Bandsplain - Talking Heads: Part 2 with Rob Harvilla

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Yasi and Rob return this week to find a band in peril. Side projects are popping up left and right, tropical vacations are being taken, Tina Weymouth has quitting on her mind, and Chris Frantz does not. What David Byrne is thinking at any point in time is anyone’s guess. What will become of the Talking Heads? You probably already know, but press play to find out how it happened.  Listen to the songs we detail in the episode here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Vtk9g0QOypaWVCePqx7oc?si=878c3724100b4cdd Host: Yasi Salek Guest: Rob Harvilla Producer: Jesse Miller-Gordon Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For decades, the Vietnam War has been a Hollywood obsession. Apocalypse Now, platoon, full metal jacket, first blood. These were blockbuster films, embraced by audiences and critics alike. And for decades, they've helped us understand a painful war and understand each other. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Brian Raftery. And this is Do We Get to Win this time, how Hollywood made the Vietnam War. Listen on the big picture feed. Anyway, I don't get it. Can you please explain?

Wait, like, Bansplain? Oh, and welcome to Bandsblane. I am your host, Yossi Salick. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is still about the Talking Heads. It's Talking Heads Part 2, babe. Where we left off, David Byrne was unreachable. We could not reach him. Where is he?

Jerry's like, okay, well, I'm going to go produce some albums. So he starts his illustrious producing career, a band called The Escalators, and also the fantastic New Wave Soul Singer, Nona Hendrix, who will also become part of the Talking Head Story. Now, Tina, apparently, allegedly, according to this book that we both read, she tries to get Chris to quit the band. She's like, fuck this guy, I'm over this shit, let's quit. And Chris is like, no.

We're not doing that. This is the best thing that's ever. happened to us. And Tina's like, no, and he's like, no, we're not quitting. Sorry, this is, I'm not, I love you with my whole heart and soul, but we're not going to talking hands. And so instead, they go on a vacation to Hawaii and then they go get an apartment in the Bahamas right above Compass Point Studios. And then I guess they start sort of messing around in Compass Point Studios. And then one day David Byrne just shows right up in the Bahamas at the studio. As you do. Meanwhile, he has a little secret. David Byrne has a little secret. He made, he made a little bit. He

made a whole other album with Brian. You know the rest. You know who I'm talking about. I remember LaSalle. That's it. Baptiste. Maybe I'm making that book. They've made a whole album, but he does not tell anyone.

Then they, I guess, just get Jerry Harrison on the horn, and then they start making another album. And that album is Remain in Light, October 8th, 1980. I'm not even going to tell you what the best selling albums of 1980 were, unless you want to know. We may be better off knowing, not knowing, actually. Just know that Ario Speedwagon is part of it. That's all you really need to know. Oh, I do love Ario Speedwagon, but yeah. Of course you do.

Things start to get interesting here, I feel. One interesting thing that I think you and I will love as people who orient our entire lives around grunge music of the 90s is that the engineer on this album is one Dave Jordan. You know him. You definitely know him because you're an album. Allison Chainsman. Yes, I am. Isn't that crazy? He was the engineer, which leads me to believe that Dave Jordan must be very old.

This is, unless he's eight years old at this point, then yes, there is a worrisome oldness to him. But this is like sort of, from what I can see, this is on all music or whatever, which I believe to be Bible. This is his like first credit. Hmm. Jeez. From this to Alice and Chains in 10 short years. That's beautiful. So he comes on a little late.

I guess there was like an engineer before him named Stephen Stanley, who was just the engineer at Compass Point. And apparently he came and told Tina that Brian Eno and David Byrne would keep re-recording her bass tracks themselves. And then he would be like, they're bad at this. they keep missing beats and then she would come in and then re-record her own bass parts. I don't want to play into my stereotype so this is the Siamese dream

of the 1980s. Nona Hendrix comes and sings background vocals on this album and many songs apparently her Eno and David Burns sing as a trio. Did you know that? I did not know that. It's kind of cool. Is this a rock album? Is this a rock album? I think if you remove once in a lifetime from it, maybe not.

What is it if it's not a rock album? Is it a funk album? Is that going a step too far? I think that might be going a step. It's more a rock album. Is it a play that funky music white boy album? Yes. It's like it's not an ACDC album.

No. It's not an Ario Speedwagon album. Sure. Sure isn't. But I think it's a quote-unquote rock album. album. Okay. I think it's an imperfect fit, but the best fit available to us. I'll tell you what. This is a very funny quote. They asked Jerry about them being called art rockers. Remember we talked about this a bit earlier? And Jerry said, I object to us being called artists who have chosen the

medium of music. I find that distasteful and very unfunkey. That was very unfunky. Jerry Harrison telling you you're not fun. is a low moment for you. That is very unfunkey of you. I'm going to start using that as a disparaging. Wow, that's so unfunkey of you, babe, to say that to me. You ate all the Doritos. Very unfunkey of you.

Very unfunkey. So, uh-oh. David Byrne has gotten into rap music. Somebody showed David Byrne. That's an uh-oh. Uh-oh. Someone showed David Byrne, Curtis blows. These are the breaks.

I believe it was Chris France, if you believe his book. Clap your hands, everybody. If you got what it takes, because I'm Curtis Blow, and I want you to know that these. You can particularly hear this when you get to the second bridge of Cross-Eiden Painless, right? Because that's just David Byrne. Facts are simple. In fact, yeah, right, right, right. Facts are lazy.

Facts don't come with a point of view. Peanut butter. But besides that, it seems like David Byrne is, like, tired of singing normal. He's like, okay, like rap music. I'm very interested now in like speech, just speeches. Like, I think he listened to a lot of this recording of John Dean's Watergate testimony and like a bunch of motivational speakers. And then obviously a ton of radio and TV preachers. Right.

Yeah, I was going to say AM radio, talk radio, radio preachers. Right. That's the my life of Bush and Ghosts thing. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. lyrics situation. Right. The LA Times asked, we're going to get into the album,

the LA Times was like, do you feel any twinge of colonialism? A twinge? Just a smidge. And Jerry was like, that's really unfunky of you to ask that question. That is actually an unfunky question.

It's a valid question. Valid and yet unfunkey. It's not funky. David Byrton, to his credit, or to his discrequent, I don't really know how to read this, says, as far as that goes, I realize that's a little bit of what we're doing, but I can't help it. That's some of the music we're most excited about. If it didn't originate out of a Western tradition, I don't feel I can be blamed for that.

Baby, you made, who do we blame? You made the music. Who are we? What are you talking about? It was the engineer, really, who's most responsible for the colonialism. I don't have the mental capacity or time to get into the, like, the, question of is it okay to be inspired by other cultural music and incorporated into your own? I simply am not, I'm not doing that today.

Okay. Because it's stupid because there's no way we can unfurl it. We're going to go all the way back to the fucking goddamn Beatles and then back to the fucking Jamie Brown. And then it's like, who the fuck wants to do that right now? Do you know what I mean? Not me. But it's enough to know that people were asking at the time.

That's what I'm saying. It's interesting that even in real time, a man at the L.A. Times was like, hey, so, um, okay. It did come with a memorandum for the press. Did you read this when they sent it out? No. Whereas David Byrne said something to the effect of, this record is the product of the studio and interest in African rhythms and sensibilities. And it kind of came with like a bibliography of all the African texts that they had been inspired by.

So that's kind of nice. Acknowledgement. Showing his work. Explicit acknowledgement instead of just being like, what? Right. I invented polyrhythms. Right. It would be the wrong way to go here.

Let's talk about the cover before we get into the music. Tina had decided that she and Jerry would create one of the first ever computer-generated album covers. We're not really in computer time yet. We certainly are not. We're in the time where the computer takes up the whole room, right? This is the, like, it's a wall and it costs $60 million. So they, they, like, team up with a hacker at MIT called Walter Bender. And the, so the original name of this album was Melody Attack, which was a Japanese game show, which you would know because you studied Japan.

I did. So the cover was supposed to be this series of war planes flying over the Himalayas melody attack. And the back was supposed to be a group portrait, right? So they load these like four photos of the talking heads online. I don't know what that meant back in 1980 or whatever, but. And they, you know, obscure and blah, blah, blah, and they make this thing. Now, meanwhile, Brian Eno had wanted this album to be credited to the Talking Heads and Brian Eno as artist. The artist of this album, he wanted it to be Talking Heads and Brian Eno.

Gary Kerr first, absolute fucking legend. This is how he solves this. He comes to him and he's like, well, Brian Della Sol. You know. there will be a six-month long promotional tour following the release of the record. Are you ready to commit to that? And Brian's like, oh, no, I couldn't possibly do that. I don't tour. I don't tour. And Gary was like, whoa, we can't say the album is by talking against and Brian Eno, because your fans will be so disappointed that you are not on the tour. And Brian was like, yeah, that makes

sense, totally. And then Gary came in. Practical Gary. Like a wrecking ball. So in the end, they decided to credit the songs like this, all songs by David Byrne, Brian. and Eno, Chris France, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, alphabetical order. They're making the art, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, David is like, oh, that's nice that you started this whole big art project, but I already told someone else they could make the album cover. This guy, Tibor Kalman, who had a design for a call Eminko, because he's going to do it for free. Tina was not happy about this.

She was mad. That was very unfunkey of David. Extremely. So Tina's like, absolutely go fuck yourself. I'm paraphrasing. I have no idea what she said. And David Phrmer was like, okay, okay, God. No, that's verbatim. That is absolutely verbatim on both sides. And he tells Tibor that he can just do the typography and the rest of the album design and on the cover. So then they changed the title to remain in light. And now the warplains don't make as much sense.

So they move them to the back. And then they put these images that are sort of masked up on the front. And then when the album comes out, uh-oh. Uh-oh, the credits were shortened, ostensibly for space, to songs by David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Talking Heads. And Talking Heads. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Chris said, it wasn't an administrative error. It was an error by a member of the band who was used to taking credit for everything that happens.

Jerry, just kidding. Yeah, I was going to say, it was diplomatic, who will go unnamed. And when it was put to him that it was not the right way to do things, he had to admit that it wasn't. But that never changed. I think that's what the state does. He says, this isn't an interview in real time, by the way, not like in the book later. This is like at the time. He goes on to say like, he doesn't write all the songs.

We write them together, blah, blah, and then he's like, but I think it's not a big problem. I feel weird talking about it because it's like the family's dirty laundry, but it's not a huge conflict. David needs to have a lot of credit. It motivates him. That's very sweet in this way, in a not very sweet sort of way. The album covers are historically a big deal, right? I feel like I've seen the more songs about buildings and food mosaic at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame up in Cleveland. The fear of music cover, was it metal?

Like there was some physical aspects, right? So the covers, you know, You know, what heightens all this that you're describing is that the covers are unnaturally important to this rock band. They're all visual artists that went to art school. Of course it is. Yeah. But yeah, it's a big deal.

And they are really cool. I mean, this album cover is extremely cool. Yeah. Tina did a good job. Okay, let's get into the music. No one cares about the album cover. This is an audio podcast. Okay.

Born Underpunches, parentheses, the heat goes on. Does this pass the litmus test for you of what we're talking about his first song being like, hey, bitch, here's where we're at now. Absolutely. From like the first, uh, yes, absolutely. That was me.

You are better at that than I am. But yes, this absolutely is a punch in the face in a lovely way. It's getting a little Caribbean up in here, no? There is some goes to compass point once. Yeah, it's a little islandy.

I like this song a lot. lot. I don't know that it needed to be six minutes long. What do you feel about that? I agree with you, but this album doesn't make sense to me if every song isn't between two and five minutes longer than it necessarily needs to be. You know, the groove of it feels central to it for good or ill. Right. Right. It's like it's a part, it's a meant to be taken as a piece, except for the overload, which doesn't belong on this album. And they honestly did Jerry a favor by slapping that on the end. But we'll get there.

Yes. I feel born under punches while being a little, is like, what if I Zimbra but Caribbean? That's what. No, that's, that's true. There's definitely a through line there. Absolutely. Yes. But cross-eyed and pain love?

That's right. A cowbell man. That's right. Shaking your head to this music is, that's the right approach. You can't lost. Yeah. It's so good. Still waiting.

Yeah. Is this their best album? Is this publicly widely regarded as their best album? I don't know about that. I'm genuinely telling you, I don't have no idea what the public regards is there. Sounds like you haven't I have a thought about that. Why do you tell me? Well, I always had like a vague anecdotal sense that this was obviously the one.

But I don't know if I'm basing this on like a pitchfork review or, or something. I don't... Gosh. Sorry. David Burning got crashed his bike directly into a fucking bus. Just not when I was listening to the podcast. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

It's, yeah, call 911 for Dave. This does feel like the most revolutionary sounding in real-time, influential, bringing rock into a new era. You know, this is the one that stands the test of time type vibe. Like, I feel, I don't think that this is far in a way. better than anything they ever did, but I do think that this is regarded as the best record front to back, even accepting the overload ever made, they ever made. If you had to choose one, obviously, you're not allowed to pick the fucking stop making

sense all that's cheating. Sorry, yeah, that is cheating. Which is your favorite? Right. I would say this one grudgingly. I feel stronger about little creed. than you do. And that's a little bit of an anomaly in like a far pop direction. Like that's not getting all of them little creatures, but like I'd put that one up there. I think again, it's like,

I like elements of all of them. You know, this is the leader. This is the winner, but not like the head and shoulders far in a way. There's no competition winner. You know what I'm saying? Like I love 77, like front to back. I really do. You know? And even fear of music. you know, for the reasons you were saying, like, I think you can get into it as like a full piece and as like a writing exercise, et cetera. And so I, I think this is the best record that they ever made, you know, but I do, I prefer stop making sense, absolutely. Yeah, we know. I'm speaking in tongues, girly. Sure. I mean, that's, when we get to, like, that's the record where I prefer the live versions of most of those songs. But yes, I listened to that one, you know, when I went back to that one, just a couple days ago, Like this is really great from front to back, like for itself. Like the album versions of all these songs are better. Burning down the house. Yeah, yeah, I totally see that.

I totally see that. Anyways, back to this one. There's a music video for cross-ed penance. Have you ever watched it? I can't picture that. Tony Basil made it. You know her? Hey, Mickey, you're so fine.

Absolutely. But she was actually a choreographer that just happened to have a one-hit thing. David Byrne had a little relish with her, but also had her like they like collaborated. I don't know if he was involved too much in this one. She cast the Electric Bugaloo's Dance Troop. The Electric Bullo's Dance Troop were a black dance troupe. Well, not quite there yet, but I'll give you a little spoiler alert.

MTV did not play this video. There was two videos for this album, and this is the one they did not play. Sure. It's quite cool. You can watch it on YouTube. It's very cool. It's basically like this urban ballet set to the song, and it's very cool. And it's like one dancer on the screen at a time.

And I went on the YouTube comment. That sounds very cool. One guy was like, that's me in the red. I was 19 years old. And I'm like, damn, that's, YouTube is crazy. He'll just be on YouTube and like watching someone a little bit. That's me. Okay.

The Great Curve. A noisy yet hypnotic piece. All the voices are really cool to me. Like the interlocking and the Brian Eno of it all, right? Because like you can hear his voice, his singing voice in various degrees of clarity throughout this record. This feels to me like the most David Byrne and Brian Eno and Talking Head song on the record. This feels like where they're in sync with each other.

