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.”