FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
When The B-52s met David Byrne
03.30.2020
10:03 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Although it’s my own personal favorite B-52s release, the 1982 EP produced by David Byrne known as Mesopotamia is generally thought of as being one of their least successful records. At least it was critically savaged when it first came out, but to my mind it contains their very best work. The hiring on of Byrne, then at the height of his creative powers, I thought was an inspired move on the band’s (or label’s) part. Byrne introduced the polyrhythmic beats of Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts to the signature sound of the “tacky little dance band from Athens, Georgia’’ to great effect. I was a big Talking Heads fan, and a far bigger B-52s fan, so hearing elements of the Heads’ “Afro-Eno-era” sound melding with the wacky racket of the B-52s was heaven for me as a teenage rock snob. Byrne took the B-52s sound to a different place, and I felt nicely expanded on their sonic palette. The B-52s obviously felt differently, as Byrne was fired before a complete album could be recorded (hence why only an EP of the sessions was released).

Seriously, you have no idea how often I played this record. It falls into the “soundtrack of my life” category in a big way. But what many fans of the group do not know is that there are three very different versions of Mesopotamia: The “classic” shorter US/Warner Brothers EP version; the extended mix version mistakenly(?) released in Germany and in the UK by Island Records; and the 1991 CD version, which basically mixed David Byrne’s contribution right out of the proceedings…
 

 
The first two B-52s albums are classics, and to my mind perfect in every way, but a third album in that same style would have probably been one too many. Byrne’s involvement, for many fans and critics, took the band a little too far away from their inspired amateur beginnings. Perhaps, but who else but Byrne was capable of coming up with such amazingly funky polyrhythmic grooves back then? And haven’t the B-52s always been about the beat? David Byrne was on fire at that time creatively and was simultaneously working on his masterpiece score for Twyla Tharp’s Broadway ballet The Catherine Wheel. I’ve read that the B-52s felt that his production made them sound too much like Talking Heads, but hey, what a valid direction that was for them! True, certain elements of their signature sound were diminished (Ricky Wilson’s Venusian/spy-fi surf guitar for one, and Keith Strickland’s drums were crowded out by a drum machine), but other elements (Wilson’s striking use of dissonance in his compositions) are given freer rein with different instrumentation (like the nearly atonal “No Wave” brass section and sleekly synthesized bass lines) than the B-52’s normally employed. And it’s a much darker, dreamier vibe for them, for sure. Their sound was nicely expanded upon by Byrne’s “dubbier/trippier/hip hoppier” production approach, if you ask me, but the B-52s didn’t ask me, and it was their call, ultimately.

Still why not release a special collector’s edition of Mesopotamia with the original longer David Byrne mixes and the known outtakes: “Queen of Las Vegas,” (see below), the original “Big Bird” and “Butterbean” (both recut for Whammy) and the pretty Fred Schneider sung ballad “Adios Desconocida” (which you can hear here). In any case, the longer, “alt” David Byrne version of Mesopotamia, unavailable now for 40 years and never released on CD can be downloaded all over the Internet (it’s not hard to find). I don’t hate the 1991 remix of Mesopotamia, but I’d never choose to listen to it over either of the other versions. Ever. ‘Nuff said.

An absolutely slamming live “Mesopotamia” from the Rock Pop Festival, Dortmund, Germany, 1983:

 
Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.30.2020
10:03 am
|
Indie rock and new wave hits reimagined as pulpy 1950s ephemera


 
There’s a fellow out there named Todd Alcott who has put together an enchanting series of prints reimagining popular songs by some of the most vital musical artists of the 1970s through the 1990s as various graphical items mostly dating from before the rock era—e.g., pulpy paperbacks, “men’s life” mags, lurid sci-fi posters, and so on. They’re quite wonderful and you can procure them for yourself in his Etsy store. Each print will run you £19.78 (about $26) for the smallest size and prices escalate from there.

One endearing thing about Alcott’s images is that they are so clearly driven by the most beloved albums in his own collection—and his taste is excellent! So he transforms multiple songs by King Crimson, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, the Stones, David Bowie while also hitting a bunch of other faves (NIN, Nirvana, Fiona Apple) just the one time.

Alcott told Ayun Halliday of Open Culture that “these are the artists I love, I connect to their work on a deep level, and I try to make things that they would see and think ‘Yeah, this guy gets me.’”

