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

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

aka their Pere Ubu song?

Drugs and Air might have fallen into that least favorite batch if not for cool sounds

I love Air, Animals, and the rest of FoM. Probably my favorite Heads album.

"air" is SO good

the first half of FOM is mind-blowing

yeah, first half is maybe the best. I love air except for the part where they sing "air". That part annoys me for some reason.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiir" = harbinger of next three tracks

it always reminded me of windowlicker

yeah, first half is maybe the best. I love air except for the part where they sing "air". That part annoys me for some reason.

― Sufjan Grafton, Tuesday, March 21, 2017 11:21 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"air" can hurt you too

no idea how someone could put True Stories above 77!

Just barely, but yeah. I could give a long answer but the short one is, more tunes I like.

I never used to like 'Electric Guitar' much but I've realised over the last couple of days how great the drumming is.

Frantz-Weymouth skeptics are directed to their work on FOM.

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

aka their Pere Ubu song?

Drugs has always been one of my favorite things from FOM – I will admit that I came to it from a "Listen for Eno" perspective and adore all the AMS echo triggers. Is it more atmosphere than melody? I suppose but the chorus is sublimely unsettling – and Byrne's guitar deconstruction at the close is equal to anything, say, Henry Kaiser ever did.

I'm a fan.

as i suggested upthread it uncoils fully live

aka their Pere Ubu song?

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 21, 2017 11:13 AM (one hour ago)

it really is

Help Needed I would like to ask for some help with the images of this poll. Similar to what Thermo Thinwall did for my Spoon poll or pplains did for Steely Dan. Email the TH box if interested and I will get back to you when I get home from work in a few hours.

I really need the help as I don't want just album images for this poll. Thanks
.

yeah, first half is maybe the best. I love air except for the part where they sing "air". That part annoys me for some reason.

― Sufjan Grafton, Tuesday, March 21, 2017 11:21 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"air" can hurt you too

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Tuesday, March 21, 2017 11:46 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I suppose that is also air coming out of Frantz's mouth when he "Jaaaaaaaammmmeeess BrrrrooooOOWN"s, too

still need help with images, no one has offered yet.