And he is like the most integrated into the band. If that's true, then it makes the absolute case for him not to be credited as the artist of this band because this is one of the weakest songs on the entire album, to me. Sure. I mean, this is as I look at it, like a pretty stacked. track list. So that's absolutely, the world moves on a woman's hips does not strike you as entirely profound or necessary. It doesn't mean a statement. No.

Okay. I'm just chomping out the bit to get to once in a lifetime. Let's hit it. That's on fucking bangs, babe. I'm sorry to say, but it's just the truth. You don't got to apologize. You can't put it on and not be like arms in the air. You know what I mean?

What is their biggest hit song ever? By what metric? And is it this? By any, by a vague pop? Like, did that ever, were they ever a charting band? I think it's burning down the house. Yeah, you're right. It absolutely is.

Yeah. But this is the one David Byrne plays on Saturday Night Live, whatever, 30 years later, 25 years later. I think it's the most David Burnie song because of, of the like vocal delivery. It's tempered the obsession with the African polyrhythms and sort of married it back with maybe like a talking headsness that is, you know what I, does this make sense what I'm saying? No, it totally.

It's a little bit less cosplay and a little bit more integrated into the DNA and sound of the actual band. Totally, totally. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about it. It was inspired obviously by all the preacher. that he was listening to. You can very clearly hear that, but is also inspired by a book

that he had been reading called African Rhythm and Sensibility by John Miller Turnoff, a white professor who had gone to Ghana to study drumming in 1970. And the book is basically, I'm sorry, I did not read the book,

okay? Fine. I didn't read the fucking book. I didn't read African Rhythm and Sensibility by John Miller, Turnoff. And apologize.

Is it Reddit making you feel like you have to apologize? I don't look at Reddit anymore. You said to don't look at it. read it anymore and I don't look at it. They lost their privileges. You don't have to clarify if you mentioned a movie that you're sorry if you didn't personally watch it.

I absolve you broadly of that. Me and David, me and David Byrne are real go-getters, okay? We are preoccupied with greatness. Sure. Thusly, we feel the need to apologize for these kinds of things. But the book is an explanation about how African drummers have conversations with each other through drum patterns. So it actually sounds like a super interesting book, and I would read it.

One of the conversations discussed in the book is about water, right? And then there's also this song, Water No Get Enemy by Felakuti. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a jam. This also, I think, sort of inspired once in a lifetime. This is where once in a lifetime is sort of coming from. It's such a good song. It just, I mean, it is.

What do you think he's saying? I mean, there's a lot of DNA of what we've been talking about, like, the dazedness of waking up and realizing he's a normie. You know, like, this is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. Like, I think it's in conversation with the big country. Don't worry about the government. You know, I have contempt for these people.

I'm fascinated by these people. I've become one of these people. How did I become one of these people? Like I think there's a through line there that can take you all the way to true stories if you want it to. You know, the spoken word of it all, like I totally agree with you that he's tired of just singing, you know, and like the houses in motion, you know, seen and not seen. Like half of these songs are not quite spoken word, but not quite sung either. Right. And so this is, you know, this is, in addition to being the perfect union of goes to Trinidad once and actual talking heads.

Like, this is the best balance between singing and declaiming. And that's why it makes perfect sense that this is like in a good way, in a non-projorative way, like the meme song, right? This is why, you know, you're going to hear somebody say, this is not my beautiful house in some inane reference, you know, in the next 24 hours. Like it makes sense that this is the song. This is the apex. the perfect intersection of a lot of different things that are on his mind and on the band's mind. What do you make of the refrain same as it ever was? I've thought about it a lot. To me, I'm like really fixated on it because I find it to like hold two meanings at once and

you can hear them both, which is like it's both a good and a bad thing, right? Like yes, yes, absolutely. Yes. Like nothing changes but also nothing changes. Like or like it's always going to be this way, but it's also always going to be this way. Like, it's both comforting and restrictive. Terrifying. Yeah. Yes. No, that's cool.

That's really cool. I like that a lot. Absolutely. I just like, this is not my beautiful wife. My God, what have I done? I was curious, and so I looked it up. You were correct. Burning down the house is their only top 10 hit.

It was number nine. I thought so. Second is at 25 is wild, wild life. It's a great fucking song. I had forgotten about that song until I revisited. And I was like, this is a jam. Take Me to the River is 26. And then it's lower half.

You know, and she was at 54. Those are the only three with any real permeation. A lot of this has to do with MTV and they're not being MTV and then they're being MTV. So it's like, who care. It doesn't even mean anything. But I'll talk about houses in motion. You mentioned it. They really do love to talk about buildings.

Yet more. songs about buildings. I love the way that this comes right after once in a lifetime. That phenomenon of like you put on a CD and you want to hear one song and you go to once in a lifetime and you don't get to the CD player in time to stop it from playing the first 10 seconds of the next song. But I just really like the flow of it. You know, and it's just the groove of it and the muttering. And now we're much closer to spoken word than singing. You know, I really dig this song both in it of itself and just in its placement. I think the sequencing of this record, and I do think it trails off pretty sharply from here, but like the flow of this record,

especially the first half, is really, really cool to me. I don't have anything to say about the last couple of songs on here. I'm sorry, except for the overload, which they shoehorned on here because Jerry had written him and he liked it a lot and it probably should have been on a different album, but they were like, that's fine, we'll put it on here. Is listening wind like pretty explicitly about a terrorist or terrorism and or colonialism? I feel like lyrically, you know, this song is a lot less figurative than he ordinarily is. Right. Like he's talking about this is an anti-American sentiment song.

Right. This feels like, yeah, like a minor culture war skirmish had it occurred. in completely different circumstances in another era. But it's just this is this, this is another song that sort of stands alone for me in that respect. Just lyrically, there's a quality it has that. Planting devices in the free trade zone. If this was today,

David Byrne would have been put on a terrorist watch list for all these, all these songs that just vaguely gesture towards terrorism. I didn't know overload was a Jerry thing. That's interesting. thing. I would not have thought that, but that's cool. It struck me as like not as good as moving in stereo by the cars, but in conversation. I won't tell it. It's the least listened to song on this album by a huge margin. It hasn't even hit a million streams. People really are just like listening when is the last song of this album as far as I'm concerned and Godspeed to you, the overload.

Remain and Lake gets a lot of really good reviews. It's called Brave. The ecstatic freedom of current American funk. There's some really like heavy-handed proclamations of how this is uniting the gap between black and white music, which I don't think is. I don't think I think it was a little, you know. It's a good record. I don't think it's solved. racism. I don't think it solved racism. I don't think it did. Yeah. No offense. No offense,

Rolling Stone. Speaking of racism, I just need to read a couple of things from a couple of these reviews of the way they discuss things. This is how the piece starts. This is a review. The desire to rediscover the African continent has been burning deep in the bowels of curious imagination. Ever since the New York Herald pact Mr. Stanley Hoff in search of Livingstone with nothing more to sustain him than a packet of cheese sandwiches and a compass. The white man's burden, question mark. Could be. All right.

You lost me and I'm really glad to be lost. He gets really into Caucasian settlers who miss roared. It's like, I'm like, brough. Cheese. This is an insane way to speak about things. Like I'm just like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Brov indeed. And then going so deep in that and then talking about this.

And then the way the review ends, and I wish I could make this, up, but it's the truth, is Safari So Good. Oh, what? As in. Safari. No, right, yeah. That is, wow. That's jail.

That's the Hague for you, sir. The rare racist dad joke in a record review. Wow. So, Safari, so good. Incredible. Honest, I was, I was reeling. Whatever. I was like, pro.

Jail. Jail, sir. The literal Hague. Don't worry, that was British. Cream was like, hold my beer. We're going to title this review, play that funky music, white boy. Yes. Yes.

Bobby Chris loved it. He gave it a day. Sure. Here is another insane thing. Time Out magazine interviews David Byrne. The title is Head Boy Speaks. Now they're asking him some questions, right? Okay.

New Funk direction. they ask him about how once in a lifetime is it about nostalgia for a middle class that no longer exists? And he says, gee, I didn't even think about it in that song. No, that's right.

Oh, no. Most of the words in once in a lifetime come from evangelists I recorded off the radio while taking notes and picking up phrases I thought were interesting, blah, blah, blah. Then the guy's like, what did you listen for in the various evangelist sermons you recorded with Brianino?

And he says, sometimes a metaphor or weird connection, they'd make would trigger me off on a train of thought, I wouldn't ordinarily follow. A lot of those people are real performers. They start off at a slow pace with a little bit of musical accompaniment, and by building gradually towards the end, they have an audience completely frenzied. Okay. Literally, it says in brackets, shifting gears.

Do you think the communist threat to American society is being exaggerated in the current Cold War atmosphere? You mentioned, you did mention this to me. Bitch, what? Do you, David Byrne, David Byrne, a, no, political analyst think that the communist threat to American society is being exaggerated in our current Cold War atmosphere. And then David Byrne... What does David say? What's his answer? If they asked me that in an interview, I'd be like, what?

David Byrne just goes, as government is practiced in the United States and Russia, there are actually more similarities than differences. Because of that, they tend to be bitter enemies. Theoretically, there are still vast differences of... I want you to picture right now someone going to Machine Gun Kelly in an interview. You know what I mean? Or Oreo Speedwagon is who I was going to say. I'm trying to put it into modern day context. You certainly are.

Boney there. Shifting gears. He'd have a shifting gears is a good. Prepare for this transition. Do you feel that the global threat of fascism is being grossly over? And he'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? He had an answer though. Like I, maybe, yeah, he was ready.

Actually, I did want to read his answer because there's one line in it that I do think is central to, I think, David Burns' orientation towards the world. And it shows up in so much of his art, which is this. In the West, you have the emphasis on freedom at the expense of justice. In the East, the emphasis is on equality. injustice at the expense of freedom. I think David Byrne, and I think kind of rightfully so, it really got me thinking a lot about this, is preoccupied with American over-emphasis on freedom. Well, that line is those two things are going to combine eventually.

A lot of what he talks about with these normies is like, look at all this freedom you have. What has it afforded you sameness in the end? You know what I mean? Like, all this individualism. Yeah. You have all this individualism and all it's gotten you is watching the same TV shows in your beautiful house with your beautiful wife. And my God, what have I done? You know?

What does David Byrne think justice is? Justice for what, for whom? Against whom? Hmm. Couldn't tell you, babe. Couldn't tell you the heart of mind of David Byrne. And later, later we even get further than that. shifting gears.

Let's go back to what's happening past this. Now, one thing that is the direct result of Remain and Light is that they have made such beautifully complicated music that it is now impossible for them to perform it live with just the four of them. So they have to assemble a much larger band. There's a couple of stories of how this band gets assembled. One is that Jerry Harrison had a lot to do with it because he had worked with Buster Jones on the Esklee. Latter's record. Chris France says Busta Jones is actually a friend of Gary's, who had played based on some of Brian Eno's albums. Regardless, Busta Jones gets up in the mix, and he brings in Bernie Worell, the keyboardist who was famously from Parliament Funkadelic. And then they bring in also

Steve Scales from Ashford and Simpson, percussionist. They had good old Adrian Bill You on guitar, another king of the guitar center. Denizens. I'm waiting for your Prague rock phase. I do think it's going to happen. I think I'm going to wake up one day and you're going to be talking to me about guitar tone. I'm going to wake up one and be like, this is not my beautiful life. This is not my beautiful house.

My God, what have I done? You're going to have a guitar center rock phase. I don't know how or when it's going to happen. Why are you cursing me? I don't think you're going to feel it as a curse when it occurs. And I'm certainly not. I'm going to be so sight. I had a guitar center rock music phase in which I dated those men.

Okay. That's going to make it difficult to organically arrive. I already had to deal with enough guitar tone to last me a lifetime. Fair enough. Okay. Anyway. They're filling out the band is what I'm saying. It's a 10-piece band.

They add Delette McDonald and Nona Hendrix as backup singers. They play a couple of shows. It's incredible by all accounts. Warner Brothers loved it so much. They were like, we will pay for an entire national tour of the 10-piece talking heads. Warner Brothers had absorbed Sire as a subsidiary at this point, and Seymour Stein is a vice president of Warner's. You know who doesn't like it?

Tina. Really? Well, because Busta Jones is playing bass. She is the bass player of the talking. He is playing. He's a better bass player, and he is playing her parts, and she is sort of like relegated to a little bit of keyboard and singing, and then maybe a little bit of bass.

Do you know what I mean? that's got a sting, no? Suboptimal. Suboptimal, yeah. The girlies are once again fighting in the press. She's telling a story of how once again that David Byrne made her re-audition many times. She says anytime David felt insecure, I was his whipping boy. Every time he couldn't come up with something, he'd beat me up about it.

I had to go through the motions of an audition, but it was a complete joke. The whole time it was so painful for me. It was like a mock trial. And David said, in the same, I guess, article, Tina had to re-audition? I don't remember that. That sounds like a Tina story to me. What a horrible tyrant I was. At some point, I was a tyrant, but I don't think I did that.

I may have asked, are you sure you want to do this? We're going down a road here, and it looks like it's going to go for a ways. Are you sure you want to do it? Reconsider things. Reconsider things sounds so threatening. Reconsider things. Reconsider things. That was really good.

Thank you. I'm getting really good at doing voices, which is all you need in life to fully fill out your clown repertoire. Now, meanwhile, February of 1981, my life in the Bush of Ghosts, the secret album that David Bird made with Brian, you know, finally comes out. It had been made before Remain in Light, but it got tied up due to it being almost exclusively made up of... Sampled, which was not a thing, right? Like it was not really a thing. Right. This is another example of something that's hard to gauge the impact of based on how pedestrian it feels now.

Not pedestrian, but like it was uncommon. Right. Like run of the mill. Yeah, yeah, totally. Right. It's an incredible album. I hadn't listened to it in a long time. I'm not in the habit of putting on my life in the bush of ghosts.

I'm not that heady and intellectual and interesting and mysterious smoking French cigarettes and listening to my life. in the bush and ghost. But yeah, it's fucking good. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I can see how people

maybe lost their minds over this. I thought it was funny that there was a sample from the evangelist Catherine Coleman who ended up dying. And then her estate

absolutely was like, the fuck you're not putting this on here. And it like, they had to completely redo that song and take it off. Bermatim. Yeah.

Jesus said, I did really enjoy this little tit. I'm so sorry. I have to say it. I apologize. I think this is a great album, but the title is derived from a 1954 novel called My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutola.

According to the liner notes, written in 2006, okay? We're talking 25 years later. Neither he or Eno had read the novel, but they felt the title seemed to encapsulate what this record was about. I'm obsessed with this. It's like, you know, when you go to retweet an article and it's like, you know, when you go to retweet an article and it's like, do you want to read this article first?

And you're like, no, bitch, fucking send this off in despair. I don't care. Album titles are not endorsements. Yes. They're very busy. They're very busy guys. You also have 25 fucking years since then. You couldn't have just paged through it.

Lots of, lots of, lots of, what if it's like a racist tome? Right. Yes. You know, again, I didn't read out. I don't know what it's about. Apologise to Amos to Tudelo. Oh, apologize.