My favorite thing about these pop culture mashups is Alcott’s insistence (usually) on working in as many of the song’s lyrics into the art as possible. That does admittedly make for busy compositions but usually in a way that is very true to the pulp novel conventions or whatnot.

According to his Etsy site, Alcott is also available for custom jobs should inspiration strike you! Here
 
More of these marvelous images after the jump…...
 

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
10.10.2018
08:57 am
|
Burning Down the House: Talking Heads perform live showcase at Entermedia Theater, 1978
07.30.2018
08:57 am
Topics:
Tags:

02talkheaalb.jpg
 
Forty-years-ago, like a gazillion other kids, I was smitten by the sounds of New Wave. The needle had worn out on punk and there was a need for a newer sound, a bigger sound to hit the decks. And lo, yea, there came unto the local record store, venue, and radio station, New Wave. 

New Wave was really just a catchall term used/devised by NME writers like legendary scribe Charles Shaar Murray to describe a diverse range of bands who often had little in common other than their unique sound like the glorious Blondie and the pantomime horse of the Boomtown Rats. By this definition, New Wave bands weren’t considered quite punk though they may have been inspired by punk, or indeed, were in fact maybe just a little bit punk, or even garage, but were at the time only just coming to the attention of a bigger, far more appreciative audience circa 1978.

So, there I was, dear reader, a young teen living with his parents in a two-up/two-down in the nether regions of Scotland’s capital. Of course, you have to remember, we Scots were still in our penitent sack cloth and ashes for the ignominy inflicted on the world under the name of tartan by the Bay City Rollers and nauseating bands like Slik who had the appeal of stale cold porridge on a hangover morning. Only the Rezillos had pointed the way to a new Eden—though few Scots were actually paying attention. And then, lest we forget, the UK charts were hideously blistered by pustules of horror like Brian and Michael (“Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs”), the Brotherhood of Man (”Figaro”), and John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, all of whom made the #1 spot with last duo staying there for a staggering nine weeks with “You’re the One that I Want.” This was the music, the audio track against which New Wave competed and why, for many, New Wave offered a hope that everything wasn’t Andy Gibb, Father Abraham and the Smurfs, or even on the march with Andy Cameron and “Ally’s Tartan Army.”

In the UK, there was an anger and an edge to the native New Wave sound from bands like the Jam, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, and 2Tone’s the Specials, most of which stemmed from the political failings of the Left who were then running the country. Mass unemployment, a devalued currency, high taxes, IMF loans, endless strikes, and urban deprivation inspired high musical passions. These youngsters wanted change—-but into what? as the only alternative to the Labour government was the Conservatives Margaret Thatcher, and even then, there were those who knew how that would end. These bands were fine, but one can only keep that level of anger up for so long without recourse to beta blockers or an unenviable sense of ennui.

Therefore, dear reader, like gazillions of other kids, I was very quickly smitten by the sounds of bands lumped together under the heading of American New Wave—bands like Blondie and Talking Heads. Blondie was love at first sight. Talking Heads was love from the second album More Songs About Buildings and Food on. Not that I didn’t like their first album Talking Heads: ‘77, it was just I didn’t hear it until after I’d bought the second.

Unlike UK New Wave, Talking Heads and Blondie wrote songs that were clever, smart, ironic, and coded with a delightful upbeat tempo and a scintillating charm. Let’s be honest, if ever given the choice of being trapped in an elevator for hours on end with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz or Joe Strummer and Sham 69, I know who I’d rather choose…the former, obviously.

Talking Heads formed in 1975 around the triumvirate of David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Weymouth. Byrne and Frantz had previously had a band called the Artistics. Weymouth drove the boys to-and-from gigs. Needing a bass player, Byrne and Frantz asked Weymouth to join the band—admirably so, indeed, Weymouth is one of the great unsung heroes of modern music. The Talking Heads played their first gig as support to the Ramones at CBGB’s in June 1975. Two years later, Jerry Harrison, ex-Jonathan Richmond’s band Modern Lovers, added his considerable talents and the Talking Heads were complete.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
07.30.2018
08:57 am
|
Psycho killer? David Byrne’s isolated vocals from ‘Once in a Lifetime’ sound like a crazy person
06.13.2018
11:48 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Once in a Lifetime” is not only one of best-known tracks ever released by Talking Heads, in some ways it represents the culmination of the entire Talking Heads project. It appeared on the band’s fourth album Remain in Light, which represents the approximate midpoint of their run. David Byrne was in the arguably most creative phase of his career, working with Eno on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (a very relevant album for the messianic preaching found in “Once in a Lifetime”) as well as churning out the soundtrack to The Catherine Wheel. Shortly after the release of Remain in Light, Esquire magazine unveiled its list of 373 Americans under 40 who are “changing the world”—according to Sytze Steenstra in Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present, Byrne was the only figure from the rock world to be selected.

