdly enough -- assuming that the 2005 Brick box set contains the same reissues you're talking about, and I think it does -- "Sax and Violins" is there as an extra on the Naked disc, but "Lifetime Piling Up" is not. Though it is on the Once In A Lifetime multi-disc compilation from 2003. The catalogue is a mess of reissues.

Yeah, "Sax & Violins" is on my copy of the Naked reissue. Has there really been a mess of reissues? Comps, sure.

I think the non-album singles from 1977 that are collected on Sand in the Vaseline are pretty essential.

are there enough hip hop and house songs that have sampled TH to warrant their own thread?

KC Flyte - Planet E

Old question - Who are the nineties/noughties TH?

I do agree with Dismemberment Plan and Radiohead. Would have to think about others. Going back to their own era, Talking Heads were a big influence on King Crimson for their Discipline (1981), Beat (1982) and Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984) albums.

Martha & The Muffins sort of paralleled the TH Eno trilogy with their work with Daniel Lanois on This Is The Ice Age (1981), Danseparc (1982) and Mystery Walk (1984). The first is available, and Danseparc will be reissued on August 4 in the UK.

I think the non-album singles from 1977 that are collected on Sand in the Vaseline are pretty essential.

Totally. "Sugar On My Tongue," "I Want To Live," "Gangster of Love," "Popsicle" – all great.

Also, "I Wish You Wouldn't Say That". "No Compassion" from the album '77 is another fave of mine.

I finally read Tom's article several years late - http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/essays/2001/02/africa/

Here's a comment I posted:

You likely know this by now, but My Life... was actually recorded before Remain In Light. It makes more sense as a sort of warm up to their masterpiece rather than a follow-up. The band supposedly wrote "The Overload" as their concept of what Joy Division might sound like, having not yet actually heard them. "Listening Wind" is by no distance the worst track. It's freaking eerie and haunting, and just another strong track in a nearly flawless masterpiece.

Wanna define...so say so, so say so
Divine to define, she is moving to define, so say so, so say so
Night must fall now-darker, darker.
She...has got to move the world...to move the world...to move
The world

so so great

listening wind is one of my favorite songs on that album

I think the Dismemberment Plan turned out not to be like Talking Heads at all... I don't know if they sounded so great at the time because I was younger or because so much shit has come out since then. The D-plan's legacy has turned out to be a, well... dumb one. The bands who picked up on a lot of their references ended up dumbing down indie rock instead of running with it in new directions (like RiL's influence on electronic music) or acting as a hipster reference for pop musicians.

I'm listening to "Sax & Violins" right now for the first time in a while -- what a great song! The melody is really very well written and honestly beautiful. When I was a much bigger TH fan (see upthread, haha!) I was really impressed by the Philip Larkin reference, partly because I was also geeked out on a lot of academic poetry at the time... I'm surprised to say I still think it's pretty well done! Not a lot of songwriters could pull that off. There will probably never be another Talking Heads, oh oh oh....

Fear of Music is still so amazing.

I must be the only person here who loves True Stories (the album).

"true stories" isn't bad ... it isn't great, either, and seems like a letdown compared to the albums that came before it, which is why it gets a bad rap.

boring and wrong

Talking Heads Live in '80-'81>>>>>>>>>>>>most other live music.

― cosmo vitelli (cosmo vitelli), Wednesday, September 20, 2006 1:54 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Talking Heads live in Rome 1980...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wp2qhoop9U

If you don't have time for the full concert (it's worth it!), go to 30:00 for Crosseyed and Painless or 48:50 for Born Under Punches then The Great Curve.

listening to Naked all the way through in a long time. I loved this when it came out, then went through this period where I thought it was substandard like everyone else. Certainly feels more like a David Byrne solo record than anything else they did but now I really like it again.

Good discussion: Talking Heads: Naked poll

Wow. The Born Under Punches from that Rome show xxp is extraordinary. I always wondered how/if they tackled that live.

Is there a decent-quality audio boot from that era?

just get the name of this band is talking heads (the reish) -- that's got a whole disc worth of awwwwwesome remain in light tour tracks.

Thanks

the Warner Music Show radio lp is a keeper too--six tracks from the FoM tour. Three numbers from the set appear on the expanded TNOTBITH, but it's all gold.

(part of?) that Rome concert is available on cd: http://www.discogs.com/Talking-Heads-Rome-Concert-1980/release/3762045. Non-official. Bought it a few years ago. Source unclear to me, I get the feeling that it might be a transfer from VHS. Still, stellar performance.
But definitely get the 2CD reissue of The Name of this Band... tyler mentioned.

The audio's taken from VHS? That doesn't sound like it'd be great.

1982 was an interesting year for TH live as well, you start to get weirder song choices like Jerry's solo track 'Slink' and DB's 'Big Blue Plymouth' and the fantastic 'My Big Hands' creeping into the set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58oSPZO-qSo

Dadaist poetry finally makes it to the mainstream.

you may ask yourself

where is that radioactive spider

About the talking heads 5.1 downmixes that were going around a few years ago (and which are fucking fantastic)… does everyone else’s file of the first track on Naked have a jarring glitch on the very first brass note? Been trying to live with it but it really bugs me!

Yes! I made a fix, lemme see if I can dig it out.

Oh yay yes please! Lol i knew it would be you who’d respond

Hah! Here 'tis - https://www.fromsmash.com/V~DKjP.~u7-bt
 

Listening now, thanks a lot MN!

No worries!