David Byrne, to add to the myth of how David Byrne perhaps sees the world differently than the rest of us. David Byrne said in an interview, I remember when we finished that record, I thought it would be a popular disco album. He's not joking. He genuinely thought it was going to be like a pop hit record. That sounds implausible to me that he could actually think that this was. He thought true stories is going to be the biggest movie in the world.

That's what I was going to say. Like it's like in the same, like he thought this, he thought that was Saturday Night Fever and he thought true stories was like back to the future or something. I guess he's not David Byrne if he doesn't see the world that way, but that is somewhat baffling to me. It's a little baffling. Okay. Meanwhile, David is off doing David Byrne stuff. He's working with Twyla Tharp on what I guess will eventually become the Catherine Wheel. Talking Hands are just not doing anything because David Byrne is not there. And so Jerry is like, okay, I'm going to go to Wisconsin and make a solo album. And I guess the last thing he said to Tina, who was

very annoyed before he left, was, why don't you just go make your own solo record? here's what happened. Seymour Stein had given both David and Jerry solo record deals. He was like, you get a record deal. You get a record deal. And then Tina came and he was like, no, sorry, we're out of record deals. I can't give all of you. I can't give every single one of you won. I already gave them to it. So she was kind of bummed. And she went to the studio, tried to do some stuff. Nothing came of it. She's bummed. No record deal. No songs. Also, additionally, their accountant was like, yeah, also you guys are fucking broke, babe. You have $2,000 in the bank. And they're like, what?

Because a thing I learned from the Chris France book, as far as that's true, is that talking heads paid for everything. They split studio costs. They paid for the tours themselves because they didn't want to be like indebted to the label. And a 12-piece touring band is probably quite expensive. So they're like, okay, we need to go make some money. So Tina goes to Gary Kerfers and she's like, I'm bummed, basically. And he was like, listen, you're amazing bitch.

okay, you're a girl boss. You got this. Books her studio time at Compass Point in the Bahamas. Back to the Bahamas. He phones up his old pal, Chris Blackwell. And he's like, Tina and Chris are going to do this. And Chris was like, you know what, great. Go make a single.

And if I like it, I'll put the album out on Island. Chris was supposed to sign Talking Heads and he didn't. And I think he was still a little like the one that got away a bit. So he's like, yeah, I'll do this. So Chris and Tina, you know, they're in their apartment that is, in the Bahamas. Did you know also Peter Frampton, Robert Palmer, and Emerson and Palmer,

Not Lake, lived in the Bahamas? I think I vaguely did. Like, I have a vague sense of this as, like, where everybody hangs out. You know, the Chris Blackwell of it all is very interesting. Like, I just, I picture Sting there, even if he's not, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's just...

Doing tantric sex. Yeah, let's not... What's... Okay, I regret. Red bringing Sting up, yes, I know what you're saying. This does feel like a dudes rock summit in the Bahamas. The Bahamas feels extremely 80s to me. Does the Bahamas not feel extremely 80s to you?

Like, it's, no one, we don't talk about the Bahamas anymore. The Bahamas absolutely just stopped being talked about in the 90s on. Other than like a tax shelter situation. Yes, literally. There is an 80s. There's a very 80s vibe to. Kokomo. Yeah.

So they go, they're trying to like make this stuff. Lee Scratch Perry is supposed to produce for them. He never shows up. They finally get him on the horn. And he's like, okay, I'll come, but it's $1,000 an hour. Not a day, an hour, 1991. And they were like, no heart. And so they end up having Stephen Stanley, the aforementioned, you know, he's Jamaican,

the engineer that just works at Compass Point, work on it. They call up Adrian Bill You. They're like, come on down. Let's do some stuff. The three of them rehearse in a building that didn't have a number or a street. And so it was called the TomTom Club. That's where the name comes from. There you go.

They recorded three songs with Steve Stanley, wordy rapping hood, Lorelei, and Genius of Love. I think we can all agree, genius of love stole the show, is the binger, probably is paying for Chris and Tina's children's entire lives for the foreseeable future thanks to Mariah Carey's fantasy. And it's like it's a lotto. Like that sample, like that sample is ostensibly in return of the Mac. Like, yes, this is this is paying for everything for everyone.

So Chris stole this beat by his own admission from Zapp. Mm-hmm. More bounce to the ounce. mistakenly in the book that we both read, it accredited that song to James Brown. And I was like, sir, how dare you put some fucking respect on Zapp's name. Okay? Absolutely. It mentions James Brown.

It is not. It's funny how the abused become the abusers, if you go. Because according to the Bowman book, Adrian Bellew came up with the beginning of that song and the rhythm guitar part. And he says, frankly, I wrote quite a lot of the record of the whole album. In fact, there were several tracks where I played everything, all the instruments. Now, apparently Tina and Chris made a verbal agreement with Adrian. Let's not sign any contracts, getting any of these suits involved. We'll just work it out ourselves. And they're like, yeah, great. This turns out to be bad for Adrian. This does not bode well for Adrian.

So they're finishing the album. It's not quite done. And he gets asked to join King Crimson. And he's like, Tina and I got asked to join King Cromson. And Tina's like, no problem, but I think I'm again, fanfic. But we'll wait. We'll wait while you go on tour and we'll finish the album in three months. And you know who else had gotten a solo album deal? Adrian Bellew from Chris Blackwell. So he was going to come back in three months to do his solo album.

Now he comes back three months later and no, nobody's there. They had left. Tina's sisters had come down, Lonnie and Laura. they're the singing, the singing girls on the thing. They had finished the whole album, and then they had left a little CD. It's not a CD. There was no compact disc in 1981. It was a tape, I guess, of the album just sitting there waiting for him.

And he said many of his solos had been removed, and some of his licks had been turned into melodies. And he was kind of bummed. Hurt people, hurt people. Hurt people. Hurt people, hurt people. Now, Chris Blackwell, I think, I don't know the exact details, but I presume that, because of however the deal was with Warners with Talking Heads, they probably are not allowed to put out solo music in America

if it's not put out by Warner's. It's usually how those kinds of deals work. Right. So Chris Blackwell puts out the single in the UK and Europe and wordy rapping hood becomes like a semi-hit. Words in papers, words and books, words on TV, words for books. But Genius of Love becomes a fucking massive hit. And so he,

kind of imports the TomTom Club record into America, and it sells 75,000 copies. So then finally Warner Brothers is like, okay, actually, you know what, we will put it. We will, you can, we'll put it. Here's money. You can go buy a yacht, I believe is what it said in the, do you read that in the Chris France book? I didn't. I forgot that. Gary Kerfers was like, how much money do you want?

And they were like, enough to buy a yacht. And so. That's a good unit of money. Yeah. So it's a huge hit. I mean, Geneoville was a huge hit. Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five did a version called It's Nasty. Maybe listen to that one.

It's nasty. Pretty good. Now, a meaningful event that happens, August 1, 1981, MTV launches. This is something I found so interesting, and I kind of wish I had known before because it makes so much sense for a lot of the things that I've talked about previously on this podcast. But I guess in the beginning of MTV, there were only 125 video clips available from American record labels. Whereas there was more than triple this number available from English artists, which is why in the beginning of MTV in the 80s, there's an outsized amount of English artists being played, which helped them.

Duran Duran. Yeah, like so many. And it really does kind of explain how these like these British rock bands got such a foothold in America was through MTV because they're just sheer availability of video clips. Because in England, they had a place to put videos, whereas in America, there wasn't a place to put them. So people weren't really making them. Right. And then the Michael Jackson of it all, right? Like the overwhelming whiteness of the earliest years.

Oh, absolutely. MTV was not playing one single black person on that station. It was not happening. Like we said, the video for cross-item pain list did not cross the screen of MTV. But they did play the shit out of once in a lifetime. Good video. But yeah, it's weird that in my memory as a kid, like talking heads. are synonymous with MTV for me.

And that's once in a lifetime, but that's more burning down the house. You know, that's more the stuff that came later. Well, no one was watching MTV in 1981. I mean, it wasn't MTV in 1981,

like, only available in like, right. College. It was like something. Rochester. Right. Yeah.

All right. So now it's 1982. I don't want to talk a lot about this, but the talking hands put out their first live album, double live album. The name of this band is Talking heads. You can talk a little bit about it.

since you probably yes okay it's dope i think i think that suffices the version of cities is extremely good i think there are songs from the 10 12 piece group you mentioned that was assembled for and like that's absolutely worth your time but so is the earliest stuff you know so is psycho killer you know from 77 78 whenever it is like it's it's awesome talking heads made two of the best live albums of all time. I agree. I'm not a really a live album, girly, but, um, nor I, to be honest with you, not most of the time. So yeah, this is their songs lend themselves well to a, uh, bringing to life in that way. So, and also they put it out because once again, David Byrne is doing fuck all off with the knee plays or whatever. And Sire's like, we need to make some, fuck. People need

money. So they put this out. They tour, though, to promote the live album. This tour is so interesting to me. I'm obsessed because Tina is pregnant. Tom Tom Club is the opener. So she is pregnant and performs twice every night. It's fucking sick. She's like visibly pregnant. It's pretty cool. It's on this tour in Japan that David

first meets Adele Lutz who will become his wife. Adel Lutz is half Japanese was living in Japan, modeling and her and David Burn meet and the rest is history. Here's another thing that happens.

May 1982, Yossi's born, but that's not what happens. That's pertinent to this story. The Tom Tom Club album goes gold. This is kind of a big deal because no Talking Heads album had yet called gold. That's what I was going to ask. Is that true? Really? Yes.

Wow. So Gary Kerr first delivers this news to them all together. And David Byrne allegedly from the storytelling was not pleased. He was not pleased. None of them went gold up to that. point. Yeah. Isn't that nuts? That's wild. Are they a critics band? Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah. You really think fear of music is going gold. You think I Zimbra is fucking pushing that shit over the edge. Like what, what's I get, no, I guess when you put it that way, sure. I guess that

does make perfect sense that they're not. We're used to once in a lifetime being a staple of like old people rock radio. That's it. But like at the time, they're not, I don't think that was like on the radio in between Duran Duran and ACDC and REO Speedwagon and Dyer Streets. I don't know. I wasn't listening because I was simply just born, but I'm presuming. Jerry said that the success of the TomTom Club reignited the competitive spirit of the talking heads. We stayed together longer.

Not interesting. That makes sense. This is a band bound by hatred and competition. Right. In a good way for the music. But yes, that's very funny. I hadn't read that, but that makes total sense. That's really funny.

Adrian Bill U, an absolute king, said this. I've had some second thoughts about what I should and shouldn't say about the Tom Tom Club. This is in the book. First of all, I'm not a person who holds a grudge about anything. Even though my experience at the TomTom Club at the time was not good for me, I don't really care. It's 20 years ago. This point's 40 years ago.

Who cares? If I ran into Chris and Tina tomorrow, I'd be as friendly as I always am. For you know, there's no reason not to be. King. I will say this book might have been written prior to Mariah Carey's fantasy, and I just don't know if we went back and re-interviewed him about. But I was very impressed by that sentiment. That is, that is a very kind. He's a water under the bridge.

There's water at the bottom of the ocean. There we go. I think you're absolutely right, though, that there's been quite a lot more money changing hands that are not his hands. I mean, I guess King Crimson did okay. I have to I do. I don't. Sure. Not on a genius of love, a scale, but sure.

Didn't Adrian Billew play on some 9-inch Nails records, too? He did. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He's done some other stuff that made him some money. So David has been writing songs because obviously, I mean, I'm only presuming Tom Tom won gold.

And he was like, you know what? Bitch? Watch this. And so they start. You're going to stay in this band until this. This band beats your other band is the vibe now. And then I will end it all. They start working on their next album down at the Bahamas.

I might have gotten the timeline a little wrong here, but while they're working on this album, I guess Tina's still pregnant before the tour. And I just liked this little anecdote. So I wanted to say that Bernie Warrl showed up at the studio with George Clinton. And George Clinton put his hand on her stomach and said, I'm going to scare this baby out of you. And the baby came the next day. I 1,000% believe that George Clinton has that ability to scare babies in utero, yes.

The story came up two different places, so I believe it to be true. This is a more salient and interesting fact. In February of 1982, David Byrne flew to England to produce an album for the band Fun Boy 3. The way Fun Boy 3 is described in the book is very dismissive, but I want to put some respect on Fun Boy 3's name. As you guys all know, Fun Boy 3 is the band. offer to the specials that was Terry Hall, Neville Staples, and Linwell Golding of the fucking specials. Fun Boy 3 is a good bit.

The book is dismissive, huh? Yeah. They don't even mention Terry Hall by name. They're like, the music isn't important. And I was like, sir, excuse me. But here's the important part. So one of the songs on this album, it's not like a hit or a popular one, but it was written by Terry Hall and it's called Well, Fancy That.

And it is a pretty, I mean, it's explicitly autobiographical song about being molested by his teacher on a trip to France. And the book posits, I couldn't find any interviews about this, but I liked the idea of it, so I'm just going to say it, that this really got David Byrne thinking about how he himself avoids being autobiographical. I don't know if that's something that he said to the author and the author just didn't quote him or it's just the author supposing. But it made a lot of sense because speaking in tongues is the first album that I feel that David Byrne starts really speaking as David Byrne in some of those songs. Don't you feel? Hmm. Does this feel? This must be the place, yes.

I don't know about the rest of it. The first thing I think is swamp, right? Like there's, there's some really rad, like, character work on this record, right? Like, I'm looking at the lyrics to this song that I'm unfamiliar with, and this is a harrowing, lyrical song with the title, well, fancy that exclamation point, right? Like, that's... I don't think it made him all of a sudden, you know, dear diary the fucking rest of his songs. I'm just saying you start to get some, especially this must be placed, but I think it shows,

I think girlfriend is brother. there's a couple of instances where you're like, oh, maybe he put himself a little bit more in the songs. I don't know. Okay. It's a working theory. Let's get into speaking in tongues, June 1st, 1983. They do not work with, you already know, Brian, Peter, St. George, St. John, Labup, Tia, still us all, you know? I don't know what happened.

He's fired. You don't know whose call that is. I mean, we can guess. Is this Tom Tom Club power exerting itself? It might be. It also might be David Byrne also being a little bit like, okay. You know, like he did my life in the Bush of Ghosts. They did two albums.

Brianino started to get a little heavily involved wanting to be like credit. Like it could have also been David Burr. I mean like, oh, my God, that's my. And also I think because we're trying to compete with Tom Tom, Club, we want it to be less weird. So that's not really what Brian, you know, brings to the table is less weird. So I'm only guessing. That's a very funny thing to say about this record a lot of the time.

Not all of the time, but a lot of the time. Making flippy, floppy is David Burns idea of appealing to the masses. That's right. That's his pop. That's his pop. According to Chris France in the book, Jerry was, Jerry was partying a little too much during this time. and he was not showing up sometimes for important things at recording and rehearsals that he need to show up. And I only mentioned this not to shame, Jerry.

We all have had a few too many drinks in our time. But more to say that it transpired that instead they would have their upstairs neighbor, 14-year-old eagle-eyed cherry, sit in for Jerry. That's right. Save to net. Fat the break of dawn come. Save the Night is a great song. I agree with you.

