Talking Heads- Classic or Dud?

xp oh yeah. crown jewel of youtube
glad you're enjoying it, Moka :)

There’s two full versions of it on youtube. I suggest doing it now.

There’s some standalone videos too… the live version of “life during wartime” is genius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0DpBnUznd0

Also “burn under punches” live is mindblowing, but the whole thing is so good.

wait are you talking about Stop Making Sense, or Rome 1980? Both amazing. But you had never heard the SMS concert?

I haven’t heard the Rome one either! I need to see that one asap.

First time seeing the SMS concert today. I had seen clips of some songs but never the full thing.

I have no excuse, I love them and of course RiL is a classic, but I hadn’t been truly acquainted with how brilliant they are live as a band.

aah I am jealous, to be experiencing both of those things for the first time. And don't forget The Name of This Band is Talking Heads - it's a live compilation so not as much of a unified experience, but pretty darn incredible.

SMS otoh needs to be seen in its entirety, start-to-finish; it has such a sublime flow.

A first viewing of SMS put me in mind of this incredible story:

https://www.slashfilm.com/tobolowsky-files-ep-44-the-voice-from-another-room/

You may be familiar with some parts of it, but it is really worth hearing Tobolowsky tell the whole tale.

the (unbelievably great) Rome 1980 show is a bonus DVD with the Remain In Light reissue fwiw

Funny, I just came across the very first retrospective putdown I've ever seen by a notable writer on Talking Heads. From James Marshall via Please Kill Me:

New York City, downtown in the early ‘80s. Punk rock’s moment of glory had passed. The promise had fizzled like a defective firecracker, co-opted by the record companies who now packaged it as something called New Wave. In came the hack producers to make it palatable for the mall and the radio. Punk in America was dead as a commercial entity, New Wave dance music was the new hot ticket. As much as we’d like to, who can forget that “New Wave” band that hired an entire funk ensemble to stand behind the band onstage to make them appear “funky” in their Ban-lon golf shirts? Am I the only one who spewed all over their Village Voice reading James Wolcott’s “A Conservative Impulse In The New Rock Underground”? How soon they forget. There was hardcore, but you had to wear the uniform, and who wants to wear a uniform? No, the rockers had either fled to Europe or crawled back under their rock.

But I couldn't agree, I love Talking Heads, and Stop Making Sense was also my intro to the band. I can find fault with it now only as a much more knowledgeable fan - the prior tour with Adrian Belew was their absolute peak - but their last tour was still a fucking great tour, and this was a rare instance of a truly great documentary film presenting truly great music in a wholly organic manner. Usually one or the other is a bit lacking, but not in this case.

the (unbelievably great) Rome 1980 show is a bonus DVD with the Remain In Light reissue fwiw

A good time to share again the folder with the stereo fold-downs from Jerry's 5.1 mixes, worth checking out because they sometimes used different parts, even vocal takes.

https://mega.nz/folder/vVsBhYLZ#Ga6e6CBJQ29zP_9sC1_uJA

the (unbelievably great) Rome 1980 show is a bonus DVD with the Remain In Light reissue fwiw

Are you sure about this? I'm looking on Discogs and not seeing this. There's a CD/DVD "DualDisc" version that has audio outtakes and two video performances from a German TV show on the DVD side, but that's it. That was also the version that was in the white plastic "brick" box set that I used to have.

yeah I don't think that's right. iirc Frantz said last year he'd love for the Rome 1980 show to be released, but Talking-Heads-the-business is too difficult a beast to even find out what the rights situation is, or if a releasable master exists.

oh whoops, my bad, yes I was confusing the German TV broadcast.

that's crazy that it's never been released. I remember that's why I bought a standalone DVD/CDR drive in 2004, so that I could torrent the Rome show and save it on a DVDR (cuz ofc there wasn't room for 4.5GB on the drive, what are you crazy?), good times

Thanking u for the feature film fold-down maresnest! The expanded CD doesn’t quite cut it for me because it doesn’t have “Cities” so this is ideal.

I’m just here to say ‘Bernie Worrell’

I'd be embarrassed to admit how many times I've watched the Rome show on YT. I prefer the way the band sounds during that tour to SMS. But it's splitting hairs since both are amazing.

I’m just here to say ‘Bernie Worrell’

― X-Prince Protégé (sonnyboy),

in the voice of Chris Frantz saying JAMES BROOOWWWNNNNN

xxp the "Please Kill Me" guy:

Blah, blah, blah. Even-whiter-inside writers white-guilt-tripping on white-guy bands trying to sound black.

I have an altogether another narrative: to me, Byrne and the Heads really come into their own on the last and best one, 'Naked', and the subsequent Byrne solo records in the '90s, where he gradually becomes both a better, rightfully soulful singer, and a better, fine-as-hell songwriter, often in the league with Paul Simon.

'Remain in Light' and 'Bush of Ghosts' remain in-teresting, but 'Naked' ('The Heads go African, vol. 2') sounds lived-in, and exciting, and life-affirming (while often scary as well).

Now that's an opinion!

Goddamn these 5.1 downmixes from maresnest of the SMS movie are fantastic

I don’t have anything against him but don’t know if I’d refer to The Hound as a “notable writer.”

sandor clegane?

fwiw my David Byrne intro: Rei Momo, specifically "Make Believe Mambo."

i haven't listened to rei momo in a good 30 years, it'd be interesting to revisit

X-post - haven’t listened to the Naked album in a bit but it definitely has its positive moments.