I was in middle school when “Once in a Lifetime” came out—I saw that video countless times on MTV. Nobody who’s seen the video can really forget it, what with twitchy, skinny David Byrne rapping himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand, backed up by a quartet of Byrnes all sync’d together in this hypnotic way. Toni Basil, who was also a choreographer on top of being a singer, and Byrne worked out the unusual movements, pitched (per Steenstra) “remained at midpoint between dance and muscular spasms.”
 

 
In the pages of the April-May 1981 issue of Musician, another David B.—namely Breskin—asked Byrne about the origins of the “voices” that inspired Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:
 

Breskin: Do you think of the voices on Bush Of Ghosts as ghosts?

Byrne: No. But I think of the music on the record as very spiritual, so you might connect that with ghosts.

Breskin: How spiritual?

Byrne: It’s difficult to explain. I think it’s a combination of the rhythms and the more mysterious textures and sounds. Like Remain In Light, there’s a positive, affirmative feeling there but then there’s also a mysterious, other-worldly feeling. Almost all the vocals we put on it have to do with one kind of religious experience or another …

Breskin: Which in a couple of cases intersect with current political experiences, like with the “Unidentified indignant radio host” railing against our lack of nerve in the you-know-what crisis and on the other side of the coin, you include Algerian Muslims chanting Qu’ran. Where did you get the “Unidentified exorcist” vocal to take Kuhlman’s place?

Byrne: Right off the radio. It was a phone-in show, people called in to have this guy drive off the evil spirits. There’s another guy in California who has you put your hands on the TV screen and he puts out his hands to touch yours and heal you through the TV.

Breskin: Can you imagine yourself in a similar role?

Byrne: What, telling people to put their hands on the set?

Breskin: C’mon David, you know what I mean …

Byrne: Helping to heal people? Preaching? Yeah, in a way. I get a lot of inspiration from the evangelists one hears on the radio throughout the U.S. I think they’re dealing with a similar aesthetic; in the more exciting preaching I think they’re going after a thing similar to the music. But I’m not very direct about it though. I like to plant just the seed of an idea in someone’s head rather than telling him exactly what I think.

Breskin: With a lot of those testifyin’ preachers, there seems to be a contradiction — or a tension — between what they’re actually saying and the way they’re saying it.

Byrne: Yes, sometimes there is. Sometimes their delivery is real ecstatic, but what they’re saying is so conservative and moralistic. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that these guys are going absolutely berserk while they’re telling everyone to behave themselves. And they’re madly raving, jumping all over the place. In that kind of preaching — like in a music piece — as much is said in the delivery and the phrasing as in the words. What’s important isn’t what’s literally being said.

 
Not surprisingly, the isolated vocal track for “Once in a Lifetime” sounds very strange indeed—you almost wouldn’t think it was part of a song.

Listen after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
06.13.2018
11:48 am
|
That time Talking Heads recorded ‘Femme Fatale’ with Lou Reed
01.12.2018
08:51 am
Topics:
Tags:


Tina Weymouth and Lou Reed onstage at CBGB, 1988 (via Tom Tom Club)

“Yes, it’s true”: toward the end of Talking Heads’ career, all four members of the band gathered in the studio with Lou Reed to record the Velvets’ “Femme Fatale.” The result came out on a Tom Tom Club LP (Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom), but the credits sure read like Talking Heads + Lou: Tina Weymouth on bass and keyboard, Chris Frantz on drums, Jerry Harrison on keys, David Byrne on slide and rhythm guitar, and Lou Reed on lead and rhythm guitar. Weymouth sings Nico’s part and everyone else joins in on backup vocals.