Such a banger. Anyways, 14-year-old Eagle A. Cherry is sitting on keyboards for fucking speaking in tongues. Anyways, they confront Jerry Harrison. And Jerry Harrison being a stand-up guy, was like, I got this. He straightened himself right out. This, like you said before, this is the commercial breakthrough because of burning down the house. It's the first Talking Heads album to sell a million copies. Apparently David Byrne said that he,

was inspired by listening back to old live tapes of the name of this band is the talking heads that, you know, what went into that. And he said, I liked what we did and it made us take stock of what we'd done, what we'd gained and what we'd lost in the various stages we'd been through. I think we felt there was some sort of charm and tightness in the earlier material that maybe we had lost. So we consciously tried to regain that and yet keep some of the other things that we'd done. Again, I get that half the time.

Maybe I get that all of the time. Maybe that makes a little more sense. I mean, it definitely didn't go back to 77, but I do feel like, I mean, he basically is like, we tried to keep some stuff and lose some stuff. And that sounds about right. Sure. No, I agree. Sure. This interview that he does with Barney Hoskins is so contentious.

Barney Hoskins hates this album. And he is not afraid to say it. He literally tells him to his... This album specifically. Yes, this album specifically. He might also just hate the talking heads, who knows. but he says to David, perhaps it might have benefited from a little more genius of love and a little less Catherine wheel. He said that to him.

That is unfunkey. That is the unfunkeyest statement. Yes, Barney. And David Byrne goes, well, people like this record and the audience is like it when we play it. My position is I don't feel I have to justify what I'm doing or defend it. I think it's good or else I wouldn't have put it out. And that's about all. David Burns is shut up, bitch.

In David Byrne language, but yes, clearly. Later in the interview, you said what to David? Chris France to Barney Hoskins. And Tina is like, you see, David was trying so hard on this album to open up and be lighter. And I do think it's much happier. I know it doesn't always sound happy, but can't you tell when you see the songs live? Barney was unconvinced. And a lot of these cases you're describing,

they're being interviewed separately. Is that like... Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%. Is that common broadly? Rock of... Babe, I was a music journalist for 14 minutes. You would know better than me. That seems abnormal.

I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe not. I don't think they're hanging. hanging hard as a band. Right. Right. I guess that's it.

I guess that's it. But I would be, I'm trying to think of what's the band. I'm trying to compare this. Are you? Do you, those guys party together all the time. Those guys are inseparable.

Absolutely. Metallica. Sure. I guess I always do picture the band in a room. That's because you're thinking of some kind of monster. that's exactly what I'm thinking. Okay, so I guess it's not abnormal, but it is very funny. It's like interviewing two different bands to interview Chris and Tina and then him.

It's very funny because they hate each other. Exactly. It's extremely funny because you're pitting them against each other and then cackling that you did this. You're both siding one rock band. Yes. Let's just get into it. And I just want to point this out before we get to the end that I, I know this is such a dumb, simple-minded observation, but it blew my socks off.

Because this album starts with a house burning down and ends with finding a home. I had never thought of that. That's a sock-blowing revelation. Absolutely. I love it so much, right? It's so, like, if you think about it in, like, psychological, archetypal terms, it's like, you're destroying a self in order to find a new one or to I just I'm serious why are you laughing are you laughing because I'm being earnest no I'm looking at every song in between these two songs and

trying to track that narrative like swamp moon rocks pull up the roots we have a home you know like I but no that is that is absolutely a beautiful thing it really spoke to me now burning the down the house, babe. That song fucking goes. What's your favorite talking head song? Let's just start there. Obviously. Obviously, it's, this must be the place. Okay. Parentheses, naive melody. I think we talked about this off, Mike, that I do think it's a cheating and

poser-ass talking heads favorite song to have because it doesn't sound like in almost any other iteration of the talking heads. It's such an outlier. I think it's sweetness and directness. and I don't know. The naive part feels like a pretty thorough through line. I don't think this is a poser-ass favorite talking about. We're getting ahead, but I'll say it. Go ahead.

Throw on this must be the place. It's called naive melody because, God, damn, gorgeous, beautiful song. Because when they wrote the song, they all switched instruments to make the song. So they were playing naively because they were playing on instruments they don't normally use, which is why it's simple and rudimentary, quote, unquote, in the melody. So Tina plays rhythm guitar on this. Jerry plays keyboard bass. David played some, quote, freaky little sounds on the Prophet Five using the modulation wheel.

But, I mean, Chris did play drums because he's the only one who knew how to play drums. But everyone else is sort of like trying their hand in a new instrument. And so they're doing something that's sort of simple. And that's why it's naive melody. You could have convinced me that somebody else played the drums. Not that they're bad, that they're simple. You know, like this is, this is not a busy song in a polyrhythm sense. No, not at all.

Well, that's lovely. I want to talk about it more in depth when we get to the end of the album, but I love that song. Burning Down the House. Burning down the house is indeed a banger. What are the three? It bangs, it slaps, it fucks, yes. It fucks. right.

Now we're talking. And this is my first exposure to them, probably the video. But that seems important to know that my knowledge of this band radiates from this song outward, from, you know, whatever, five years old on. Watch out. You might get what you're after. That's like, be careful what you wish for, right? That's the classic, you know, protect me from what I want. Right.

Like whatever. I read this, and perhaps because underneath it all, I'm in kind of a deep romantic, I read this as the album of David Byrne finally really falling in love. And, you know, watch out. You might get what you wanted. Cool baby. I think that makes a lot more sense biographically. That album for me is always little creatures, but I think it makes more sense to apply it here.

I mean, this has the feel. of the newness of and the strangeness and the fear and the like sort of like excitement of falling in love whereas little creatures has more of the sense to me of like a deepening of like a end-domesticity yeah domesticity or like this is like you know I'm an ordinary no that makes sense people on their way to work say baby what did you expect yeah gonna burst into flame something short can sweep me off. No, I think that's a valid rate. That's a great read. Sure. Let's see what Genius says. Let's see. I'm going to click on this. Oh, God. The song is said, I'm sorry, I have to contradict you. It's debt. Yeah, I don't know about that read. He's given up trying to solve his problem. Now, all he does is sit and watch television, ignoring his problems. I don't want to quarrel with genius in a public for a quarrel with any of these.

mutants who annotate genius songs, but... I did not say mutants. I'd like to say, Rob Harvilla did not say... I didn't, you can quote me, bitch. Anyways, here is what Tina said about this song. It started from a jam. Chris had just been to see Parliament Funkadelic at Madison Square Garden, and he was

really hyped. During the jam, he kept yelling, burn down the house, which was a Parliament Funkadelic audience. chant. Sure. And David Byrne liked it, so he changed it into burning down the house. Tina apparently took her basement from a black uh-uhuru, is how you say that, uh-huhuru song? I think so, yeah.

I couldn't locate which one it was, but. Do-d-d-d-do-do-do-do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d- Yeah. Okay. Apparently, he went through a lot of iterations of lyrics on this song before we got to the final ones, and some of them included, and I'm talking like the burning down the house part. or I have another body. Pick it up by the handle. You travel with a double.

I'm still under construction. Wow. Foam rubber USA. Foam rubber. I'm having trouble. I'm having trouble fitting it as well. I don't know how it works, but he told this to NPR. Anyway, it's a great song.

We love it. It's an awesome album opener. And it does what you said. I think it sets the tone of this album being like, okay, we're a little bit going back to basics, but it's still a little weird. Expanded. Right. Making flippy floppy.

Do you just like to say that because you like the name of the song, or do you actually really like this song? Both can be true. I can like the song title a little more than the song itself, but that speaks to how much I like the song title. You know, I, what are the songs on here? I prefer to stop making sense versions. Definitely that one.

Definitely girlfriend. Slippery, Swamp. Nive melody is close. Yes, I like this song better live, but yes, this is a good song with a fantastic song title. I want to get into Girlfriend is better, though. Put on Girlfriend is better, you guys. This might be my second favorite talking head song. Is that insane?

Wow. That's not insane. That's probably why this is my favorite album, because it has two of my favorite songs on it. That's a good reason. Do you take it fairly literally? That girlfriend is better than not girlfriend? Yes. That feeling when no girlfriend?

Yeah. I think it's kind of literal. I mean, I think this song is pretty explicitly about Adele, if I had to guess. I mean, because there's so much about it that is sort of references, I mean, she still lives in Japan. So the distance. Somebody calls you, but you cannot hear. Get closer to be far away, you know. There is a little.

it, the parenthetical is it, is maybe troubling, but... Well, this is what I'm talking about. This is the complex nature of falling in love where you're afraid and you're questioning, but it's all happening. And my favorite lyric of this one is, uh, I got a girlfriend with bows in her hair and nothing is better than that. It's like so sweet, no? It is.

It is very sweet. There's your throwback. Slippery people. This one absolutely 1 billion percent that stopped making sense version is better, but it's still pretty good on here. It's very, we're going to church. Like, it's the preacher from once in a lifetime and now we're at church and we have the whole, you know, don't you think? Yeah. Every time I hear it, to me, it sounds like a church song.

The piano is good. Like the really crystal sounding piano, I really, I really dig. And the call and response, no? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The backing vocals, you know, on, you know, better live, but the guitars are so good on this. Stop Making Sense especially, but yeah. This one, I am wholeheartedly with you that the Stop Making Sense version is Leaps and Bounds superior.

The original source material version does bang. It does. Everything here bangs. Yeah. If you had never heard the Stop Making Sense version, you wouldn't be like, this is trash. You'd be like, hell yeah, this song fucking rules. Right. That's what distorts a lot of my relationship with this band's catalog is going from Stop Making Sense backward for a lot of it.

Like, life during wartime is probably the ultimate example of like I'm sure if you listen to it the normal chronological way, that song, the original sounds way better to you than it does to me. Do you think he says peanut butter in the Stop Making Sense version? To last a couple of days Do you think that your podcast self is your true self Or has your podcast self Taken over your previous true self? I think the latter I don't think that this is my highest self peanut buttering all over

I hope not Well That would be It's not a bad way to go out If that's the way it happens Something to bring the therapy I get wild Wild Gravity

it's a good one man it's even it's another situation like fear of music where even like the lower tier like the less immediately popular songs every time i'm like oh yeah totally moon rocks like yeah this this is dope you know like it slaps they don't do they don't have b sides in the classic sense of you can take them less seriously you know what i mean like it's the albums hang together as albums and the albums benefit even from these less prominent songs. But Swamp is so funny to me. Like Swamp, I just, I don't understand what's happening

and I love it, right? Like, I don't, is this like a, who is this person? Why is he singing like that? Why is he singing like that is exactly what I'd like to know. I was thinking for the chorus, I could just go, ah, ha, ha, ha, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. And it works, you know. it's legit what does wake up touch monkeys mean

lyrically i think it's like maybe like the precedent to go outside and touch grass there we go he was he was early on everything he was ahead of his time he was definitely something touch touch monkeys is a really weird way to express that idea but that's david burr you know that's why he's the best he's anchored in a different reality than the rest of us He is. I just want to skip over to this must be the place. I'm sorry. Apologous to Moond Rocks.

I figured this is going to happen. I know we talked about it a little bit, but how did they make such a gorgeous song? It really is gorgeous. It's sort of singularly gorgeous. And I think a key part of how beautiful it is and how vulnerable is that it's so anomalous, right? Like there's just there's no other song in their catalog that feels like this. You know, just the way he sings, I feel numb. Always, like, stops me dead in my trash, right?

Born with a week. It's just something about this song just gets to you, you know, on a spiritual, on a molecular level. I liked what you said. I had forgotten about the everybody playing a different instrument. So, like, the Tina part, like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Like, it's not making sense. She's just doing that over. and over again. She's on the second line and she's just playing this simple thing over and over

for whatever, six minutes. And like, it's beautiful the way it all, you know, all these naive parts combine for something that feels so complicated and so deep. It's really like such a testament to the fact that like music doesn't need to be complicated to be good and nor doesn't need to be like envelope pushing or interesting. While that is important and holds a place, Isambrough, but I mean, I think we can all agree that this is a better song than I Zimbra. We can. It's like a stuff on the nightclub. It's got everything.

It's got heartfelt lyrics. It's got, you know, a bopping little beat. It's got emotion. It's got swelling little bits. It's got... Human Roomba's. Yeah. It's got it all.

It's got you've got a face with a view. Love me till my heart stops. Love me till I'm not. dead. Show me a better compliment in song than you've got a face with a view. Why are you laughing? No, it's true.

I'm just an animal looking for a home. I'm just an animal looking for a home. Honestly, as much as he's a weirdo alien from a different planet, how perfectly has he distilled the process of falling in love? Lyrically.

Like, the less we say about it, the better. We'll make it up as we go along. I love the passing of time. When you're standing here beside me, I love the passing of time. That's a really profound lyric. It is. You're right. You're right. It absolutely is. I think rock critics, or at least I overuse, like, childlike, right? Just like, just throw it at everything. And I don't think it quite applies to this situation either. But again, going back to the naive quality of it, like the very simple way he's expressing falling in love. You know, and the simpler it gets, the more profound it gets, you know, and that's how it works when you do it, right.

This is a popular first wedding first dance. Is it? I think it is. You have cool friends. No, I don't think these are any of my friends. I think this is my anecdotal internet sense. My friends are cool, but they didn't. I don't think they, you know, they picked various country songs.

Your friends are dancing to the fray. That would paradoxically be really cool. at this point. Step one says we need to talk. I think I have shimmer by fuel. I have a vague sense. There we go.

Your answer to everything is shimmer by fuel at this point. It's true. It's so true. I'm guessing at least one person listening to this, their first wedding dance, was this. Yeah, that's probably true. And good for them. I wish them the best. I hope they're still married. Absolutely.

Yeah. There's not much else to say about it. It's one of the best songs of all time. I'll die on that hill. Is it understood that way? Like, again, this is, is this the second most popular song on Spotify? Not that this is a perfect metric, but like, I think it's in, it's, it endures. I try to raise it.

It is the second most popular song. People prefer psycho killer. Sure they do. As a society, we are unwell. But this is, this is number two. Well, Byrne, you done did it. My hat is off to you. Once again, I must say that the music critics are unwell.

They are also not living in the reality that I think was taking place at the time. Here's what David Frick said for Rolling Stone. Speaking in Tongues, Talking Head's first studio released in three years, is the album that finally obliterates the thin lines separating R.D. White Pop music and Deep Black Funk. Oh, boy. Finally. Finally, someone obliterated the thin line separating Artie White Pop music and deep black funk. There's a lot of singing into each other's mouths happening in this profession historically.

Imagine you sat there. You pulled out your little typewriter and you were like, knuckles crack. I know what the first line of this review is. And the editor was like, yep, nothing to see here. No notes. Yon was into it. Run it. Run it, babe.

I don't know if this is true. I'm no expert. But let's just say the review is very positive. And he does, I think, rightfully point out that naive melody is probably a great example of this, but it does benefit from the influence of the sort of newly emboldened, self-esteem Tina and Chris Tom Top Club, you know? Right. The dynamic, yeah, the power dynamic has shifted positively. And they're able to sort of bring that good, good vibes, good time music to David Burns'

House of Horrors or whatever is going on in his. So you hear them, you hear the other guys a little clearer on this record than on I think so. Yeah, I totally. I would only know that because Tom Tom Tom Club exists. I'm not like familiar enough with the nuances of what they bring to the. the table, but it's real good. It's also a little more light-hearted.

