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Talking Heads “Wild Wild Life”

sfilzen — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 17:03:53 +0000

Talking Heads “Wild Wild Life” 1986. 12″ single. The boppy, upbeat new wavey track was the lead single from True Stories and hit no. 25 in the US. Its video won the 1987 MTV Best Group Video award as well as “Best Video from a Film” (that video is extended sequence lifted directly from the True Stories movie): it features cameos from actor John Goodman and comedian Sam Kinison and the Talking Head band members parody a bunch of 80’s celebrities (Prince, Billy Idol, Madonna, etc) lip syncing. So fun! It’s not my all-time favorite Heads song, but it is pretty great. The 12″ single has both the Extended Mix as well as the LP mix, plus a version of the country-twanged “People Like Us” from the True Stories movie; there is a different version on the album. I’m not crazy about that song. And since I don’t even remember if I ever saw True Stories back in the 80’s (I probably did at some basement party but wasn’t paying attention), I can’t recall its place in the film.

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Talking Heads “More Songs About Buildings and Food”

sfilzen — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 20:57:55 +0000

Talking Heads “More Songs About Buildings and Food” 1978. Today, November 22nd, is Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth’s 70th birthday (b. Martina Weymouth, 1950). More Songs About Buildings and Food was Talking Head’s second LP; it went to #29 in the US and #21 in the UK. Produced by Brian Eno, the album ranks high as one of the best releases of the era: it’s rhythmic and weird, smart and new-wavey. The single (a cover original by Al Green, 1974) “Take Me to the River” went to #26 on the pop charts in the US. Other great tracks on More Songs are “Warning Sign,” “The Girls Want to Be With the Girls” (so boppy, new wave fun!), “Found a Job” (great funked-out beats) and “I’m Not in Love” (driving wild weirdness).

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Talking Heads “Little Creatures”

sfilzen — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 21:41:40 +0000

Talking Heads “Little Creatures” 1985. Today, February 21st, is Talking Heads guitarist and keyboardist Jerry Harrison’s 70th birthday (b. 1949). Harrison is originally from Milwaukee (our home) and this LP originally resided at WKTI, a radio station here that used to play Top 40 hits but now plays country music, I think.

Little Creatures was Talking Heads’ 6th studio LP and while still kinda new wave/post punk, incorporates world music and Americana elements. It hit #20 on the US album charts and went to #10 in the UK. Talking Heads released three singles from the album: “The Lady Don’t Mind,” “Road to Nowhere” and “And She Was.” I haven’t listened to this album in forever, but those songs are still so great! I’m not sure if “The Lady Don’t Mind” charted but “Road to Nowhere” was pretty popular (and got a lot of airtime on MTV if I remember correctly, that image of David Byrne weirdly running burned into my brain) and went to #25 on the US Mainstream Rock chart and to #6 in the UK. “And She Was” is so exuberant! Apparently it’s about a hippie girl David Byrne used to know who tripped out on acid and described feeling like she was flying. The track went to #54 on the US singles chart and to #17 in the UK. I feel like “Stay Up Late” was also a single – it has its own official video – but I’m not totally sure about that one.

Allmusic says about Little Creatures “Talking Heads’ most immediately accessible album, Little Creatures eschewed the pattern of recent Heads albums, in which instrumental tracks had been worked up from riffs and grooves, after which David Byrne improvised melodies and lyrics. The songs on Little Creatures, most of which were credited to Byrne alone (with the band credited only with arrangements) sounded like they’d been written as songs. Perhaps as one result, the band had been streamlined, with extra musicians used only for specific effects rather than playing along as an ensemble. Byrne, who was singing in his natural range for once, frequently was augmented with backup singers. The overall result: ear candy. Little Creatures was a pop album, and an accomplished one, by a band that knew what it was doing…Little Creatures was, in a sense, Talking Heads lite. It was hard to think of this as the same band that produced “Psycho Killer.” But for the band’s expanding audience, who made this their second platinum album, that was okay. And their popularity was being accomplished with no diminution in their creativity.”

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Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense”

sfilzen — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 21:15:29 +0000

Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” released on this date, September 12th, 1984. The LP accompanied the release of the concert film (recorded in December ‘83 at The Pantages Theatre in Hollywood while the Talking Heads were on tour for their album Speaking in Tongues). The movie has been hailed as one of the best concert films of all-time and the album received almost as great accolades, appearing on several best-of lists and peaking at #41 in the US and #37 in the UK.