Rolling Stone reported news of the NYC supersession in 1987. It provided the happy ending to “Are Four (Talking) Heads Better Than One?,” a profile that suggested the foursome was held together with Scotch tape and chewing gum, and contained some bons mots from Lou:

Back in earlier, calmer days, the band looked to Lou Reed as a sort of patron saint. He doled out advice like “Get some dynamics in your songs” or “David should wear a long-sleeved shirt – his arms are too hairy.” And more profound warnings, which the band still remembers today. Chris: “Lou Reed once told us, ‘Man, I’ve gotta go out on tour again. People want to view the body.’” Tina: “He told us, ‘A band is like a fist of many fingers. Whereas record companies like to ego-massage one finger and break it off.’”

Listen after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
|
01.12.2018
08:51 am
|
Rare concert photos of Blondie, Zappa, Iggy, Fugazi and more, from the Smithsonian’s new collection


 
In December 2015, the Smithsonian Institution began an ambitious crowdsourced history of rock ’n’ roll photography, calling on music fans to contribute their amateur and pro photos, launching the web site rockandroll.si.edu as a one-stop for accepting and displaying shooters’ submissions. One of the project’s organizers, Bill Bentley, was quoted in Billboard:

We talked about how it could be completely far-reaching in terms of those allowed to contribute, and hopefully help expose all kinds of musicians and periods. There really are no boundaries in the possibilities. I’d like to help spread all styles of music to those who visit the site, and show just how all-encompassing the history of what all these incredible artists have created over the years. What better way than for people to share their visual experiences, no matter on what level, to the world at large.

The project, sadly, is now closed to new submissions, but it’s reached a milestone in the publication of Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen, authored by Bentley. The book is a pretty great cull of the best the collection had to offer, full of photos rarely or never seen by the public, chronologically arranged, and dating back to the dawn of the rock era. Some of them are real jaw-droppers, like the concert shot of Richie Valens taken hours before his death, Otis Redding drenched in sweat at the Whiskey a Go Go, Sly Stone looking like a goddamn superhero at the Aragon Ballroom in 1974. From Bentley’s introduction:

Although the sheer breadth of the offerings was overwhelming, that fact only underlined the importance of an organizational strategy. The publisher sorted through the submissions, categorizing them by performer and date to create a complete historical timeline of rock and roll. Approximately three hundred photographs are included in the following narrative, many of them by amateurs whose enthusiasm and passion for their subjects are here presented to the public for the first time. The balance of the photos were taken by professional “lens whisperers,” whose shots were selected to flesh out this overview of rock and roll. The results, spanning six decades, aim for neither encyclopedic authority nor comprehensive finality, but rather an index of supreme influence.

Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen isn’t due until late in October, but the Smithsonian have been very kind in allowing Dangerous Minds to share some of these images with you today. Clicking an image will spawn an enlargement.
 

Blondie at CBGB, New York City, 1976. Photo Roberta Bayley /Smithsonian Books
 

The Clash at the Orpheum Theatre, Boston, September 19, 1979. Photo Catherine Vanaria /Smithsonian Books
 

Frank Zappa at Maple Pavilion, Stanford University, CA, November 19, 1977. Photo Gary Kieth Morgan /Smithsonian Books
 
Many more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
|
09.18.2017
11:00 am
|
‘Who ate my pie?’ David Byrne plays boorish, mustachioed, pie-loving drunk on PBS sitcom


 
The first episode of the PBS anthology series Trying Times (originally called Survival Guide) was directed by Jonathan Demme. “A Family Tree” stars Rosanna Arquette as a science major and aspiring astronaut on a nightmare first visit to her future in-laws’ place. Everything that can go wrong does, but nothing is worse than the behavior of her presumptive brother-in-law, Byron, the boorish pie-hoarder played by David Byrne. “Ask me what’s the most poisonous snake in the world,” he dares her.

I recommend the whole half-hour episode (split into 1 2 3 parts on the YouTube), but the “Who ate my pie?” scene below is a satisfying quick fix of David Byrne acting like a total asshole.