We like that. It's more of a band record than a producer record as Remain in Light sort of famously presented itself as. It's almost like David Byrne fell in love and he could finally like chill to fuck out. Do you know what you mean? It love does have that effect on the least chill among us. I wouldn't say he's like finally fucking because he probably was already, but it's giving that energy.

Do you know what I mean? I know what you mean. I couldn't even speculate. but I do know what you made. Like it was almost like giving slight insult energy before and now it's not giving the slight in cell energy. Yeah. Now you're not laughing.

Well, laughing, laughing heartily at all of my earnest. My earnest takes on the beautiful lyrics of naïve melody and then here just staring blank. Laps of delight and commiseration. Okay. Well, they got plenty of great reviews as it should be. And it's time to do the Speaking in Tungs tour. And David is like, well, I want this to be a fucking thing, bitch. Okay, we're not doing it unless it's a whole fucking thing.

I'm talking a theater production. He will not take no for an answer, especially regarding the big suit. He wants a big suit. Let's take a quick sidebar to talk about the big suit. You know the big suit. You're familiar. We're all familiar with the big suit. The inspiration for the big suit.

The inspiration for the big suit came from a dinner in Tokyo. David Byrne, Adele Lutz, his girlfriend, his paramour, and the German designer Juergen Liel were dining in Tokyo. And David Byrne said, you know the next time I tour I should have a costume. And Yurgen said something like, well, David, in theater, everything is bigger than in real life. I can't do a German accent, but just imagine. I think that planned to see it, obviously. And then also Adele and David were helping out this very famous theater director Robert Wilson with a upcoming project.

And in advance of that, they had been studying Kabuki theater. And here's what David Burton said. I thought, well, because you know Kabuki costumes are very rectangular. You know that. Yes. You studied Japanese in college. I don't. Okay.

I thought, what if you take that kind of silhouette, but put it in a Western business suit? I've become fascinated with the idea of taking things that look like everyday or commonplace, and stretching that somewhat rather than making something totally fantastic and imaginary. I like to restrict myself. Take a business suit. A business suit has to look like a suit, even if it's made of pink fur. Okay, Cameron. It makes reference to the businessman.

It had some kind of psychological meaning besides a costume. It's a businessman in prison buying a suit or lost in his suit or his suit was swallowing him. It implies all these other things that a wild costume that didn't have those references wouldn't say. David Byrne is still preoccupied by the absolute prison hell he thinks normal people live in. Right? Is he wrong though? No, but yeah. He absolutely is not.

And he's so right. And he was like, what if I? But the funniest part about the big suit is that he is to this day perplexed that people won't get over it and like it's the number one thing we associate with him and it's like babe what did you expect it is the most simple and visually arresting thing you've ever done and no one is ever going to forget it also it's hilarious why a big suit i like symmetry and geometric shapes 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 is he not indignant but he not indignant but

he is surprised that people still talk about that? I feel he might have been slightly indignant. I think he said something to the effect of when I die. They're going to put it on my gravestone, wore the big suit. That's fine. On mine, they're going to put goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song, and on yours, they're going to be, I don't know, the Rob Harvilla of at all. The Rob Harvilla of at all. That's what your gravestone is going to say.

Just Japanese words that I cannot read. Study Japanese. Forgot all of it. Peace. Okay, so we have ideas. We want to do a theater production. Enter Jonathan Demi. Jonathan Demi was a film director already by this time.

He had made two films back to back in 1975, Caged Heat and Crazy Mama. I've not seen either of these. Have you seen them? Not for a very, very, very long time. Sean Fantasy, our boss is going to be. Yeah, he's going to be pissed. Disappointed. And then a movie called Melvin and Howard, which did seem interesting to me, but I didn't

have time to watch it. And then he made his first big budget Hollywood film Swing Shift starring Goldie Hawn. And I think maybe he didn't like that experience. I don't want to put words into his mouth because after that he was like, I want to make art. The two kinds of movies are Goldie Hawn and art. And art, exactly. Those are the two genres roundabouts, 1984. I mean, clearly this person, if you're saying that you have not seen overboard, which is both.

Exactly, yes So he had seen the talking heads at the Greek theater With the whole everybody And the big suit Like, because they did this, right? They did the production and the big suit And they toured this before this movie. It wasn't.

Yeah. And then he was like, this would make a perfect movie Because he's a visionary. And David Byrne was like, I loved your film, Melvin and Howard. Went around and I applied for a job at a place like McDonald-Douglas,

Northrop Hughes. What happened there? They didn't want me. Well, I might have done something. Like what? I'm Howard Hughes. That's not a joke. He really did love his film, Melbourne, and Howard. And he was like, he doesn't joke about these things.

He's like, okay, I'll do this. Interestingly, something I learned from Chris France's book is that the Talking Heads paid for a lot of stuff themselves, including, I think, this film. Like, they pay, they, like, split a lot of the money. They ended up getting some more from Warners, but like they financed most of it. Did you know that? Yeah. And just the band itself, you know, like if they were cutting costs, you know, they would not have the band that they have. They would just figure out how to cram, remain in light songs into a quartet format.

But they get this incredible band. They get two backup singers, you know, on top of the costumes, you know, the production of it. A TIF with the manager, according to Bernie Moore all over. the band being paid fairly, but I don't want to gossip. Okay. So, never, never. They film Stop Making Sense, your favorite film, at the Pantages Theater here in Beautiful Hollywood.

The cinematographer was a guy, just like a who cares, done nothing, guy called Jordan, Cronin with, who had done The Beatles Heart Days Night and Help and also a small movie called Blade Runner. That's all the experience you need. to make it happen. We're just triangulating Blade Runner in a hard day's night. That's basically. That's it.

That's it. Honestly. Not no. Okay. This was the funniest thing in the world to me. The day before the filming, I think they filmed two days, but the day for the first day of filming, one of the backup singers, Edna Holt, she was like in L.A. She was like, yeah, I'm getting to get a cool haircut.

She got a really cool, short haircut. And David Byrne had a fucking meltdown. He was like, you did what? And then he made her sit in a chair for 12 hours and get hair extensions because he was not about to have a short-haired person in his movie. That's a drag. You know, it's, I'm always sort of vaguely conscious of that, the potential of that side of David Byrne, you know, the dictatorial. He had a vision. Jerky guy.

The visionary. Yeah, the troubled anti-hero visionary guy. you know, unfortunately, that is very much what he is. But that is a drag because... I mean, I kind of get it. You can't be the lead or even an actor in a film you've been cast to be in and then cut your hair off. Yeah, I guess so. But it's like, I don't think their hairstyles are necessarily like a focal point.

I would not have been less into the film had Edna had a little bob. Right. precisely. But I'm not the visionary. I'm not the maestro. Talk to me about your experience of this film. It was released in October of 1984. So you were 10.

Just kidding. You were four. You were six. I was six. You got it. You nailed it. I did not see this in the theater. I did not see Purple Rain in the theater.

Yeah. Did Barb Harvilla see it in the theater? That is an excellent question. You've had so much time to ask. car i'm guessing that she didn't just because she was living in eureka missouri you know with a six year old at the time i'm i'm trying to picture this movie playing in the same multiplex you know where they had like you know indiana jones in the temple of doom or whatever i so i am guessing she didn't see it in the theater i think some of my aunts and uncles probably did but i didn't

I don't think my mom did, unfortunately. I try to think of the first time I actually sat down and watched this. I would guess college, honestly, you know, just a DVD or whatever in the late 90s. But I found the soundtrack first. Like, didn't they put out the soundtrack? And at first, it's incomplete. Like, the original vinyl version, I don't think, is like the entire performance, whatever it is, like, 90 minutes solid. you know, it's a much shorter track list.

But then in the mid to late 90s, they put it on CD and they put the whole thing out. And that CD is what I got, I think, at my college radio station. And that's what kicks this off for me. So, like, I heard all this before I saw the movie. And I think it feels a little different. Like, I don't, I'm aware of the big suit, right?

But there's a very big difference between, like, looking directly at him wearing the big suit singing, girlfriend is better and just hearing the song, right? Like the experience of genius of love, right? Like if you're listening on CD, like, suddenly just Chris is going, James Brown, like, in your ear. And, like, the energy is very different. And it feels disruptive.

It feels like, you know, he's hijacked, you know, a talking head's performance, even though he's in the band. But when you watch the movie, obviously, and you understand that, like, this is a costume change. Sure. And also you see how joyous the band is just playing. genius of love. It's not that they're like relieved that David Burns not there, but like the camaraderie is the same, is still strong, and is just a little different when it's everybody

playing this song. And so like there are huge differences to me between listening to this and watching it. And I guess it matters that like I heard it a lot before I saw it. Right. There was some drums with the genius of love also because they wouldn't let Tina's sisters be the backup singers on that one because the way the works of the pantages, I didn't totally understand this, you can't really hear yourself and I don't know what the deal was with monitors and didn't have any years, didn't exist at that time. And they were basically like, I'm so sorry, but your sisters are absolutely just not accomplished enough singers to sing in key without. And then Tina forgot to tell them that. And then they were in the audience the

first night and that's how they learned about it. How many bummer facts do you have about this? This is my job. This is my job. Fantastic. Fantastic. I'm simply reporting the news. I'm really reporting the facts. So in the film, it is so cool, right? I think Jonathan Demi made such an interesting choice, which was to never film the audience,

which you never, ever, ever see a concert film where you don't see the audience. And it really gives it more of that, like, heightened sense of, like, it being a play or, like, some sort of, like, thing that you're watching. You don't get kind of taken out of the moment because you see the other audience. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's really cool. It's just a really cool feeling. Yeah. And the way that they sort of bring the musicians out one by one. According to Byrne, it solved a whole host of problems. It gave the show a definite beginning and middle. It allowed us to perform the older songs in the old configuration. It had something visually happening on the stage without using lights early in the show, which was necessary because a lot of the shows were at outdoor places like Meriwether Post Pavilion. It told the history of the It reveals how the music is made. It shows how the stage and lights are put together. Yet it does it in a very simple, obvious way.

Yeah, it feels like the lifespan of the band in miniature, you know, up to it, including like Jerry coming on last, right? Like, it's just, it's really cool. It's really, really cool. What do you think about his dance moves? David Burns. I mean, this is probably, unless you're big into MTV, everybody's first, experience of David Byrne visually, if you haven't gone to a show, right? Like, this is where this is everyone's, a lot of people's first and most prolonged exposure

to like the visual situation that is David Byrne. And so I, yeah, like the awkwardness, like there's the, the big gift moment is the wiggle, right? You know, like, it's just this was, it was a memeable experience several decades before that word had any meaning. But it's just even before the big suit, you know, he's just, he's just such a striking human being. And he both looks perfect as a rock star front man and like just entirely wrong, you know, at the same time. Like just perfectly right and perfectly wrong superimposed on top of one another. Like it's, it's wild. He said that he, um, practiced that in the mirror to come up with it before.

And it shows. And that's life. during wartime. Yes. And just when they're running in place, like that's such a cool moment. I love that. Yeah, the dancers.

My favorite is when he dances with the lamp during naive melody. Of course. There's just something so lovely about that. He said it seemed like the natural thing to do. Of course he did. The other thing that's cool about that, it's like the backup singers are very still.

Like there's something, it's not somber, but like there's a very, different energy to just that song. Everybody is just, I'm trying to think of a word that is not like, it's just like a very melancholy, very quiet, very still, you know, it imparts to you how serious they are about this song in particular and just how singular this song is. And then he dances with a lamp, just the look of wonder on his face, you know,

and just the shot up, like the shot like through the lamp. and just like how bright the bulb is. Like it's just, it's such a striking visual image. You're okay. I'm great. I mean, it's beautiful, man. I mean, it's, I don't think there's any question that this is like my favorite music documentary and live album. I don't, I don't know that there's, I'm sure I'll think of examples of competition or whatever, but like I do, I do think that's true.

Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Not even some kind of monster. Don't apologize to me. Yeah, not right, right, right. Like the last waltz, right? Like, I get the arguments against.

This is the best. This is true. Jonathan Demi made art. It is funny because I feel like the version of naive melody on here with the visual does really like underscore a thing that I didn't say when we talked about the song, which is that it does have baked in melancholy to it, which also makes it like such a striking song. Because I do feel like that,

that is also part of falling in love where there is like a weird undercurrent of mourning because you're like mourning the loss of the one when it becomes a two and also maybe it's so scary so that there's like a sad scariness. Absolutely. Anyways, this is a fantastic film.

The tour was popular. It really puts David Burnoff from ever wanting. to do any other kind of tour, which does become a problem, but we can get to that later. Well, guess what, babe? We're going to have our chance to see it in the big screen once more when A24 re-releases it in September. So let's play a little movie date, babe, you got the popcorn, I will buy the candy. Stop making sense the album, by the way, is their, I think, to date, highest selling album

of all time. Yeah. Which I don't think is common in the live album. album world. Peter Frampton accepted probably live. That's right. That's the only Peter Frampton album I've ever heard of, but I presume that he would have had to have other source material in order to play it live.

You would think so, but not, who could say, there's just no way. Who can know for sure. It's just a very mysterious figure, Peter Frampton. Robert Grisgow gave this a B plus, sir. He did? Are you all right? I guess maybe if you were like tracking the Talking Heads career in real. time and you were a big fan and this is like the second live album they put out in four years.

You're like, okay. Right, right. You know, I don't know. But he was, he's going to live knowing that he was wrong and he will die knowing he was wrong. Okay. Here's where it gets fun. October 1984.

David Byrne is like, we're not touring again until we do something that tops the big suit, bigger than the big suit. And they're like, okay. So this thing happened with President Ronald Reagan, which I didn't know about, I guess I would have been too. I was two, but I'd never heard about it later either, that he was testing a microphone on live radio and decided to say these words in his, he chose to say these words in his test. Here are the words. My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever.

We begin bombing in five minutes. Sir, are you insane? I'm going to be honest and say I didn't know that either. Huh. My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. Doesn't that give you like a really fucking frightening window into the psyche of that man? Of course.

Like he was like, wouldn't it be funny if I outlawed Russia forever and we begin bombing in five minutes? You know that's like what he wanted to do, like in his like gleeful child heart? That's like what being a president was to him because he was just like an actor cowboy who was like, what if I'm a president? What does a president do? You outlaw Russia and you bomb shit. It's like that thing from a while back where like everyone in, was it Hawaii where everyone thought like a missile, like Hawaii was about to be bombed for some reason.

I'm paraphrasing this from memory in an unhelpful way, but there's like just. I think we've gone through so much that it's honestly impossible to remember any of it. Like there's been so much harrowing. insane shit that we have to take in day over day that I'm like oh was it like not last year that we thought we're all going to die like I don't and now we have a new thing where we're all going to die but no one's really it's okay thanks for backing me up there anyways the point being this is this happens and Jerry was like what if I hunt this down this recording and I turn it into a funky little

electronic track with Bootsie Collins I have to say, apropos of nothing that Jerry Harrison's shoes in stop making sense are really cool. He's just wearing cool shoes. And so this just strikes me as a good. They're like, I don't know, man. They're like orange or red perhaps. They're just, they were just striking looking shoes to me. Anyway, it's like a guy who wears shoes that cool.

