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The Name of This Band is Talking Heads: New ‘Chronology’ DVD burns down the house
02.07.2012
06:04 pm
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The recently released Talking Heads: Chronology DVD is must-see TV for fans of the legendarily Caucasian 70s art school quartet who mutated into a futuristic Afrofunk-orchestra that rivaled Parliament-Funkadelic within just a few short years. Chronology charts the band’s progress from their stiff early days at CBGB and The Kitchen, through TV appearances on American Bandstand, The Old Grey Whistle Test, and Late Night with David Letterman, with clips from the US Festival and the reunion performance of “Life During Wartime” from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2002.

For years Talking Heads could do no wrong in my eyes. I have dropped untold amounts of LSD listening to Fear of Music, Remain in Light, The Catherine Wheel, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Tom Tom Club, but after a point I soured on them a bit. I don’t think I’m alone among “first wave” Talking Heads fans when I say that I’m not really all that interested in anything that came after Remain in Light so I’m glad to see mostly early and mid-period material represented here.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some great tracks on Speaking in Tongues (and that limited edition Robert Rauschenberg cover was tres excellent) but their later work started to feel really kinda forced to me. Prior to this release, “live” Talking Heads video material was mostly limited to Stop Making Sense. Frankly, I thought they were already well on the decline by then. These earlier performances are more alive—and certainly more spontaneous, looser, rawer, fresher and funkier—to me than what was staged for the Jonathan Demme film. That’s why the material on Talking Heads: Chronology is so essential. Hell, after watching the live performance on the DVD of “Crosseyed And Painless,” I’d contemplate anything short of murder just to see more footage from the era covered on the latter half of The Name of This Band is Talking Heads. See for yourself, it’s a scorcher.

Extras on Talking Heads: Chronology include audio commentaries from the entire group, a 1979 episode of The South Bank Show devoted to Talking Heads and a David Byrne interview from 1978. There is both a deluxe version of the DVD that comes packaged like a hardback book (with a fantastic essay by Lester Bangs) and a regular version. Since you can get them both for just about the same price on Amazon, go with the deluxe version of Talking Heads: Chronology for sure.

Below, a fucking killer live “Crosseyed And Painless” videotaped at the Capitol Theater in Passiac, NJ, 1980 included on Talking Heads: Chronology:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.07.2012
06:04 pm
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