There was a time back in the mid-Eighties

When I was convinced that the Talking Heads' record, Little Creatures, was a simply smashing masterpiece.  Sure, Little Creatures, as great as it was, was not as good as other Talking Heads records, such as Talking Heads: 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, or Remain in Light.  (For whatever reason, Stop Making Sense and Speaking in Tongues did not do much for me then -- and I have never owned, to this day, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, which sounds quite good to me now.)  But Little Creatures, with its' quirky, v American pop obliques, like, And She Was and The Lady Don't Mind; and the countryfied Creatures of Love; and the new baby staple, Stay Up Late; and of course the faux gospel blind alley that is Road to Nowhere (which I desperately wanted to love back then, and pretended to, but which I have never liked, at all), all fit v snugly in to my (v white, suburban) twelfth grade/now I am going to college aesthetic.  Heck, it made perfect sense to me when after the release of Little Creatures, Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed Talking Heads the best American band today.  

The 80s were interesting, for sure.

Listening to Little Creatures now (it is one of the Wife's fave records) I  have to wince.  The album, certainly no masterpiece, has not aged poorly.  It is just not v good, really.  The performances are stale, lacking verve or excitement and the "church" inflections of David Byrne on Road to Nowhere are embarrassing.  The subject of Television Man was already tired, even then, plus, like many even great Heads albums there is a substantial amount of filler, which I will not even get in to here, today.

I understand that the group wanted to ditch the ever growing number of extra members at the time, that the group wanted to be a true four piece, like they were in the old days, that made an American album, that would not rely on the old Brian Eno treatments, or Funkadelic sounds.  And it is a direction they pursued again with their abysmal follow-up, True Stories, which was tied in to a terrible film of the same name that David Byrne directed.  (David Byrne, Time Magazine Renaissance Man, indeed!)

Chris and Tina's names were solidly on all three of these projects.  They were a band, after all, a very good band, but in retrospect, I find it difficult, indeed, to see them as excited or enthusiastic about the direction the band was moving in at this time.  Chris and Tina were passionate about freeing people's asses and then their minds.  Chris and Tina also were in to exploring the outer space laid bare by artists like Funkadelic, Sun Ra, Bootsy Collins, and James Brown.  Byrne seemed in love with his headlines and himself.

(Plus, it prob did not help Chris and Tina's case that The Tom Tom Club was so crucial, cultish, and popular in New York -- and other parts of the US.)

The band was DOA by the time Byrne had discovered "world music" and had dumped Naked on to the market, another album with a few good tracks, that absolutely falls off the edge of the planet by the end.

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For the longest time, I felt the best Talking Heads album was More Songs About Buildings and Food, a record that seamlessly blends their special brand of geek with Soul music.  Everyone in print kept telling me Remain in Light was their best record.  They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.  The first side and the first track of side two, Once in a Lifetime, are savvy, sassy, danceable, evocative treasures.  But I cannot call any album that includes abominations like Seen and Not Seen, Listening Wind, and The Overload, seminal or crucial, at all.

I still like Talking Heads.  A lot.  But the album I reach for the most today is Fear of Music.  I also really like Speaking in Tongues.  Talking Heads: 77 does not do much for me today, though, I will always like Don't Worry About the Government (it might be an idiosyncratic thing:  I remember coming back from a debate tournament, piled in to a van with lots of kids, me singing the song out loud, whilst listening to it on my Walkman.  It was a v beautiful moment.)  More Songs sounds just as good today as it did in 1986.

I made myself an "Ultimate Heads" cd.  It is in chronological order.  The last track is This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), which to this writer might be their best track.  (Though, Life During Wartime is pretty damn good, too.)

Kisses,
xxxoooxxx