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

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.

My parents were in college in the late 70s and the Talking Heads were THE BAND of their college experience.

For some reason, I feel like the Heads are underdiscussed/underappreciated by people of my generation, despite the massive respect for David Byrne as a public intellectual.

My experience as a trying-to-be-cool high school student in 1987-88 was not exactly that Talking Heads reputation crashed -- Naked was indeed seen as a letdown, but non-stop listening to Stop Making Sense was absolutely de rigueur (along with Document obv.) Considered VERY cool to be all "this ain't no disco" as general dismissal of popular culture despite none of us really being old enough to remember disco

And btw for the mid-40s people SMS definitely plays the Sand in the Vaseline role of "this is how we encountered and largely how we stayed engaged with this band," I don't think I heard the 77 version of "Psycho Killer" until I got to college

what is Sand In The Vaseline??

https://www.discogs.com/Talkingheads-Sand-In-The-Vaseline-Popular-Favourites-1976-1992/master/39425

a two-disc comp with excellent heterodox selections and liner notes

and more generally, it's a dangerous sex move

Considered VERY cool to be all "this ain't no disco" as general dismissal of popular culture despite none of us really being old enough to remember disco

and despite the Heads recording many dance tunes!

"The Big Country" could've been commissioned by the Democratic National Committee last summer.

True Stories was considered a huge letdown among nearly everyone I knew

― sleeve, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 9:50 AM (fifteen minutes ago)

Naked was indeed seen as a letdown

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, March 14, 2017 10:01 AM (five minutes ago)

These two did quite a bit to deflate their rep, but breaking up at low ebb buried them - for a while, anyway

I'm 45 and came to TH via Stop Making Sense. Backtracked to Speaking in Tongues and then leapt all the way back to the debut; never heard the intermediate albums until years later. Didn't like Little Creatures, but liked True Stories (the album) - in fact, "Puzzlin' Evidence" will almost certainly make my ballot.

I'm too young for Stop Making Sense but its spending two years on the Billboard chart suggests that it became a favorite of mid '80s college students.

yeah, it's their bon jovi or w/e

Always interesting to see when/at what age people got on board with certain artists. (Spin Alternative thread is great for this too.) I'm lolold, so I first heard the Heads on this promo sampler (with Dead Boys, Saints and Richard Hell.) Drove my Pure Prairie League-loving roommate up the wall.

http://assets.rootsvinylguide.com/pictures/1977-sire-2-x-7-comp-new-wave-rock-n-roll-get-behind-it-before-it-gets-past-you_9501388

I used to have that!

braggin/

I saw the SMS tour in high school, my younger stepsister left "after they played the hit" ("Burning Down The House") and we teased her about it for years

/braggin

From the second album through SMS, Talking Heads was the consensus soundtrack for my high school and college crowd. I remember people starting to get off the bus when Little Creatures videos were in constant rotation on MTV (the "Burning Down the House" video had started that process). By that point maybe they seemed a little too popular to be cool. SMS was such a powerful summation of the earlier material that it was really hard to match.

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?

"A Clean Break" from The Name of This Band should probably be on there, since there is no studio version
"In Asking Land" from the Once in a Lifetime box set

Both are on Spotify

By that point maybe they seemed a little too popular to be cool.

little creatures also a very comfortable album. cheery vibe, familiar song-forms, pastoral imagery, songs about having babies, and quite a bit of mainstream radio play. heads felt safely middle-aged at that point (which they were, or getting there). no longer the alarmingly thin weirdo twitching in the corner, smoking like a chimney.

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

― sleeve, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 12:50 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people were mostly still on board for Little Creatures

― sleeve, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 12:50 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Little Creatures was hotly/highly anticipated -- their first studio album after Speaking In Tongues! Their first record after the triumph of Stop Making Sense! I remember walking into a mall record store in Omaha on release day and hearing this great song playing in the store and thinking, "wow, wouldn't it be something if that was the new Talking Heads record?" And it was/ "And She Was." Most of it holds up for me.

True Stories was one of those records that I listened to a bunch of times trying to figure out why I didn't like it. I gave up and started listening to XTC instead.

I don't mind "Wild Wild Life," which sounds like the band writing a hit to order.

I've long wanted "Creatures of Love" to surpass "This Must Be the Place" as their Beloved Love Song.

Love For Sale is also a good song, but the rest of True Stories is pretty weak. Naked was a nice rebound, even though it seems people hate it here.

lot of great song ideas on true stories, but they're all pretty lifeless in execution (weird, as liveliness was clearly the goal)

to me Little Creatures and True Stories sound so radically different to the rest of their catalogue, I can barely reconcile them as the same band

the key is the engineer: E.T. Thorngren, who also worked with Robert Palmer and Peter Wolf.

http://i.imgur.com/qiYFumP.jpg

GET YOUR FINGERS OFF THAT VINYL

"A Clean Break" from The Name of This Band should probably be on there, since there is no studio version
"In Asking Land" from the Once in a Lifetime box set

Added, thanks!

this will ruin my cred but i didn't know "Love → Building on Fire" wasn't on original release of 77, it's inseparable from that album for me

Road to Nowhere was the first Talking Heads song I ever heard. It was on a compilation of cycling/road-related tracks I got after Bjarne Riis won Tour de France in 96. Bicycle Race, King of the Road, River Deep Mountain High. Life before spotify was good times.