So many great tracks! “Psycho Killer,” from Talking Heads: 77 leads off the album. A super-spirited version of “Burning Down the House” comes a bit later followed by “Girlfriend is Better” which Talking Heads released as a single in December ‘84 (the studio version originally appeared on Speaking in Tongues). Side B’s “Once in a Lifetime,” which was the first single released from the LP, is still an iconic moment in 80′s pop culture: the seizured herky jerky dance moves seared into collective consciousness. “Once in a Lifetime” was first released in ‘81 from Remain in Light and did pretty well on the charts (#103 in the US, #14 in the UK); the live version from Stop Making Sense hit #91 in the US in ‘84. “What a Day That Was” is ridiculously rhythmic and then there is the soulful epic “Take Me to the River,” originally by Al Green and Mabon Hodges, to conclude the album.

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Talking Heads “Speaking in Tongues”

sfilzen — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 20:30:16 +0000

Talking Heads “Speaking in Tongues” released 35 years ago today, June 1st, 1983. Their fifth studio release, Speaking in Tongues was their most successful to that point, propelled by their only Top 10 hit, “Burning Down the House,” which hit #9. “Burning Down the House” – like the rest of Speaking in Tongues (which Rolling Stone’s David Fricke called “the album that finally obliterates the thin line separating arty white pop music and deep black funk”) – is both new wavey and seriously funky. The story goes that Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz had just seen a Parliament-Funkadelic concert at Madison Square Garden and at band rehearsal kept yelling “Burn down the house!” – a P-Funk audience chant, inspiring David Byrne to write the lyrics. I loved “Burning Down the House;” MTV had it on heavy rotation so I saw the video about a million times during the summer of ‘83. The rest of the art-funk album is super-groovy, too. I especially love “Girlfriend is Better” (the lyrics from that track supplied the title for Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense, a truly iconic 80′s moment for oversized suits and shoulders), the deep swampy beat of “Swamp,” the hypnotic post-punk vibe on “Pull Up the Roots” and “This Must Be the Place (Native Melody).”

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Talking Heads “Remain In Light”

sfilzen — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 20:03:15 +0000

Talking Heads “Remain In Light” 1980. It’s Milwaukee-native and Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison’s birthday today, February 21st (b. 1949). On Remain In Light, he gets musicianship credit for guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion (really, all band personnel seem to share multiple musical responsibilities, as does producer Brian Eno). The album is very art-meets-science rock, intellectual post punk steeped in complex Afrobeat rhythms (specifically Fela Kuti of Nigeria), American funk and the newly emerging hip hop scene via tape loops and sampling. The album reached #19 on the US Billboard chart and in 1989 Rolling Stone named it the 4th best record of the 80′s and in 2015 placed at #129 in the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list. Two singles came from Remain in Light: “Houses in Motion,” which failed to chart in the US but hit #50 in the UK, and “Once in a Lifetime” which charted at #14 in the UK and, kind of to my shock, only #103 in the US. I swear I heard it A LOT in the early 80′s (i.e. I can still sing along to the lyrics now in 2017, but it could be because of its inclusion in the concert film Stop Making Sense). Also notable is the opening track, “Born Under Punches” (with the great lines “Take a look at these hands. The hand speaks. The hand of a government man. Well I’m a tumbler. Born under punches”) and the epic “The Great Curve,” which “includes [King Crimson guitarist’s] Adrian Belew’s synthesiser-treated guitar, African-inspired percussion, and brass interludes.”

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Talking Heads “77″

sfilzen — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:01:33 +0000

Talking Heads “77″ released on this date, September 16, 1977. The single “Psycho Killer,” one of the most iconic Talking Heads songs, reached #92 on the US charts in 1978; Allmusic describes it as a “deceptively funky new wave/no wave song … [with] an insistent rhythm, and one of the most memorable, driving basslines in rock & roll.“ Talking Heads started performing this song live as a ballad sung from a killer’s perspective in the band’s first iteration as The Artistic in ‘74. David Byrne described his inspiration as “imagining Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman-type ballad. Both the Joker and Hannibal Lecter were much more fascinating than the good guys. Everybody sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.”

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