Yeah. Booty Collins, Ronald Reagan. Let's do this. The song is called Five Minutes. I could only find the one that also features Arthur Russell. Pretty cool. Five minutes. B.

Bambamming Mix. By Bonzo goes to Washington as the artist. He can't find anyone to put it out in time because he's, I think, trying to negatively impact Ronald Reagan's presidential election against Walter Mondale. It does not make quite the impact on politics that I think Jerry Harrison was hoping, but I do applaud him. Ronald Reagan did handily win the next election. Whatever state Mondale won, it might have been Minnesota. It was one of them.

He only won that state because of this song. Because of a bombing bombs of us to Washington. In May of 1985, David Burns on the cover of the New York Times magazine, just by himself, by the way, with the caption that says, David Byrne, thinking man's rock star. Apparently all four of the talking hunts went to this photo shoot, not knowing that they would actually not be on the cover.

Gwen Stefani. They got Gwen Stefani. This is pre-Gwen Stefani. There was a precedent for this, and it was David Byrne. Now, meanwhile, David Byrne starts working on his movie. We'll get to that. I just want you to know this is around the time

he starts working on his little movie. Then they make little creatures. You love little creatures. Why don't you take it away? June 10th, 1985. Okay, so I'm seven years old and I do, my first experience of them is probably burning down the house. But like, this is probably the first album that I hear in full, even if only in pieces playing on like my cool uncles and aunts stereoes, right? When I'm seven, eight, nine years old.

Damn, cool uncles and aunts were bumping little creatures. I'm saying they were, absolutely. Like I hear like Anne she was. I hear Road to Nowhere. I hear the lady don't mind. Like I can access like a seven-year-old, eight-year-old mentality still. And so this record is really cool to me. It felt really cool to me at the time.

Like Jerry's shoes. Like Jerry's shoes. I can't say what they are or why they make me feel the way they do. But it's and it's this is their pop moment, right? Their pop-y-ist moment. Like Angie was is probably the purest. pop song they ever did in terms of like how it starts hey hey that's every song every album starts really well i know we've talked about this this is another example so like it's the same yeah

the first five seconds of a talking heads record are very effective is this the appropriate time for me to admit and reveal that i do have one talking heads tattoo and it is hoping yes it is absolutely the most 25-year-old-ass tattoo, like as in I was 25 when I got it, but I guess we're going to be soon coming upon it's 25th anniversary. Just kidding, I'm not 50 yet, but 25-year-old me was like, you know what would be tight as hell, bitch?

What if I got, and she was, tattooed on my wrist, but listen to this shit, okay? Listen to this. I'll put an ellipsies of the end so that it reads, And she was or and she was because what is it if not full of possibility pregnant with possibility? And she was anything. She could become anything. Okay.

And what did she become? What did she become? A fucking podcaster. Now, wait a minute. I do enjoy it on my arm that I could become fucking anything. And fucking fast forward 15 years. And what am I? I'm a fucking podcaster.

You're talking to me. You are too, babe. You are too. I'm not here to make you feel better about your life choices. No, you certainly are not. I do enjoy the thought of like a dude like chatting you up in a bar or whatever and like reading the tattoo like left to right and be like and she was. It's like ooh. Why?

And getting to the dot dot dot dot. I's like, ooh. Why? All right. Anyways, pretty sick. Cool. Cool choices that I made. I love this song though.

Besides the fact that the ellipsies are humiliating, I love the song, I stand by my tattoo. It is very early Manning Pixie Dream Girl Ode, which as you know I love to talk about. Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. David Byrne said, he used to know a girl in Baltimore that he called a blist out hippie chick. He used to drop acid and lay down in a field and then levitate over the Yoohoo factory. Remember Yoohoo? I think you was so. I'm a little shocked that Uhoo didn't make it into this song. He said, it seemed like such a tacky kind of transcendence, but it was real. A new kind of religion being born out of heaps of rusted cars and fast food joints.

And the girl was flying above it all. I'm crying. I'm crying. Why is that so moving? It is moving. I didn't know about the Uhoo factory. That does add a dimension of commercialization. Like what's more fucking 80s than youhoo?

Youhoo is pretty 80s. Who knows what it is? Is it milk? We don't know. They call it a chocolate drink, which is troubling. That's code. Yeah, that's for sure. There's no cows were involved in the making of youhoo.

Yeah, I really love this song. I think it's, do you think Talking Heads purists look down upon this song as being sort of like a sellout pop hit? It's a good question. I mean, it didn't work. You know, it wasn't like a huge. anomalous pop hit in that way. I think it did charts, but like,

I don't think it was successful enough for Talking Heads fans to look down at everyone who only knows them for this song, right? Like I, I, so maybe if you're going to do that to this band at any point, you're doing it now, but I think this song is not popular enough to create that kind of hostility. But I mean,

it's, it's for sure, like a very, a much popier and much simpler. and more direct way of speaking. You know, I liked what you said about, you know,

I, this being the domesticity love album, you know, like this is the initial rush and melancholy of falling in love. Before the house, we're burning down the house and we're finding home. Exactly. That's it. That's it.

Now we're, now we're at home. And that's, that's lovely. Like I, I, I, I've seen sex and I think it's okay.

It's an extremely David Byrne way. to put it. I'm telling your wife that you said that. That's really not necessary. Actually, what are your thoughts on stay up late? Stay up late. This is the one that they made into a children's book, right? I think it's interesting.

I think it's, no, but I do think it's interesting. It really, I hate to keep, I know you did it too, so I don't feel as bad. Keep saying the childlike thing, but this is like makes a lot of sense when you put it into the context of like life stages and like you said they're at home they don't have kids but their friends have kids right like Tina and Chris have kids there's other people around them starting to have babies and this sort of like and who amongst us hasn't experienced as you because you have three children but me the cool aunt over here is all every time my friends have a new kid I'm like what the fuck is going on here

Here, this is crazy. You made that and now you have to fucking keep it alive all the time. It is mind-blowing. But that, it's giving that energy to me where it's just like, what a curious thing, children. But there's just such a creepy overtone to it. Is it because he says peepy? Partially that. And then I know you want to leave me.

leave me, leave me. Like just the total note of dissonance to it. And just the concept of this song is keeping a baby up too late. It's like it's sort of the creepy uncle, but not like the creepy uncle as the internet understands the concept of the creepy uncle. Like it's just inappropriate uncle behavior. The way that the second verse sort of crescendos in a sinister way and like having fun with no money, a little smile on his, like it's, there's something so disconcerting about this song

without it ever losing that sort of child like, holy shit, you know, you have a copy of yourself that you have to feed sort of vibe. Like there's just, it's a very complicated and unnerving collision of vibes. It do slap, though. Additionally, it do slap. Yes. I mean, I do. And again, someone made this into a children's book.

The manic pixie dream girl thing is funny. Like, the lady don't mind. Like, that's there. That's very funny. That's absolutely there as well. And what, I mean, listen, Angie was is absolutely a drug song. I'm not gorgeous because if you've ever done psychedelics, it really, it hits different. You're like, yeah, I am floating above the Uhoo factory.

Thank you for asking. I am joining the world of missing persons and missing enough just to be all right. Creatures of love, you don't want to just dabble into, you've said it, I've seen sex and it's all right. It makes those little creatures come to life. I'm perhaps not a well person, but the first thing I think of is like crabs. Okay. That's totally what I thought you were going to say. I'm horrible.

I know that I was a little creatures. That's really weird. sex. It's disgusting. What are you talking about, sir? Wow. Okay. There is a line in this song that is also in This Must Be the Place. There's something about David Burns singing the words before you were born. We've been here forever before you were born. And then in naive melody, it's like there was a time before you were born. Something about him singing those words and sort of acknowledging a time before him. I don't know how to explain it, but like, I really like that echo. And it has like a vague but sort of profound quality to me.

Well, yeah, but it's that thing of falling in love with someone and being like, no, but I've known you forever since before we existed. And how is it possible that you at some point didn't exist? That's not possible. Yeah. No, that's, yes. You're right. The little creatures are not crabs. The creatures of love.

A man can drive a car and a woman can be a boss. A woman can be a boss. This is a proto-girl boss anthem. There we go. The Barbie movie predicted. That's right. 30 years. I must say, and I know this will be way after the fact that no one's talking about the Barbie movie anymore at this point.

But I do take umbrage. Not all women, hashtag, would be upset by a man playing. You're going to do it. Matchbox 20's push on acoustic guitar for four hours. That sounds wonderful to me. That's a perfect date. Is it Ryan Gosling? That's even more perfect with his gorgeous voice.

Shout out dead man's bones. I'm just saying, how dare you stereotype all women when there's women like me, you know? I thought you were, are you, where are you on the Stephen Malkmus reference? That's a little more kind. Yeah, that guy's, that guy is annoying. That guy is a reply guy. That's fine. That one I was like, this one, this one hits.

Okay. No, I get you. I get you. Rob Thomas was like, I'm just glad they didn't. Oh, well, push you. Well, how will. Honestly, give Gawzing the fucking Oscar for that alone. I don't know if he's going to be in the Oscar conversation.

He should. He should. He should be. He should be. Just for mimicking fucking Rob Thomas's beautiful voice. Anyways, we've digress. Anyways. The latest.

Lady don't mind is a really good song. I like the beep, beep, beep, beep in the song, because I often, to myself. Yeah, I do a lot of beep beep, beep to myself around the house for no reason. There's the pig voice halfway through, stay up late, like just out of the first chorus. Yeah, it's a good non-sequitur David Byrne voice or character, just very valuable. And Road to Nowhere, man, I mean, Road to Nowhere is a jam. It slaps. I first heard this song in reality bites, and I'm going to tell you something.

It's in reality bite. I forgot about that. Yeah. It's the closing credits to the pilot television episode that she makes for In Your Face TV, which is how much they've been off like. Yeah, where they cut it up and make it horrible. That would be a better movie, actually. Yeah, at the end, it's, oh, they.

play wrong, which I am not ashamed to admit it to you guys, and I probably should be, but I absolutely did think that was a Pink Floyd song for much longer than I should have. It's fine. It's a very upbeat Pink Floyd song. I will say that. I don't know a lot of Pink Floyd songs. It's on my list. That's fine.

I deeply would like to get, I'm interested in Pink Floyd conceptually. And they were very hot also, but I just haven't spent time. with the dark side of the moon at all, but I will. Okay. So Ryan Gosling singing comfortably numb to you for four hours on the beach of Barbie land. So far not exactly what I want, but maybe it will be. Okay. Tita said for Rojanoa, she uses the same bass rhythm from burning down the house.

Do you hear that? Most important about Roach Nowhere is the video is extremely cool. It is. It absolutely is. Co-directed by David Byrne and Stephen R. Johnson. I want to tell you a fun little fact. Well, two fun little facts. One is there's another video from this album that Jim Jarmish directed.

What? The lady, the lady, don't mind. The one that won the MTV Video Vanguard Award was Road to Nowhere. David was not there. He did one of those things where you accept via a little video. And in the video, he was in a laundromat in Texas.

We know why, because he's making that movie. But you know who was in attendance at the MTV? video music awards of whatever the fuck year this was 86 or whatever. Basquiat, Keith Herring, and Andy Warhol. Dope. Now it's like Addison Ray, if they even make it happen. Like the only people they can fucking get to show up are like, Logan Paul. Yeah. Wow. We used to be a fucking proper country is all I'm saying. Yeah. Definitely I think their best album

cover in my humble opinion. That's interesting. My tastes are, to my tastes. It was painted by the outsider artist, Reverend Howard Finster of Summerville, Georgia, who received visions from God, then rendered his holy hallucinations in tractor enamel, which I absolutely relate to because the t-shirt that I recently made. Okay. That has the anime girls that says, never for money always for love, came to me in a dream, like a vision. And then I made it. So I too. With tractor enamel, though?

No, I made it out of screen print. But I'm just saying some of us receive visions from God and make art out of them. Now, R.E.M. is who had initially put Reverend Howard Finster on the map, on the art world map, because they had filmed the video for Radio Free Europe in his Paradise Gardens, which is where he put all the sculptures, 46,000 pieces of sculpture, if you will, from the God visions. And then also Michael Stipe and Finster had collaborated on a painting for the cover of the R&M album, Reckoning. The song Maps and Legends off of Fables of the Reconstruction is an homage to Finster. Anyways, that made him like a cool art guy. So they were putting his art in like New York galleries. And then David saw it that way.

And he said, can you do the Little Creatures album cover? This looks like one of those album covers that for sure benefits from the vinyl format, right? Like this is, there's a ton of, a ton of wording. Yeah. This is not a thumbnail situation. Yeah. So this is very cool. You're right. Reverend Finster did not, his vision from God did not

include iTunes. Presuppose streaming and how it would be like a little God mad actually about that. The back cover is just them wearing like quote unquote wacky, very colorful clashing outfits. You know, I don't know if Paisley is the right way to describe anything that's occurring here. Chris is wearing a pink tuxedo. I looked at this back cover a lot. I'm looking at this and I'm seeing as I saw it as a seven-year-old. It's like, who are these people?

You were like, they seem fun. They do seem fun. They're not smiling, but they do seem fun. I'm looking at it. I think there was one item of Paisley. It looks like one of Tina's skirts, although I can't get close enough. But yeah, this is a good time.

It's giving cum to Garsohn. I like it. They did Chris France dirty with that sequin pink jacket, but otherwise. Wow. Gorge. I don't know if he was the most fashionable member of this band. Also, I'm confused.

I thought David Byrne was taller than everybody. That's a really excellent point. That's a really, really excellent point. My head is spinning. Yeah, this is the way it is presented here. Is it a Tom Cruise type situation where it's just, he is just filmed very carefully? Yeah, that's wild. Yeah.

They're also, they're also a 70s band that's becoming real. fucking 80s. This is, it is, this is an extremely 80s situation all the way around. All of it. And she was the back album cover of the videos. Okay. Here is what the Rolling Stone review said. Because Talking Heads have spoiled us with the richness of their music for nine years,

we have come to expect a bold advance with each new album. So what is it here? Gregorian disco or perhaps Electro Shakuhaquatchi or Indo-Punk? Actually, Little Creatures is a retreat from the avant-garde. a retreat that begins immediately in the cover art. That feels right. Do you feel like maybe David Byrne had found his home and he was like maybe a little bit less seeking of the libidinal forces inside of himself that made him want to like push the

envelope musically? I think that's true. And that makes a little more sense to me than the word retreat. Right? Like I, if you go all the way back, right, to 77 or whatever, like, they, like, they. They've never sounded like this before, you know, and they sound like more of a conventional pop group in a way that makes sense to you in 1985. But, like, I don't see this as a retreat or a regression.

But I just, I agree with you completely that there is a very domestic sort of manic pixie dream girl, but chill about it sort of vibe to this record. But I, it's one of those things where you can talk yourself into it being radical as an experiment in just being a pop band. Right. Like they've done, they've done so many wilds and revolutionary things audio visually that like just them making a fairly straight ahead pop record is itself, you know, like a revolutionary

sort of radical feeling proposition. You know, this record won Pa's and Jop in 1985 that the village voice critics poll. It was the best record of the year according to the experts. That seems insane because I want to let you know that Hounds of Love came out also in 1985. Kay Bush.