The New Yorker posted this review of “A Family Tree” shortly after Demme’s death.
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
|
07.13.2017
10:59 am
|
32 minutes of Talking Heads playing CBGBs in 1975
03.07.2017
01:47 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
In 1975 the art-rock combo known as Talking Heads played its first gigs in New York City. In June they opened for the Ramones at CBGBs; by September they were the subject of an admiring account by John Rockwell in the New York Times. They took October off and then played a trio of gigs on the Thanksgiving weekend. December was busier, with 5 shows at CBGBs and 1 at Max’s Kansas City.

The second of those CBGBs shows took place on December 6, 1975, and Metropolis Video captured the full set on a video lasting 32 minutes.

In his excellent Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, Will Hermes mistakenly identifies the clip as being recorded two weeks later, during the “CBGB Christmas Festival” weekend (it happens, nailing down shit like this is tricky):
 

Talking Heads played two nights at CBGB in late December. In a blurry black-and-white clip that later surfaced on YouTube, David Byrne appears to be doing a mic check, but instead of the usual “one-two” he sputters “Uh. Uh, uh” over and over, like an autistic kid in a lock groove. Tina Weymouth stands stock-still, her bass nearly the size of her torso, her hands draped over the top, waiting. She wears a dress shirt under a pullover, her hair in a blond bob. She resembles Olga Korbut, the era’s famous teenage Olympic gymnast. Byrne looks equally neat and preppy, dress shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up. Chris Frantz, behind his drum kit in the rear, wears a similar light-colored shirt; his head is cut off in the framing.


 
Three of the songs played that night ended up on their debut album Talking Heads 77. Hearing Byrne’s somewhat adenoidal rendition of ? and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears” is a special treat.
 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
03.07.2017
01:47 pm
|
‘Storytelling Giant,’ offbeat Talking Heads video compilation from the 1980s
02.23.2017
12:55 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
When MTV ran the world in the 1980s and a few years after, it was de rigueur for bands to release VHS video compilations. The Police had one, Duran Duran had one, ZZ Top had one, you know Madonna had one. Typically, They Might Be Giants decided to name theirs Video Compilation.

Talking Heads were unquestioned pioneers of the music video form, so it would be only proper for them to release such an item. The band’s last studio album was Naked in 1988, the same year that Storytelling Giant, their video comp, came out. The band would wait until 1991 until announcing that they had broken up, but it seems likely that everyone knew the writing was on the wall, so Storytelling Giant can be seen as a quasi-conscious capper to their career as music video artists.

Here’s the (slightly bizarre) writeup of the compilation from the back of the VHS box:
 

“Storytelling Giant” is a work composed of all ten Talking Heads videos made over the past decade. They are connected by random, unrehearsed, spontaneous footage of real people talking. None of the people are actors, and all of them are wearing their own clothes. Many of them know nothing of the Talking Heads, and sometimes they tell stories that have nothing to do with the band’s music. Yet, somehow, their stories bring the Talking Heads music into another place. A place of giant lizards. . . A place where little girls sit on clouds. A place where everyone has enough to eat. . . And the government provides hairdressers if you can’t afford one. A giant man walks into a bar. He begins to wrestle with three nuns. A man with a toupée stops them, and they begin to speak.

 
The compilation is very effective in that cerebral Talking Heads way—the interstitial spoken-word bits are interesting but generally short—most of the time you’re hearing a bit out of context and you’re never really supposed to know what they’re talking about, it’s all about generating arbitrary connections. 
 

 
A few notes about the videos. I’d forgotten that John Goodman is in the video for “Wild Wild Life.” That song is off of True Stories, and Goodman’s rendition of “People Like Us” is probably the high point of that movie, so that makes sense. Interesting to see him here, before he became famous.

The most pleasant surprise on this compilation, for my money, is “And She Was,” which was directed by Jim Blashfield, who has mentioned Terry Gillam’s cutouts as an influence. That makes total sense—the video kind of a 1980s version of the “Eleanor Rigby” sequence from Yellow Submarine using moving cutouts, and it’s dated extremely well in my opinion. I didn’t realize that Jim Jarmusch had directed a Talking Heads video, but there’s a reason for that, “The Lady Don’t Mind” is one of the less interesting videos here.
 
More after the jump…....

