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Talking Heads do my head in

richardg

richardg

Admonishtrator
Bet I'm fairly alone here. He's just been on 6music now and I even turned it off for 5 mins. He's a one trick pony, usually chanting or shouting over some supposed world rhythm. Not enough good songs to justify his status as a near-legend IMHO.

Mr Jones was the song...utter crap.
 
Glad you added 'IMHO' :)

I guess you're talking about David Byrne. He was responsible for some truly classic albums in the past (IMHO his recent stuff hasn't been as good but then how many artists keep up the quality over a long period of time?).

The early Talking Heads albums are great as is his collaboration with Eno (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts).

Edit: Mr Jones is from the album Naked. TH had peaked by then.
 
Not a huge fan of Byrne’s solo work, but Talking Heads were superb. The run of albums from 77 through to Remain In Light are just flawless. The stuff that followed had its moments, but the first four albums remain landmarks to this day. Hugely groundbreaking and influential albums.
 
I love Talking Heads, they were massive in Glasgow for some reason, everyone and their granny was into them here, Stop Making Sense the DVD and Album are just amazing, and thier version of Al Green's Take Me To The River is the best cover of any song I've ever heard.

When SMS was released as a cinema release it was shown in the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre) and I heard that when the film finished the audience gave it a standing ovation.

Can't really play any of their stuff now as I played it to death at the time but the stand out for me is Psycho Killer which is right up there with HITTGV (Grape Vine Marvin Gaye's version).
 
richgilb said:
Bet I'm fairly alone here. He's just been on 6music now and I even turned it off for 5 mins. He's a one trick pony, usually chanting or shouting over some supposed world rhythm. Not enough good songs to justify his status as a near-legend IMHO.

Mr Jones was the song...utter crap.
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You're not completely alone. I can't stand them. Psycho Killer? Hearing them turns me into one.
 
I was quite into Talking Heads in my teens in the '80s.... but got to admit I've got some sympathy with richgilb now.... I find their earlier albums too samey and undifferentiated and frankly dull. One or two good songs here & there. The only album of theirs that still gets playtime now is "Little Creatures" which I enjoy all the way through.
 
Little Creatures is a great album. I must have played that to death when I first got it in the 80's, still played it loads in the 90's and need to dig it out again. "And She was" is just great pop music. I like Stop Making Sense too, have the original and the special edition copies. Both great.
 
TH's were a fine group. I do tend to agree with Byrne's solo work is of varying quality. I saw him when around Rei Momo and Uh-Oh, nreally good show with a great Latin band on both occasions. The best for me though was at an Amnesty fund raiser at the RFH and he played The Forest with a full orchestra.

Bloss
 
richgilb said:
Bet I'm fairly alone here. He's just been on 6music now and I even turned it off for 5 mins. He's a one trick pony, usually chanting or shouting over some supposed world rhythm. Not enough good songs to justify his status as a near-legend IMHO.

Mr Jones was the song...utter crap.
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This is the beauty of music and the human being, we all like different things. I love early Talking Heads (everything up to Stop Making Sense), but, for instance, I cannot abide Genesis with Phil Collins or any of Collins' solo work. Just utter nauseating rock by numbers to my ears. Plenty like it, however, and most of them rate him/his Genesis above Peter Gabriel... a cardinal sin in my view, but that's it... it's just my opinion. Thank goodness we're not all the same.... just turn the TH off and listen to something else is my advice... that's what I do when I hear Collins' warbling nonsense!
 
Stunsworth said:
Saw David Byrne play the Roman theatre in Lyon and he was superb - unlike Marrianne Faithful who was support. There’s a Blu-Ray from the same tour...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004MLXR4O/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21
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It was that tour we saw him at Bridgewater Hall. Utterly fantastic. We danced nearly all the way through...the whole crowd did. It was superb.
My favourite is Remain in Light but I listen to everything up to and Inc. Stop Making Sense.
 