Might have heard of it. Number 18. Number 18. I'm sorry. Not quite. Yeah. No, that's tough. That's not quite as good as John Fogarty's center field. For example.

The replacement's Tim. Brough. You guys. are not all over there at John Cougar Mellon Camp The Hadesdae. They do be 80s. I just had a thought that it's also like interesting as we get into the next stuff that happens.

It almost feels like David Byrne he raged against the machine of the big suit. Do you know what I mean? For so long. Like, and really culminating in this like visual. Like I'm trapped in the prison of the big suit and this is what normal people are like. And then he,

it's almost like the thing maybe like he got he hit adulthood, right? He's like 33 around this time. And maybe sort of, I don't want to put words into his mouth, but like maybe we all do this is like realize that you can actually

make it however you want it. You know what I mean? And then this sort of gets him more interested in the weirdness of the everyday. Do you know what I mean? Like,

Sure. It's almost like he had discounted like wholeheartedly that there would be freaky weirdness and art in the flyover states in normalcy or whatever. But come to realize actually that's the freakiest weirdest places of all. Yes. And that's maybe leads us into true stories. Right. Yeah. That he is living in New York City is probably relevant.

to that, you know, a 33-year-old or whatever in New York City versus anywhere else is a very different sort of person. Is your brain broken the way my brain is broken just from our age where to this day when someone says New York City, I can only immediately hear the Pace

Picante cowboy who goes, New York City. Do you do what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. That is a synapse in my brain that will never be broken. Pace Piccani sauce is made in San Antonio with fresh vegetables and spices by people who know what pecanay sauce is supposed

to taste like. This stuff's made in New York City. New York City. Why is that so resonant? Why is that one of the most? Because it was on all the time when we were kids. Okay. So it's just blunt force repetition.

And it was like needle drop New York City. And then they like ousted the man from me, really good. I hope it won a Cleo or whatever. I would not buy a paste pecanter salsa if you put a. gut in my mouth, but I'll always remember they add. Are you like a salsa snob? I do. I do.

I do. I would prefer like a really good salsa if I'm having salsa. Sure you would. You know. Yeah. It's, it's, I can get a paste pecanque salta salsa jar. Yeah, you live in Ohio, but. You live in Los Angeles.

Okay. It's different. Fair enough. And here is where the twain shall meet in true stories. So here's what happens. David, he wants to make a movie. He's an author. He brings some tabloid clippings and photos that he's become obsessed with,

including one of a little girl standing in the middle of the road, and one of a fat man holding a sign that says, looking for a wife. To a screenwriter that Jonathan Demi had introduced him to, Stephen Tabalski. And he was like, uh, babe, can you write a script out of this? Here's, I just picture him just like dropping a pile of loose clippings onto this man's desk and being like make this into a screenplay and the man being like babe comma write me a script right yeah and the guy's like you got it chief and to his honestly huge credit tabalski sat down

and was like okay uh sure how about a celebration of a town and then Warner brothers pictures was like great here's three million dollars what a time to fucking be alive literally we have We have five tabloid clippings, a loose idea, and a dream. And Warner Brothers is like, here's $3 million. You're the thinking man's rock star. He wanted the members of the band to be in it, but he had apparently written Tina as a prostitute and Chris as a pimp. So they were like, that's okay. We're going to pass.

Thank you so much for the offer. It's just coincidence. Yeah. Did you watch this in anticipation of our recording or are you lazy? That's like a false binary. Or do you not value our time to? together. Okay.

Jesus Christ. I haven't seen this in a while. I remember it quite fondly. I will defer to you on the details of it, but I do. I like this movie quite a bit as the culmination of this David Byrne master's thesis on normal, imprisoned weirdos, right? This is like the sort of the gentle, the kind, the understanding. You know, it's like, oh, you, people are people.

people too is sort of what David Byrne realizes. It bummed me out when you said that like he was bummed out that this didn't become like a huge success. That's like a very David Byrne notion to think that this movie was going to like hit it big at the multi-plex in Yurika Missouri. Yeah, exactly. And I just, I just remember I cherish this movie for having just a very dazed like, wow. Like it's you guys just just eat hot dogs like sort of vibe to it. It's like the old, he's like a space alien who landed, you know, in a field, you know, and just he's filled with wonder at every mundane thing everybody around him is doing. And like he's trying to make Paris, Texas, you know, and he doesn't.

But, you know, he makes, he makes something very sweet and very singular and very disarming, you know, with a better soundtrack than I think people remember. Soundtrack is amazing. So he cast John Goodman as the lead and Spalding Gray as Earl Culver, a man who has not spoken to his wife in years. And then he puts himself in it as I don't know himself and wearing various different cowboy hats and cowboy outfits. A lot of hats. A man like myself loves a costume. I loved this movie, too. To me it felt very much like what if David Lynch was a silly goose.

Do you know what I mean? No, sure. There's a straight story X decades before that happens vibe to it. Absolutely. There's like a lynchian element, but without any of the darkness. It's just, yeah, I just, I love it. So in the film, the actors sing the songs that the talking heads had written. And I like this.

I like this duality to the whole thing. They released some singles that way, too. Like also in the film, Tito Lavaria, he's in this movie. You might know him. He was in the L.A. punk band The Plugs. He sings that song Radiohead. I think it's at like some sort of like dance. right like a dance hall or whatever which is the song that tom york and his pals names their little band after

on a friday you hear that song and they're like on a friday is a very bad rock band they're like what about radio head the john goodman rendition of people like us i believe you said you teared up i did i weeped i wept i weeped both what's right i get it it is it is Yes, there's something very sweet about it. We don't want freedom. We don't want justice. We just want someone to love. Yeah.

And just he just, he belts it, right? Like he sings it the way John Goodman. Where are we on the John Goodman arc? Like Roseanne hasn't happened, right? Am I? No.

And as David Burns said, and I really wish I remember which actor he's talking about because he tried to cast someone else in the role of John Goodman. They said no. And he was like, well, he could have been on Roseanne now. Yeah. But unfortunately, I do not remember who it was.

Yeah, it's fantastic. I wonder why they chose to make the soundtrack, the talking heads doing the songs. Right. So periodically, I'm what at this point? This is 19. So I'm eight years old. Periodically, MTV is banned in my house if my mom happens to come in and something untoward is occurring or something.

out of pocket. And so, but there was a channel on cable. It was like some like movie channel preview action and they would run the trailer for true stories and they would run the videos that they made for. Such good videos. True stories. And so like love for sale is they're chocolate people, right? Like they pour the chocolate out.

And wild wildlife is like sort of like a karaoke type situation. Absolutely slept on song also. puzzling evidence like the gruff dude the gruff like preacher dude who does puzzling evidence got what you wanted lost what you had like so i would watch that just over and over again and my little brother would watch it with me and then we were in the car once and love for sale came on and my brother was like oh chocolate people this is the chocolate people so and my mom was like what do you mean chocolate people and i she found out about the whole scheme and so then i couldn't watch this channel

either. I really dig people like us that there's two versions, that there's a David Vern version and the John Goodman version. And I, it would be weird to listen to the movie versions without watching the movie, right?

Like, it's just like, who are these people most of them? Like, it's a real artist. He would have put it out that way. Isn't there like a thing? I feel like I remember from the Roger Ebert review of this. Like he, there's like a bunch of twins. Many, many, many, many, many sets of twins.

Right. And so, like, that's, that's an artist. That's anuteur. They mention twins once or twice in the film, but I didn't, I didn't, like, I wasn't struck by a abundance of twins, but maybe he did it subtly. Wild wildlife is so good. You just maybe to remember how good wildlife. People don't talk about it, actually, that that's, like, that's a true banger.

It is. And love for sale. is awesome. Like I, that's, if you've ever thought to call them hard rockin or harder rockin, like that's where you do like just a do do do do do do it. It doesn't.

It doesn't in like a talking head song. It doesn't in like a really cool way. And that's the first song, right? Like once again, like within 10 seconds, you are in just a completely different environment. You know,

with what feels like the same band, but not really. And that's like a very underrated, very difficult thing to do that they did just over and over. So according to the Bowman book, David Byrne really thought this movie and this album was going to make Talking Hudson so huge. I can't attest if this is, there's no direct quote. So this is, I'm just thirdhand saying what Bowman thought.

But the one fact that we do know is that Talking Heads got asked to play. Motherfucking Live Aid, okay? Oh, God. Live aid. How many people saw all that? Live Aid. Do you know off the top of your head? Not off the top of my head, but it's like easily the biggest. Whatever. Let's just say everyone in the world watched it on TV, basically.

I was going to say that Live Aid is probably by default, like the most watched musical events, like in history, right? Like, adjusting for how many people in like the absence of the internet or whatever. Like, I don't know if you're ever going to get a situation of X tens millions of people. 1.9 billion. Yeah, that's not happening again. In 150 nations. And David Byrne was like, we're good, babe. Thank you so much.

Now, they could have been you too. Could they have been, though? No, people have been like, I zimbra, get out of here. I don't want that. Man, what would they have played? We want pride in the name of love. Yeah, we want queen. We want literally queen.

Yeah. They're not. Talking answer wasn't exactly making. jock jams per se. Regardless, I think it would have been beneficial for their career. I think so. I think that's fair to say, yes. You know their manager was like, I'm going to fucking kill myself. Anyways, according to Jerry, he said that would have catapulted us the way it did Peter, Gabriel, and YouTube. We would have been one of the top bands in the world. The opportunity was ours to take because David was so obsessed with this movie, we did not go. Okay, instead, all the band members have to move to L.A. temporarily because David Byrne had moved there into the Hollywood Hills, the Dell. And to make the stuff, the true story is made $2.5 million at the box office. If you'll recall, it cost more than that. So that was bad. But they still, after this, put David Byrne on the cover of Time magazine with the headline Rocks Renaissance Man.

Jesus. Rock's Renaissance man and the Thinking Man's rock star. And the thinking man's rock star. And then the rest of the band is like, cool, cool. Yeah. It's cool. That's pretty cool. So the vibes are bad, I'm assuming.

They didn't play Live Aid. They don't, he's on the cover of time. The movie doesn't do well. Now, he also doesn't want a tour. So they're not making money because he won't tour. He's making money, I think. I think he is. I think there was a book.

that he made related. It's just like the script of true stories with some pictures in it or something. They had a book deal. Yeah, I think he's probably doing okay. I don't know. I'm not as financial accountant, but I presume he was doing okay. Finally in the spring of 1987, they're like, okay, let's make another record. So they all get together, but they have not written any songs.

So they start improvising in New York. But it's not really going. It's not going, babe. So they're like, what if we go somewhere totally different and new? And guess what time it is? It's time to bonge. we're going to Paris. They're like, bange, let's go to Paris.

The long con. That's right. It's all been leading up. You've been waiting to do that for seven hours. Yeah, bonged, a shoehorn bong in here. No bonged before it's time. Congratulations. All right.

This is 1988. The tide is shifting. Pixies have put out surfer Rosa. Jane's addiction is nothing shocking. All of this is happening. dinosaur junior bug, you forget that all these things that I think we associate as 90s things started in 86 and 7 and 8, you know? Yes. That's the cool shit that's happening.

And talking heads are like, here's naked. You know what I hear in naked? It doesn't, it's not anything musical. This feels like terror twilight to me. This feels, it's sort of in retrospect, like I'm projecting onto it, but it's like the bands. running out of gas as like a band in real time. But Terror Twilight has, has had such a cultural reckoning.

Right, that's true. No, and I do understand that. This record isn't terrible. Nothing about flowers is good. That's what I was about to say. There is nothing but flowers, sax and violins, and then like the rest of it. And so, yes, nothing but flowers.

I got no trouble with anyone who says that's the best their favorite talking at song. That song is unbelievable. Wasn't Saxon violins not even on the album, though? That it's not. And that's, I understand musically. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is.

It doesn't sound sax of violins like the rest of the record at all, but it's the second best song in the record by like a lot. I love that song. I feel like I heard that song for the first time. I'm, we had them on cassette. It was like, we're getting into the greatest hits era, right? Like, where I, I feel like there was possibly even a double, I don't know if it was a double disc, but a double tape cassette, talking heads greatest hits that might have been posthumous. And like, or after the band broke up.

And sax and violins was like the last song, was like a bonus track. And that's where I found it. And that's, you know, and sugar on my tongue. was on that too, I want to say. And so it's very important to add those two songs into the canon at that point. I just even, even

adding Stephen Lillywhite to mix. You'll do anything to bring Dave into this. That's right. David and Matthew is the Llewhite Sessions, Steve Lily White, the god, the king. I mean, I'm sorry, he also did several iconic U-2 albums. Yeah, right. Okay,

you two also. Sure. Also, I didn't know this, but Chris is brother had a band called Urban Verbs, and Lily White had worked with them, which is how Chris France suggested him, which I found very interesting. Yeah, this album to me, no thoughts, just vibes. I don't care about it. I'm sorry. I don't think the record has many thoughts either. I don't think that's, I don't think you're necessarily discarding it by saying that. I, can I tell you what Bobby Criscow said? Please. I, this is going to be, yes. We're a pulse. Oh, yeah, this is post-graceland. Yeah, that's very important.

That's very important, yes. Graceland bangs, though. Sorry, I know it's not okay. I can say a little bit. Yeah, it's fine. Just like the Smith's albums are good. I'm sorry if these people do that things. Grandfathered in.

Okay. Where Paul Simon appropriated African musicians, David Byrne just hires them for better and worse. This is T-heads funk heavy on the horns, which aren't fussy or obtrusive because Byrne knew where to get fresh ones. What's African about it from an American perspective, is that the words don't matter. It signifies sonically.

I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that sentiment. The big exception is the glorious nothing but flowers, a jive at ecology fetishism. That's very resuring in this context. B plus. B plus. He's really just doling out the B pluses.

A minus. This one, B plus. So just one small notch down from stop making sense. Nothing but flowers also. as sort of the de facto farewell. It's also honestly not even that good. If you listen to it outside of the context of this album, it's just fine.

It's just really good in the context of this album because everything else is so mid. It's very, very, very good within the context of the album makes everything around it better. But like I, Nothing But Flowers is another song that I've heard people say they've played at weddings very successfully. I don't go to these weddings.

I want to, I'm not cool enough. to be at these cool talking heads weddings. But like I, something about the regression, the ecological regression, you know, this is the end of the bands. You know,

the Pizza Hut is, you know, it's, it's that book after us or whatever. Well, the Pizza Hut is overgrown with daisies, right? Oh, right, right.

The Dairy Queen, the Pizza Hut. I, yes, it's, this is not only the band ending, but like, Not the world ending, like our world ending, you know, the world taking back itself and leaving us, you know, with our abandoned pizza huts.

It's just a very poignant and very sad, but also like incredibly joyous song. Yeah, okay. It's pretty good. You're right. Thank you. I'm just mad about this album because it's like, you just made one too many. Yeah, but don't they all do that. And some of them make 10 to 12 too many.

Do you have any experience with American Utopia with his, I think he's already on to the next. He's on to the Amelda Marcos Broadway musical now. But previously, David Byrne had a musical called American Utopia. Then I think it was like COVID era. And like they put it on HBO a couple of years ago. It's really good. Like it's, and it's like as I've been saying like it's one of the 50 times that I've seen David Byrne play a bunch of talking head songs, not with talking heads.