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
02.23.2017
12:55 pm
|
Talking Heads talk sex and drugs, 1979
02.22.2016
12:13 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
In the August 1979 issue of Oui Magazine, there appeared a revealing single-page interview with all four members of Talking Heads conducted by Scott Cohen. According to the intro, the interview took place at the group’s loft in Long Island City, which is where the basic tracks for Fear of Music were laid down in late April and early May of the same year. So the timing on that works pretty well; this interview probably occurred right around the recording sessions, and the album came out the same month as the interview.
 

 
Although the magazine wasn’t his creation, Oui ended up being Hugh Hefner’s attempt to compete with the more explicit Penthouse. (Interestingly, the group didn’t merit inclusion on the cover, which touted instead their interview with Gregg Allman.) In that spirit, Cohen’s interview is kind of rude and frank, the questions have the flavor of ones that Howard Stern might ask. Here is a representative sample, with one Q and A for each member of the band:
 

Oui: Which Talking Head has the biggest microphone?
Jerry: My microphone is about eight inches long and two inches wide. Everyone in the band is about the same size.

Oui: As the Talking Heads get better, do you get laid more?
David: About 25 percent more.

Oui: As the Talking Heads get better, did you get higher?
Chris: Yes, but basically there seems to be something inadequate about drugs in that they’re so temporary. I wish they were better, longer lasting and more beneficial in a permanent way.

Oui: Do you wish your tits were bigger?
Tina: No, I think my tits are perfect, by themselves. I don’t wish they were bigger. I wish one was exactly the same size as the other. They usually aren’t. I wish they both were the same size as my big one.

 
In the interview, Tina Weymouth does the most talking, probably for the simple reason that she’s a woman and it’s more fun for a porn mag to put her on the spot and make her say things like “I like cock,” even though she meant more like a linguistic thing.

In an issue of Sounds a bit later, Weymouth said (a little hilariously) that “she was out of her head after a party when the tape recorder was switched on, and when she saw the interview in print she didn’t know whether to be more annoyed about being taken advantage of or about the fact that Oui had left all the best bits out, about butt-fucking and so on.”

I think I’d probably feel the same way….....

Here it is. Click for a larger view:
 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Check out the earliest known Talking Heads recordings, 1975
‘Once in a Lifetime’: Talking Heads’ mind-scrambling concert video

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
02.22.2016
12:13 pm
|
Fear of Music: Amazing early Talking Heads doc from 1979

01theadsgrp.jpg
 
A loft in Manhattan, New York, 1979: Talking Heads are working on their latest album Fear of Music. A TV crew from England are present making a documentary for the UK arts series The South Bank Show. They interview and film the band at work—writing, rehearsing and recording songs. At times, listening to Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison and David Byrne talk they all make it seem what they’re doing is really quite ordinary, almost mundane. Frantz says he considers his life quite normal when not on tour. He gets up early rather than sleeping all day and going to the clubs at night. Byrne, who sounds at times like Andy Warhol—nervous, shy—discusses his thoughts about dressing like ordinary working people in ordinary everyday work clothes, though he soon discovered keeping up with ordinary fashions was expensive. Tina Weymouth points out the band plays under full house lights and eschew spotlights on solos. They are earnest, conscientious, and make it sound as if what they are doing, what they are creating, is quite workaday when in truth this talented quartet are producing something very, very extraordinary.

As the documentary develops, the disparity between their artistic aspirations and their personal points of view of what they’re all about becomes apparent—with Frantz musing on whether it’s good old rock ‘n’ roll or actually art that they are producing. History’s jury has already returned the verdict on that—a unanimous decision in favor of art—great art.
 

 
Weymouth, Frantz and Byrne first played under the name The Artistics. They had an idea of “combining conceptual and performance art with popular music (their sound earned them the nickname The Autistics).” Then a friend suggested the name “Talking Heads” lifted from the TV Guide—which appealed as it had no genre defining angle. Dressed in button down shirts, sensible shoes and corduroy in amongst the ripped T-shirts, leather jackets of New York’s punk clubs, Talking Heads was a vision of the future, belonging to no genre or scene, ultimately. This became more than evident through the eight studio albums the band produced between 1977 and 1988.

Keep reading after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.18.2016
10:17 am
|
I’m with the Band(s): Intimate photographs of punk legends at CBGBs

01bgbc01.jpg
 
Whether it’s the Left Bank, or Bloomsbury, or Sun Records in Memphis, the Cavern Club in Liverpool, or London’s King’s Road, there is always one location that becomes the focus for a new generation of artists, writers and musicians. In New York during the 1970s, this creative hub could be found in a venue called CBGBs where different bands came to play every night spearheading the punk and new wave movement and bringing about a small revolution which changed everything in its wake.