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tiggers said:
This is the beauty of music and the human being, we all like different things. I love early Talking Heads (everything up to Stop Making Sense), but, for instance, I cannot abide Genesis with Phil Collins or any of Collins' solo work. Just utter nauseating rock by numbers to my ears. Plenty like it, however, and most of them rate him/his Genesis above Peter Gabriel... a cardinal sin in my view, but that's it... it's just my opinion. Thank goodness we're not all the same.... just turn the TH off and listen to something else is my advice... that's what I do when I hear Collins' warbling nonsense!
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Well... thing is Phil Collins did not really have much style or taste, he could write songs and then produce them badly. I only like In The Air I think. I can't say that about David Byrne. It's the exact opposite. And there could possibly be a bit too much emphasis on art with him. It's only rock n roll. Which makes the music grate a bit more than it might.
 
When I first started listening to them I had just started smoking hash must have spent days out of it listening to their albums. I'm convinced TH were stoned too for about ten years making those albums. That big suit thing in SMS is just pure mad mental out there and the lampshade thing on "Heaven' is brilliant.


"The film is also notable for Byrne's "big suit", a normal business suit that gradually increases in size as the concert progresses, until by the song "Girlfriend Is Better" (featuring lyrics from which the film takes its title) it is absurdly large. The suit was partly inspired by Noh theatre styles, and became an icon not only of the film – as it appears on the movie poster, for instance – but of Byrne himself. Byrne said: "I was in Japan in between tours and I was checking out traditional Japanese theater — Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku — and I was wondering what to wear on our upcoming tour. A fashion designer friend (Jurgen Lehl) said in his typically droll manner, ‘Well David, everything is bigger on stage.’ He was referring to gestures and all that, but I applied the idea to a businessman's suit."[3] Pauline Kael stated in her review: "When he comes on wearing a boxlike 'big suit' — his body lost inside this form that sticks out around him like the costumes in Noh plays, or like Beuys' large suit of felt that hangs off a wall — it's a perfect psychological fit."[4] On the DVD, in one of several interviews between two Byrne-portrayed characters, he gives his reasoning behind the suit: "I wanted my head to appear smaller and the easiest way to do that was to make my body bigger, because music is very physical and often the body understands it before the head."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Making_Sense
 
Big regret is never having seen TH play live. Had all the Sire albums so in retrospect can't understand why I never made the effort. Seen Byrne a few times since the TH days but just doesn't have the same impact for me.
 
mikechadwick said:
Big regret is never having seen TH play live. Had all the Sire albums so in retrospect can't understand why I never made the effort. Seen Byrne a few times since the TH days but just doesn't have the same impact for me.
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Don't think they ever played the UK, certainly not Glasgow anyway which is why the SMS film was so popular.

I've never seen them live either but the OGWT performance of Psycho Killer is outstanding and right up there with the Wailers and Bob Marley's performance on that programme circa 1973.
 
used to be a fan back in the day and haven't heard their stuff for ages...but I'd just added some of their albums into my amazon playlist last week and will play them this friday night... :)

I've got most of David Byrnes stuff on cd tho...

edit, just search on amazon, and it's david sylvian whose solo music I have.. :D
 
alanbeeb said:
I was quite into Talking Heads in my teens in the '80s.... but got to admit I've got some sympathy with richgilb now.... I find their earlier albums too samey and undifferentiated and frankly dull. One or two good songs here & there. The only album of theirs that still gets playtime now is "Little Creatures" which I enjoy all the way through.
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As stated upthread I loved the first four albums at the time (I have them all on vinyl), landmark ground-breaking stuff, but for some reason I have neglected to play them for ages, certainly well more than a decade. I fairly recently stuck Fear Of Music and Remain In Light on my iPhone and hearing them again only reinforces just how good they are. Remain In Light feeling a lot more accessible than I remember it. It was just so far ahead of its time it really sounded quite alien to me as a 17 year old in 1980. Funky as a truly funky thing. In hindsight I’d love to know if they were fans of Miles Davis’s mid-70s dark grungy funk stuff of Agharta, Get Up With It etc as I think I can hear a bit of that in there.
 
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