Speaking In Tongues is the peak of music

I wouldnt say Naked is their best but side 1 of Naked is one of my favorite TH things to listen to

For example: I hear 'Ruby Dear' or 'Cool Water' as kind of thematic sequels to 'Listening Wind', but whereas the latter sounds a bit patronisingly detached to me (granted, it's a period feature), those dark points of the Naked album actually feel dangerous; Byrne's unhinged delivery on them is awesome.

I like better passionate Byrne than 'idiot-glee' Byrne. I think too much has been made of his asperger-manchild persona to the detriment of when he really has something straightforward to say and he says it as passionately as any normally sensitive person.

Also, to not make it all about Byrne, all the band's playing on Naked is sprightly, and delightful. Many memorable Tina basslines, and Chris - especially good on brushes - shows he's not the on-the-one one-trick pony one* could have been excused for mistaking him for. (*pardon the sound-puns!)
And for the (epic) "The Facts of Life" they get to shuffle instruments kind of like they'd done for "This Must Be The Place" before!

I've always thought "Mr. Jones" was a single too, on the basis that it got plays on Italian national radio at the time the album got out, but apparently that wasn't the case. If they ever happened to reissue it for some coming anniversary, they've got the promo video sorted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rGEAsfhoeY

I like the undercurrent of menace on the second side: "Listening Wind" and "The Overload" for the Columbia House crowd. But I can barely distinguish instruments; it's a synth pop album with occasional band touches.

i agree that byrne reaches a new level as a singer by naked. vocally, i always heard SMS as kind of his last hurrah as 'high strung dada yelping guy'. you can hear him trying out new approaches on true stories and little creatures, getting more comfortable with crooning and different deliveries. then with naked he seems like hes in control of a whole new toolbox, doing all kinds of different stuff that he wouldnt/couldnt have done a few years prior

Loving the Naked reappraisals. This was easily my #1 record when it came out and for a long time after. I still have a lot of affection for it.

The reception for this has always fascinated me: they went from their commercial peak and TIME Magazine cover artists a year and a half earlier to being redundant and irrelevant in '88.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Gotta be because of Little Creatures and True Stories

I love "Blind", but their sound had been drained of power and texture by 1988. Like in "The Facts of Life", which is obviously meant to start as a grinding industrial nightmare in its opening minutes, but actually sounds like a cartoon.
My favourite Byrne record post-Remain in Light is uh-oh, the songs, lyrics, arrangements and melodies really connect.

Hard for me to think of an album that has a greater disparity of quality in its two sides than Naked

yeah got a lot more time for Naked than Little Creatures or True Stories which lack the things I like about TH

The message of True Stories ("Aren't suburbanites cute?") hasn't aged well either,

My favourite Byrne record post-Remain in Light is uh-oh, the songs, lyrics, arrangements and melodies really connect.

I prefer the eponymous follow-up for, I guess, its Proper Mature Songwriting, but his guitar playing was fierce on Uh-Oh. That tour was fabulous, still a top five show.

Based on my tastes, I should have liked that 1994 album, but it did nothing for me. uh-oh was helped by its humour.

"Butt Naked" and "Back in the Box" though

Can't remember the last time I listened to Naked. I'm willing to give it another chance at least, which is absolutely not true of Little Creatures.

"Blind" is structurally interesting; basically a soul song but with little bits of Afrobeat and salsa thrown in here and there. The horns are better than, say, the horns on a Phil Collins album. Byrne's hoarse voice, though... he sounds like he heard Rain Dogs and nobody told him he couldn't pull that off.

A friend of mine who liked the record more than I did (and who might still be buying Byrne albums) regarded "Cool Water" as one of the great "final songs" of a band's career, with its apocalyptic message.

"Mr. Jones" sounds like it was slowed down by the engineer. It should be maybe 5-10 bpm faster than it is.

"Totally Nude" is a mix of things I like (Hawaiian guitar, juju guitar — this song is massively indebted to King Sunny Ade) and things I hate (Caribbean/soca rhythm). Would be better without the synths and steel drums, too.

The message of True Stories ("Aren't suburbanites cute?") hasn't aged well either,

Haven't watched the movie or listened to it in some time, but I remember it being a little more nuanced/weird than that. Maybe I'm projecting but I always think of Byrne's attitude on a project like TS or a song like "The Big Country" as really having it both ways: he's critical of suburbia or whatever part of conventional life he's observing, but also just fascinated enough by it to hold back from pure mockery. Like he acknowledges that he doesn't get it, and therefore can't partake but also can't fully judge those who do. Part of the whole Aspergersy-alien thing, I guess.

Even the repeating chorus line in "The Big Country" - "I wouldn't live there if you paid me" - I jump back and forth between imagining him unironically identifying with the narrator, and being critical of the narrator's condescension. But like I said, I may just be projecting.

Sure, there's a lot of subtext there, but I can't imagine Byrne (or a comparable contemporary cultural figure) not getting harshly criticized for making his red-state satire so gentle if such a film came out now.

ha, I think I misunderstood your original comment. in that sense, yes, I agree it hasn't aged well.

i never imagined that he identified with the narrator of the big country, i always heard it as a randy newman-style character study of a pinhead. by the end of the song he admits he's miserable, while its clear to the audience that the people hes looking down on know something he doesnt. it even ends with a joke at the narrator's expense: "its not even worth talking about those people down there" (after talking about them nonstop.) plus if the big country is meant unironically then you have to believe that "dont worry about the government" is meant ironically, which i cant buy