Amongst the musicians, writers and artists who played and hung out at Hilly Kristal’s club at 315 Bowery were conceptual artists Bettie Ringma and Marc H. Miller. Bettie had come from from Holland to the US, where she met Miller—a writer and photographer whose passion was for telling “stories with pictures, with ephemera and with a few carefully chosen words.” Together they started collaborating on various multi-media and conceptual artworks.

In late 1976, Marc and Bettie were drawn to the irresistible pull of creative energy buzzing out of CBGB’s. Most nights they went down to the venue and started documenting the bands and artists who appeared there:

Our first photograph of Bettie with the movers and shakers at CBGB was taken during our very first visit to the club in late 1976. Standing alone by the bar was one of Bettie’s favorite performers, the poet-rocker Patti Smith. At home at CBGB and a wee bit tipsy, Patti was more than happy to oblige our request for a picture with Bettie. Soon we were CBGB regulars, checking out the different bands and slowly adding to our collection of pictures.

Marc and Bettie’s original idea of creating “Paparazzi Self-Portraits” at this Bowery bar developed into the portfolio Bettie Visits CBGB—a documentary record of all the bands, musicians, artists and writers who hung out at the venue, with photographs becoming:

...a reflection of the new aesthetic emerging at CBGB, a contradictory mix of high and low culture energized by fun and humor, the lure of fame and fortune, and a cynical appreciation of the power of a good hype.

More of Marc and Bettie’s work from this punk era can be seen here.
 
003betpat003.jpg
 

Patti Smith was hanging around at the bar, but no one was taking pictures of her because she was super-shy. She posed with me and then just went away: some musicians are like that, they’re not into socialising. They’re just artists.

 
0debbet000.jpg
 

Debbie Harry is a really great singer. She had a very different style from what was emerging there at that time. She was not shy, but she was very aloof: you can see that in the picture, hiding half her face behind her hair. It wasn’t something she needed, because she was very pretty, she was the frontwoman. But it gave her safety.

 
0rambets067.jpg
 

I just love the Ramones. When their music starts I can’t sit still, I just have to start hopping and dancing, and I’m 71 now. We saw them live about 10 times: we would go out of our way to see them perform.

 
More of Marc and Bettie’s work after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.16.2015
09:05 am
|
When the Staple Singers covered Talking Heads on Soul Train
07.07.2015
09:39 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
By the time Pops Staples sang “Papa Legba” in David Byrne’s movie True Stories, the relationship between the Staple Singers and Talking Heads was already well-established. In 1984, the Staples had a minor hit with their cover of Speaking in Tongues’ “Slippery People,” on which Byrne played guitar, and which they promoted with an appearance on Soul Train. I prefer it to the original.

Biographer Greg Kot writes that the idea for the single came from a producer the two groups shared. From Kot’s I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era:

When the songwriting-production team of Gary Goetzman and Mike Piccirillo persuaded the Staples to record “Slippery People,” they enlisted Byrne to play guitar. “Gary was a producer on Stop Making Sense and he was instrumental in helping me get [the 1986 Byrne-directed movie] True Stories off the ground,” Byrne says. “He produced records as well as movies, and he and his production partner had the idea to find contemporary material that the Staples could cover that would also sound like something they might have written. ‘Slippery People’—just the title alone sounds like a song they could have written. Musically, it was definitely influenced by gospel—its very gospel call-and-response chorus made it a natural fit for them.”

Byrne’s Gumby-like dance moves for Stop Making Sense had been in part inspired by the way worshippers in Southern sanctified churches responded when filled with the Holy Spirit, their bodies writhing and undulating while speaking in tongues. “David’s inspiration was seeing people in church, and that’s what I connected with,” Mavis Staples says. “My head went off into the Bible.”

With Byrne’s chattering guitar skipping atop a grid of percolating percussion, the Staples’ version of “Slippery People” cast Pops in the role of the preacher and Mavis as the congregation responding to his sermon. She sounds like she’s scatting in tongues, a brilliant jazzy take on Deep South church tradition.