And it's like a sort of obnoxious on that level. But like, it's a really good, just sort of David Byrne greatest hits, kind of musical. But it's a music? Is there a story? There is no story. There's no. John Paul John stole the bread and he's. No, there's no bread.

I mean, he talks. But then how is it a musical? I, okay. So it's just, it's a, it's a jukebox. But even that has a story. I don't know, man. I don't know the terminology. There's, if you, I know the song Blind really annoys some people I know.

Like, it's just, it's one of the rantier David Byrne talking heads songs. But like there's, if you're ever going to like the song Blind, you're going to like the American Utopia version of Blind. Like, they're all in silhouette. Like, it's just, I feel like the HBO version came out like in the middle of like heavy COVID lockdown. And I sort of gravitated. I'll watch anything.

And it's the togetherness of it and like the idea of watching like a Broadway thing. You know, it's something about the communal nature of it was very moving to me at that exact moment. Well, that's nice. Yeah. But it's a mid-album. Like it's, yeah. I watched Monk from the beginning. Also an absolutely valid spiritual communal.

I was not in community with anybody. Unfortunately, it was just me watching Monk. Okay, never mind then. I think David Byrne would have made a great cameo in Monk now that I think about it. He could have been like Monk's like weird brother, but that's already John Tartoro. I don't know. Okay. Yeah.

I'm going to defer to you on Monk. Corn is in it. Which is pretty cool. Corn, the band. That's right. Mr. Monk goes on their tour bus. It's a great episode. He does not.

Yes, he does. No, that's correct. It's a real thing. Corn is spelled it for him. Sorry to interrupt. It was a great sound. Very, very musical. I wish I could understand more of the woods.

Do you have a lady's room? Yeah, we have a bathroom. Our bus driver detox is in there right now. One of the finest episodes of television. I can't believe I don't know that. I know. How stupidest. Okay.

So tell me how the talking heads ends, because from what I pieced together, there was no, like, big thing or fight or decision they just heard about it through the press, the other members that David Byrne had been like there's no more talking heads? Is that correct? Broadly speaking,

that's the vibe I always got. And like, thinking about the traumatic band breakups of our generation, right? It's like the pixies breaking up via facts or whatever. I don't know if there was something that pointed. Why was you too involved in all of these? I feel.

And bitchy. Oh, my God. Right. There's something to do with you too on the. You too. I'm going to make one of those red string boards. Suttly destroying all the competition, you know, or like whatever happened to the police, you know, like just the ranker.

Also Bono. Also Bono. And so, yeah, it's, I had a very anecdotal sense at the time that just, that David Byrne just wasn't into it anymore, you know, and sort of the next thing that happens is the heads record, which sort of suggests very strongly Do you mean no talking just heads? And the next thing that happens is many years later because naked comes out in 88.

I mean, there's some sort of box set. And then this is in 96. I'm not going to lie to you. I had never heard this. I didn't even know it existed somehow. I knew it existed, but I had never heard it. It almost makes me sad to picture myself, 1996, I'm 18, like in a Camelot Records,

with $20 doing that I got $20 I got $20 I can buy one album and seeing I remember this cover. And you bought Pinkerton. And I bought Pinkerton. Exactly. It's like if you gave me 25 options, if I could buy 25 records, like this would not be one of the 25 records. You bought the single to, uh, I want to push you around for how we'll, how I bought that whole record. I'll have you know. Me too.

Fucking jams. Jams on jams. So no, in a broad sense, they want to keep going. He doesn't. You know, I'm sure they would love to reform. That's obviously not happening. Like, this is the divide, you know, that just, it just stops. And, you know, this is the number one reunion I would love, would have loved to see.

You never know. Coachella might really pull together money. I don't know. But I don't think they're going to because it doesn't feel like a money thing at all. Well, also, no, the Coachella doesn't care because that would only attract the old ones who are not going to go to Coachella. Well, right. This is a fucking who's the Stone Roses situation. Like, it's that window.

I was there. I was there for that Coachella. I really much enjoyed the Stone Roses set, but it's true that many people did not care. So, I don't know. I see you wanting to completely skip over. No talking just heads, but we're not doing that. I don't, but yeah, that's. You do want to.

You're really trying to get, you were getting to wrap up talk just there. I heard you. You were lofty ideas of re- No, no, we're talking about. No talking just heads. Because honestly, some of these tracks fucking go. Do they? Okay.

Okay. The Johnette Napolitano, first track, damage I've done, is actually really good and sort of like trip-hoppy and weird. It's a very of the era album, which I was kind of surprised about. Like, gone is the grace land of it all. There's some of these are good. Also, they got the fact that I didn't hear about this stuff, that you didn't hear about this is crazy.

They got some of the huge names. Michael Hutchins, Debbie Harry. Yeah. Richard Howell, like it's the idea, going all the way back to the beginning, like, Debbie Harry fronting, talking heads functioning.

It's like, okay. I'll listen to four minutes of that. It is okay. The best one, in my opinion, which is kind of a shocker. I don't think anyone would expect this. Is the Ed Qualichick one. Indy hair.

It's really good. It's really good. And you know that man came in via Jerry Harrison, as we had already said, Jerry Harrison, by this time, big record producer produces. The placenta is still on the floor. Everybody's stepping over it. And the old mother cries. And it bangs. Also, Sean Ryder is on this, which gives me the opportunity to mention that also insanely, Chris and Tina produced the Happy Monday's album. That's insane, but also makes sense. But it's also like the really insane one. It's the Yes Please album, which is most notably insane, because is this not the one that is immortalized in 24-hour party people where Sean Ryder goes to Barbados and just does a million drugs and makes no music? This is the one that poor Chris and Tina are involved in. A million drugs is the exact figure.

Yes, I believe that absolutely. So, so gorgeous. Anyways, all I'm saying is give no talking just heads in and other chance. There's some good tunes on there. You want to know what Robert Criscoe gave that? A B-minus. What? Man, Bob is hard to read.

I don't know anymore. I can't say. I think the two tracks that jump out at me, well, let's see. The Richard Hell is cool. The drumbeat has like a take-me-to-the-river vibe to it. Like, I just... The Jonet Napa Thelino's... song I mispronounce that. I'm sorry, but like, it's, it's, it's too, it's too alt rock. It's like the chorus,

the, the, the verses are very soft and the chorus is very loud. It was 1996. That's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's to say that one. I can't remember her name, but apparently there was a girl that they actually called the punk Lolita who lived in San Francisco. It was in the Chris France book. So that's based on a real person. Okay. The one with Andy Partridge from XTC, paper snow, like that's a cool idea.

But yeah, the Andy Partridge one is good, too. I'm just saying, don't sleep. It occurred to me, now that we're wrapping up the talking head. It was very interesting that this sort of like iconic CBGB's scene that yielded so much mythology, right? It really was like two types of people that built this, but it started with heady intellectuals. And the talking heads are part of that tradition. Patty Smith, that whole sort of, I mean, talking hands are art school kids, but like the the failed poet to rock star pipeline, which you would never even imagine.

Very fertile, yes. And then there was like the remote. You know? Right. Yeah. I do not want to know what as a teenager I thought CBGB was or what punk was, but I didn't think it was this. And I was quite delighted to discover that it was kind of this.

Even if it's only like 30 seconds, like, where are you on the Tom Tom Club posts beyond genius of love. Is this a band you spent? I don't know her. I saw them live. I'm going to say 2010. How was it? That sounds really cool, though.

It was cool. It was in New York City. It was at Irving Plaza. And it was just a very downtown New York cool, you know, now millionaires living wherever they live now. You know, like it's just, it didn't. They did good. Maria Carey did well for them.

precisely and there's there was one record i think it was 2000 the good the bad and the funky it's like the fourth or fifth record they made and i reviewed it for like alternative press or something like at random they were like can you do this my shirt like i really liked it like there's a really cool yeah it's i i i'm not going to argue with the straight face that it is anywhere equal to the talking Heads is like a catalog is like a body of work. Like genius of love is this hilarious like money making like actual pop song anomaly. Like that's a very fun part of the story. But like I it's a it's a weird catalog that spans.

Like they put out a record. I mean now it's 10, 11 years ago, but like they put out a record in 2012. Like, you know, it's this band lasted longer than Talking Heads did. you know, in some fashion. I mean, everyone is still making stuff, right? Like, Jerry Harrison is like an ongoing album producer. He's done so much stuff. He's also touring.

He toured with somebody doing Remain and Light. They came to Columbus, like very recently. What kind of somebody are we talking about, like, just some random guy? Was it Adrian Bill U? It was Adrian. Bill U. I think it was. It was, yeah.

Yeah. That's kind of cool. I would have gone to that. I should have gone to that. I believe it was here. It was in Columbus. And David Byrne, like you said, he made a musical. His tutuit writing is by ground town.

He has David Byrne radio on his website. Some choice selections of the last couple of months are David Byrne presents Ethiopian jazz. David Byrne presents stomping brass for a new year. David Byrne presents Turkey is amazing. The country or the... One can only presume, but I didn't click on it. I didn't click on it to know, but I have to presume he's talking about the country. So, you know what?

He's out here. He's out here doing stuff. He made a record with St. Vincent, dude. Did he have to do you? You know what's a good David Byrne not talking his record is the second Brianino record. I forgot. It was 2008. It's called everything that happens will happen today.

And, like, again, like, it's not equal to whatever your favorite of either of those guys is. But, like, it's a pretty good record for those two guys in 2008. I like that they're still friends. Yeah, I want to say that I saw them tour it at Radio City Music Hall. And, like, it was, like, half talking heads, like, old classics, right? But, like, it was really cool, you know, and the songs. newer songs did not feel gratuitous than anomalous within, you know, the greatest hits thing. When I lived in New York City, it was David Byrne and Questlove, where the two dudes you would see

everywhere. Any show you went to there. Yep, he two toots away on the bike. Like, that's just David Byrne was just a presence. Has David Byrne become a living big suit? Like, in the sense that he is a more of a sign and a symbol than a person. person at this point. Do you know what I mean?

Like if you're going to make one of like a Mount Rushmore. Right. You're going to slap some people on it. David Byrne is surely one of the people. Yes. He's always doing something very weird and like kind of annoying if you're not into him, but kind of tremendously charming if you are. Not annoying, though, the way Tom Morello is annoying.

You're right. Those are two very. very different energies and I do know what you mean. Yes. But they're like the stewards of guitar rock music. Well, through, I hope I'm pronouncing luaca bop, like through the record label like David Byrne has sort of taken it upon himself to be a certain type of record collectors like ambassador to a certain type of world music. Right. And it's like if you know a lot about the universe he's playing and maybe you find that a little irritating and superficial, or maybe he's opening people's eyes, you know, to like Ethiopian jazz.

Before I let you go, we need to hear from the beautiful Talking Heads fan voices. Let's hit it. Talking Heads was extremely influential in my character development. To me, the Talking Heads were one of those threshold bands in high school and college. Like, I knew someone was dynamic and appreciated good music if they liked the Talking Heads. If you're able to attach the word punk to a band as inspired by world music as a band like the talking heads is, I think you create this relatability that people who are looking for something with a little bit more bite or a little bit more aggression are able to make a connection with. Before, I had only listened to rap and kind of mainstream pop music.

I was involved in the hardcore scene growing up. I was kind of like a sheep. I didn't feel like I had any kind of individuality. I just wanted to be like everybody else. When I first heard the talking heads, the context in which it was presented to me was punk music. But it was a different kind of punk music that I had never heard. I think the first time I heard them was in the car with my mom.

Burning Down the house came on the radio. when I was super young and she was just belting it and jamming out and it was one of those few times I wasn't embarrassed of her singing and acting out because the song was actually really good.

In college I was working at a Barnes & Noble in Richmond, Virginia and one of the older employees who worked in the CD section had great taste, you know, and I was a freshman in college and I was, you know, downloading stuff off nabster. You know, I just knew Psycho Killer

and you got me two restaurants, more songs about buildings and food, and the Kings, something else by the Kings. And I'd never heard it before. So when I got home, I torrented speaking in tongues, and the rest is sort of history. That was like the gateway drug into the talking head's universe for me, and I never went back.

Then I heard this must be the place at 25, which is a little late, but from then on, I became so engrossed in rock and roll from all role from all decades in a vinyl collector, and I embrace my weirdness and my individuality now. And it was something about at the time when I was young and indie and loving, like, lonesome, crowded West and getting into television and radio head and all these things, and it was like, wow, this record has all of that at its core. Using the word punk to co-sign something like that, immediately gives someone with a little bit of a narrow worldview

a little bit more of a ledge to grab onto. David Burden's messages about love and society and all of it still feel equally as relevant as when they came out, even though I wasn't alive then. I couldn't imagine what life would be like if I never heard that song. Okay, well, gorgeous. Beautiful.

I can't believe I waited until now to say this, but did you see that tweet that was circulating where the person was like, what is the greatest American band? Is it the Grateful Dead? This is one of these discourses where I'm like 5% sad to not be engaged in and 95% like thrilled. I could not care less about the, the non-knowable answer to this, the literal unknowable because there's no such thing. I was going to ask you if a consensus is formed. A lot of people said talking heads, which just made me think that they are part of at the very least canon of greatest American rock bands. That's very nice to hear. I saw a lot of people say Tom Petty.

Sure. Not a band, but okay. And the heartbreakers. Right. No, I am not really engaged. Producer Jesse made an excellent point in which he said that, ah, yes, the Grateful Dead. A band so amazing that the rest of the world heard it. and said, we're all set on that.

Thank you. You guys, American, yes, you can keep it. Not polarizing at all. Literally the rest of the world could care. The Grateful Dead is not even set foot, I don't think, on European soil. That's obviously wrong, but you know, you get what I'm saying. Like, they've never been like, come to Brazil. You know what I mean?

The truest wrong thing you've ever said. But you get. That's very funny. There's a group of bands that are the most American in the sense. that the rest of the world absolutely is not interested, and it's jam bands. They do not fucking want them. Is that the actual question? The question is the most American band that doesn't signify outside of America?

No, the question was what's the greatest American rock band? And I would just assume that if the band has not crossed over into any other place but America, perhaps they are not the greatest American rock band. No, your question is better. And you're right that it is, it's just fish or after the grateful day. Right. Now it's time for Rob Harvilla to go, babe. Thank you for joining us, Bobby Harvilles.

Again, the pleasure and honor of my life to speak to you until you invoked fish. Sorry. See you for the fifth time when we do Tool. Come back next week for a new episode of Bansplaine. Goodbye. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Banspline. Our guest today was Rob Harvilla. You can follow him on Twitter at Harvilla.

This episode was produced by Jesse Miller Gordon. edited by Adrian Bridges, with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bansplain are Gina Delvac and me, Yossi Salink. Huge, huge thanks to the Talking Heads mega fans you heard on this episode. Michael Bingham, Billy Jones, Sarah Derballa, and Anna Zucaro. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos De LaGarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper

Rupert and also Casey Simonson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Mearsson, Jessica Hopper, and the goat protein powder I have recently been taking. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. I was hoping that you would answer the question so I could take a break in after sustenance. I totally blew the yogurt break there. That's my fault.