David Byrne

They knew they needed Doug and Roky!

(True, they still did battle w Fogerty in court, though that may well be on him, and they slogged on for many a year with that substitute singer who barely lived to tell in recent Rolling Stone, but they got it right a couple of times.)

For what it is worth, there are four credited songwriters on "Genius of Love." I am not a huge fan of that song and honestly find it kind of annoying, but fine, let's call it a good track. Hey, a great track! So? That's one song! The era as we all know is full of great tracks, one hit wonders, one offs, but no one would ascribe greatness to, like, Peter Schilling.

― Josh in Chicago

Josh, with respect, you're being...willful here. Who cares how many songwriters? "Genius" was an epochal track, sampled within months (weeks?) by Grandmaster Flash, blatantly plagiarized by Narada Michael Walden for Stacy Lattisaw, and, more than a decade later, became the basis for a ferocious Mariah Carey single...and popped up AGAIN when Carey's "Heartbreaker" sampled the Lattisaw track.

Tom Tom Club were only good for one album, but pop music is filled with one-album wonders. Don't hold it against them.

Anyway, my Cook and Clifford comparison was in the context of them in the Talking Heads. No one, not even Franz and Weymouth, are making any real claims their post TH stuff has somehow been overlooked, and few would go to bat for much of anything in Byrne's solo catalog, either, give or take "The Catherine Wheel" or his (other) collaborations with Eno. Franz and Weymouth's grievances are about their tenure in the Talking Heads, but that ship sailed decades ago. There'd be more merit to their grousing if they had managed much of anything in the past 30 years, good *or* bad. Though it doesn't help that what little they did was bad.

under the age of 60 has heard and most likely adores. That one song is better known the result of the combined impact of every single solo song Byrne ever did.

― veronica moser, Tuesday, September 20, 2022 5:40 PM

truth bomb. byrne's solo career is a snoozefest.

"Genius of Love" >>>>>> True Stories

and i mean maybe a bit more niche,
but "wordy rappinghood" is also a very solid jam.

byrne's catalogue otoh has nothing that even resembles someone having any fun whatsoever.

oh for sure it does. still mediocre at best, forgettable at worse.

I will speculate wildly that, even though in 1981 and 1982 Byrne would deny giving a solitary shit about chart success, given his dictatorial tendencies and pass/ag grandiosity (both accelerated by primo cocaine available to NYers in his position), he had to have been envious of their success at the time. That one song that Josh has the perfect right to be dismissive of at that time had greater cultural penetration than My life in the bush of Ghosts and, again, has had far greater legacy since than the combined impact of every single solo song David Byrne has ever done.

I live about a mile from Frantz and Weymouth. In 2019 I was seated next to them at a Mott the Hoople show and made some small talk with them re: the town we live in. 6 months beforehand, and two days before I moved out of NYC after 30 years, I saw the Byrne show, which while unmatched as live performance, I was not gonna discuss with them

i won't stand for this catherine wheel erasure! it's proof that byrne didn't necessarily need frantz & weymouth, but also that they really helped - just compare the studio versions of tracks to the live versions with talking heads. the studio versions are good but the live versions are fantastic

Good album!

Tina and Chris at a Mott the Hoople show seems like such an odd conjunction.

I'm not sure how trustworthy the David Bowman bio is, but it records a moment when Byrne frozen on hearing the news that the Tom Tom Club album had gone gold faster than any Heads.

the studio versions are good but the live versions are fantastic

"What a Day That Was" is one of the highlights of "Stop Making Sense."

i still am not sure where it all shakes out. genius of love is brilliant, and there are some other excellent songs on that first tom tom club LP as well. i've always been a big fan of "Lorelei". and then, yeah, the other three never caught traction after that. i think part of that was they were missing a compelling singer.

harrison managed to be a modern lover and also produce some of the very worst albums of all time, so i give him a bit more credit for being able to adapt himself to the situation. frantz and weymouth, they seem like the perfect bandmates for talking heads, like a key that only fits that particular keyhole

https://i.imgur.com/GHUylCh.png

xxxp (re The Catherine Wheel) Yeah, and Twyla Tharp's choreography was inspired, when I saw it. He should have taken more dance commissions. In How Music Works, he describes the tour where his dancers taught the musos how to dance, and they got the dancers playing instruments too, while dancing. And about all the busking he did in college towns, going back to the 60s. Considering also Stop Making Sense, The Name of This Band, as well as American Utopia, maybe he should always think and be live.

A weird conjunction for me was when Roddy Frame came into Tower Records on 4th and Broadway, where I was working the floor at the time, and asked if we had any "David Birrrne" albums.

Scot recognize Scot.

Byrne's had commendable collaborations outside of Talking Heads - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, The Catherine Wheel and I'll even add The Knee Plays and The Last Emperor, all but the first done for projects that were much more than a recorded album - but otherwise I agree, his solo career has been massively disappointing.