The single rose to number 22 on the R&B chart and anchored the group’s 1984 Turning Point album as part of a two-album deal with Private I Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc.

 

 
Then 70, Pops talks about emerging from retirement and the success of “Slippery People” in the post-performance interview with Don Cornelius below. On their next LP, the Staple Singers interpreted “Life During Wartime,” with less exciting results—the production makes me picture Chevy Chase behind the wheel of a convertible with a dog in the passenger seat, but I’m not sure that’s what they had in mind.

Slippery People (club version):

Live on Soul Train:

 
Thank you Adam Payne!

Posted by Oliver Hall
|
07.07.2015
09:39 am
|
So Radiohead named itself after ... Ned Ryerson from ‘Groundhog Day’? The truth revealed!


 
It’s common knowledge that Radiohead got its name from a song written by David Byrne called “Radio Head” that appears in the movie True Stories. What’s less well known is that Byrne wrote that song about Stephen Tobolowsky, a familiar character actor and raconteur whose signature role is Ned Ryerson in the classic 1993 movie Groundhog Day.

This remarkable happenstance was revealed on Tobolowsky’s recent appearance on the Nerdist podcast hosted by Chris Hardwick. The story is told around the 40-45 minute stretch of that episode.

So what’s going on? Let’s start with the premise that Stephen Tobolowsky claims to be more than a little bit psychic. Add to it the fact that Tobolowsky is credited as one of the co-writers of True Stories, along with the playwright Beth Henley. So if nothing else, Tobolowsky and Byrne were hanging out a bit during the mid-1980s, while they toiled on this movie. (In the Nerdist interview, by the way, Tobolowsky says that Byrne threw out most of Tobolowsky’s contributions as a writer.)
 

 
In his college years, Tobolowsky more or less stumbled on psychic powers of considerable potency, if the stories he tells are to be believed at all. As he puts it, he developed the ability to “hear” or “read” people’s “tones,” that is, to intuit a whole lot of private and even situational information about a person just by being in the same room with him or her. One story involves blurting out that a quasi-mentor of his was living under an assumed name and that his initials were actually “M.L.” or “M.K.” (they were “M.K.,” in the event). He tells a couple more stories of that level of mind-boggling ability—stories that, if true, would cause quite a few skeptics to give up the argument entirely. Tobolowsky continues:
 

So my girlfriend Beth at the time thought, “We have a real money-making thing here! ... You know, we’ll have people pay a quarter or a dollar and have you read their tones.” She would round up people, bring ‘em in to the green room or whatever, and you would think it would be funny, but I would go, like, “Ah, you just got an inheritance and you want to know how you’re going to spend that money,” and they would get up and cry, and everyone would have these creepy, creepy, creepy feelings.

Beth loved me for it, and she thought, “This is so cool, what are my tones?” and I said, “I gotta quit doing this, because this is way creepy, and I don’t really like it.” So—while that nineteen furious days that we were working on True Stories, Beth says, “Tell David. Because David wants to put all these true stories in his movie, Stephen. Tell him the true story about you hearing tones.” And I said, “No, baby, no, I don’t want—” “No, tell him the story about you hearing tones.”

So I sat and told David the story of me hearing tones. And he looked and says, “You’re kidding!” And I said, “No, David, that’s really the story but I don’t do it anymore, I don’t like to do it anymore, it was too creepy, and I don’t like to do it anymore.”

So anyway—sure enough, a year later, David has written into True Stories a character that hears tones, and he wrote the song, that day he came over and played “Wild Wild Life,” he says, “Here is a song that I wrote for you, Stephen.” And we put it in the thing, and it was “Radio Head.”

[Hardwick gasps.]

“I’m pickin’ up somethin’ good…. Radio Head….”

So Radiohead got their name from the song David Byrne wrote based on my psychic experiences when I was in college!

 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
05.29.2015
09:26 am
|
Making Flippy Floppy: The Talking Heads exercise ‘infomercial’ you never asked for
02.18.2015
05:06 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
The title of this post pretty much says it all. Is it corny? Yes. Did it make me laugh? Yes. Do I wish something like this really existed? Yes. Should national treasure Richard Simmons make this thing? Most definitely.

 
With thanks to Jeff Albers!

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
02.18.2015
05:06 pm
|
Page 1 of 3  1 2 3 >