Anyways, Road to Nowhere is probably somewhere in top five for nostalgic reasons for me.

had the Sire Two on One cassette of 77 and MSABF from like 83? Fliptop box style, no plastic.

One of my favourite New York memories is picking up Little Creatures from a random crate of free records on the sidewalk near Times Square.

And I just finished my annual chronological Talking Heads discography re-listen the other week, perfect.

I'll stick up for the much maligned True Stories. If you take it for what it is (conventional songwriting with kinda crappy 80s production) there's actually some really good songs on there, side 2 especially. The beautiful 'Dream Operator' will be ranking high on my ballot. I'd personally rank it above the more celebrated Little Creatures which to me is a bunch of mediocre songs sandwiched between two great ones.

television man is pretty good. road to nowhere is kinda sweet but there's too much oompah-pah on those albums for me to really love them

I don't hate True Stories, but I just never much warmed to it. Listening to the downmix for the first time as I type, I wasn't aware of the Pops Staples version of "Papa Legba." That's kinda interesting.

The Pops Staples version outdoes the Heads version.

Listening to the "Bonus Rarities & Outtakes" MP3 album on Spotify right now. A few repeats from other comps, but a bunch of interesting alternate takes and mixes including:

First Week/Last Week - minus the marimba & horns
Electricity - pre-"Drugs" arrangement, instrumental studio version
Crosseyed & Painless - Longer, fewer overdubs, more facts about facts (Facts go out and slam the door...)
The Lady Don't Mind - from Speaking in Tongues sessions
Warning Sign/Artists Only/Drugs - Alternate takes

also worth noting here that the 7" version of "Houses In Motion" is a different mix that has a longer fadeout with additional verses as well.

wrt True Story pretty much all the film versions of the songs with the characters singing are better than the versions on the album. didn't Byrne say that he was reluctant to record them as a Talking Heads album, but was convinced to do it to promote the film?

And it was recorded at the same time as LC.

*revisits debut*

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

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson)

Same. Now listening to the 1975 CBS Demos (crispy demos!), which are totally amazing. Pre-Jerry. Most songs played are significantly faster than their definite versions.

i know this isn't comprehensive, but are there any other solo/collabs that i should be reviewing before voting?

Byrne - Catherine Wheel (1981)
Byrne - Rei Momo (1989)
Byrne - The Forest (1991)
Byrne - Uh-Oh (1992)
Byrne - David Byrne (1994)
Byrne - Feelings (1997)
Byrne - Look into the Eyeball (2001)
Byrne - Grown Backwards (2004)

Byrne/Eno - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981)
Byrne/Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008)

Byrne/St. Vincent - Love This Giant (2012)

Weymouth/Frantz/Harrison - Tom Tom Club (1981)
Weymouth/Frantz/Harrison - Close to the Bone (1983)

Harrison - The Red and the Black (1981)
Harrison - Casual Gods (1988)
Harrison - Walk on Water (1990)

Harrison/Modern Lovers - Modern Lovers (1972/76)

The Heads (Weymouth/Frantz/Harrison) - No Talking Just Head - 1996

Byrnen's eponymous 1994 album (for which he grew long singer-songwriter hair) is his best solo work after TCW.

Rei Momo remains a product of its time. My college station played "Make Believe Mambo" often; it got me to check out the Heads stuff, so it worked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dSMCIB8pfQ

I liked this, essentially more "Naked:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ls18cKIL3o

I want to say there was a lot of Uh Oh I liked. But it's been yeeeeeeeears.

what about byrne's side of The Last Emperor? i'm not sure i can get through all this before the poll but i aim to try. i've listened to a fair amount of byrne's solo and collab work, but zero jerry harrison solo. i skimmed a few tracks in a record store once (i think from the Red and the Black?) and was completely appalled

I liked Uh Oh a lot in 1992! I saw his tour on its Miami stop (he always stopped in Miami) -- one of the most thrilling shows I've seen, although I'll admit that I'd seen SMS for the first time only two months earlier and was thus ready to be blown away. The horn section worked. He danced like a fiend and opened and closed the show with acoustic cuts ("Nothing But Flowers," "And She Was," "Psycho Killer").

television man is pretty good. road to nowhere is kinda sweet but there's too much oompah-pah on those albums for me to really love them

― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin)

always loved zydeco, so squeezebox oompa-pa sits okay w/ me