I should say basically every album he's done after Talking Heads split has been disappointing - I wasn't a fan of the last one with Eno or the one he did with St. Vincent.

morrisp, it doesn't appear to happen in this press conference - at 29:36 they're asked whether they thought about reuniting after seeing the film and Weymouth wryly says "When we saw it in the studio ... we said, 'Wow! What a great band...'" Harrison jokes he hasn't seen the film yet and Byrne avoids the question altogether.

weymouth's comment is a bit more than that:

Q: has this reinspired you, seeing it again, to do something together again musically?

Weymouth: yes. when we saw it in the studio with Erik Thorngren (sp?0, who was remixing it, he said "wow, what a great band...._too bad_"

and she kind of gave a deadpan stare during the "too bad" part. i don't know though, it's hard to read her. they have a very complicated situation and, like most humans, they are incredibly ambiguous and there are a lot of different ways one could understand what she said and her intentions

There have been flashes of greatness--"Strange Overtones" comes immediately to mind--but in general he's just underscored the importance of the other three.

catherine wheel a very good album, indeed. not tons of fun by any measuring stick though.

xxxp Oh yeah, Music for The Knee Plays , also for a stage production--with horn players, and "inspired by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band," also, The Last Emperor was a soundtrack, so those continue w the live and/or collaborative stimuli of his best DB albs. (I need to get back to the ones with Eno.)

El alma del Perú negro is an outstanding collection.

The Catherine Wheel was fun to try to dance to, or so my younger self would say.

Yeah, Luaka Bop released tons of great stuff.

Byrne also wrote lyrics for good album version of Philip Glass's The Photographer, based on his multimedia production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN7VRbnOm1U

Yeah, Byrne's has had a commendable career outside of making music himself. Luaka Bop is a good label - didn't they introduce Cornershop to the U.S.?

(didn't need that apostrophe s)

Tom Tom Club were only good for one album, but pop music is filled with one-album wonders. Don't hold it against them.

Third album is pretty good too. You can get a totally fun, solid Best Of out of the five C20th albums and b-side/soundtrack cuts.

(Haven't heard the later records.)

(throw Damage I've Done from the The Heads album in too. sucks that they didn't get to go on and try that second album with Johnette as full-time frontwoman.)

David Byrne got a song into Windows XP he's the most listened to artist on the planet

Hey, I'm also fond of the Franz-Weymouth-produced Ziggy Marley album

I like that record.

everybody's just doing great

xxxp Thanks for the tips, sic---"the five C20th": you mean they did five albums in the 20th Century?

I wrote a Voice piece (yes, one for every thread) about Luaka Bop's 15-track celebratory retrospective,
Twenty First Century Twenty First Year---archived here with comments about a few more later LB releases:
https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2009/07/luaka-being-and-boppingness.html

Adrian Belew was on Maron yesterday and mentions picking up a yet another sampling check for "Genius" (Latto - Big Energy).

Belew was on Tom Tom Club and Jerry solo records but never on a Byrne solo record, I think?

belew was on the catherine wheel

Ah of course. In the interview, Belew jumps from Remain to Tom Tom Club to solo Jerry.

tbh there are too many albums to discuss in this interview and some of the best and most detailed bits are about his cincinnati beatles cover band.

definitely give byrne props for luaka bop stuff.

Belew also talked about his good relationship with Jerry and playing on the Crash Test Dummies record, which I missed in the Jerry thread.

Thanks for the tips, sic---"the five C20th": you mean they did five albums in the 20th Century?

That’s right. I might try and relisten this week to see if I really can throw together a good C80 and YSI to Leo. Have never heard the unreleased new EP that got added to the US version of the third album!

has it been mentioned that belew and jerry harrison are playing together at hardly strictly bluegrass? https://www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com/artist/jerry-harrison-adrian-belew-remain-in-light/

Speaking of former punk guys showing up as producers on '90s albums: Belew produced Jars of Clay.

The band is promoting a new website "with music, videos, photos, merch and bios written personally by David, Chris, Tina and Jerry."

Byrne's peronally written bio is brief, but mentions Frantz several times (Providence: "I believe Chris suggested we put a band together to play at school dances"; Manhattan: "Seeing bands playing original music at our local bar (CBGB) I believe Chris suggested we form a new band and audition once we had enough material.")

Frantz's bio is longer, but his recollections square with Byrne's ("I invited some of my friends to form a band to play at school parties and dances. One of those guys was David Byrne. [...] Tina and I graduated from RISD in 1974 and moved to New York City where we reunited with David and moved into a raw loft at 195 Christie Street. I asked David to form a new band").

So fwiw, Byrne seems to be giving credit where due there.

Harrison's bio lists his production credits! ("Crash Test Dummies, Live, The Violent Femmes, The Bodeans, Poi Dog Pondering, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, The Verve Pipe, Rusted Root, O.A.R, The String Cheese Incident, Stroke 9, Josh Joplin, The Von Bondies...")