U Talkin’ U2 To Me? - U Talkin' Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head? - More Songs About Buildings and Food

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Scott and Scott discuss Talking Heads’ second studio album “More Songs About Buildings and Food.” They also talk about unexplainable events in their lives, MAD Magazine, and Adam’s failed Traveling Wilburys late night bit.

from e to zimbra this is you You talking... Talking Heads... To my talking head? The comprehensive and encyclopedia compendium of all things talking heads. This is good. Rock and roll. Music?

Did I get the title right? Yeah, I think the debate was is it the the the current title are you talking heads to my talking head or are you talk are are you talking it's not even r the r is not in there in the first place oh it's you it's. Let me look at the logo. What is it? Let me see if I can find a logo. You talking, talking. You talking, you talking within apostrophe. You talking, talking heads. To my talking head.

That's what it is. You talking, talking heads to my talking head. But my. Your pitch was. My pitch was you talking, talking heads to my head that's talking? No, thank you. Which I do not think is better, so don't... Look, it's a zero-sum game.

Both suck. Make no mistake. Zero-sum is right. Speaking of... Why am I yelling? I feel i yelling i feel like i don't know usually you're because you're recording in your closet usually you are uh silent as the grave you're trying to whisper as to not uh tip your children off as to your abhorrent nature you know what's going on is that recording here in my closet, rather than in the studio when we can hear ourselves in our headphones, I cannot hear myself in my headphones. So it's just, that's why I have one of my headphones sort of off my ear so I can hear myself. Do you hear yourself in your headphones, Scott? I have a iPod in in this year underneath this

pair of headphones in order to hear myself tell me how you do how do you do that you buy a second okay let's go back to the beginning the big bang do you know what that is uh well it's the beginning of everything right the universe yeah exactly a giant explosion in the universe which created everything um smash cut to sorry is this an episode of talking about the bang i think it might be hey everyone welcome to Talking About The Bang. This is Scott. And this is Scott. And this is just a show where we talk about all things bang.

Whether it be the Big Bang. Comedy Bang Bang. Comedy Bang Bang. Whether it be the Big Bang Theory. Whether it be Bang Bang Into Your Heart. Whether it be Should I Get Bangs? Or be should i get bangs or you know kiss kiss bang bang kiss kiss bang bang oh man what a good movie huh great movie is this i love films i think so hey everyone welcome to i love films this is scott And this is Scott. And today we're talking about a wonderful, wonderful film.

I believe, if I'm not mistaken, filmed in the 2000s? Am I right about that, Adam? Yeah, the second renaissance. That's right. And we're of course talking about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. A kiss kiss, a bang Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. A Kiss, Kiss, a Bang, Bang. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. That's right. That's how you say it.

Great film. Great film. I've never seen it. Oh, cool. Me neither. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.

Good ep. Yeah, sure. Have you seen that movie, though? I have. They haven't, apparently. No, neither of them had. I'm asking if you have. It's pretty personal.

I'd appreciate it if you would... You know what? You're right. None of my business. None of your business, especially on an episode of Talking About Bang, where... Wait, is this an episode of none of your business? No, it's not. Okay.

That's none of your business. That information, by the way, it may be. Right. It very well could be, but it's- It's not my place. This is an episode of None Ya. Right. It ain't none of your business.

Who wants to hear? It ain't none of your business. So stop fooling around with my life. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Noneanya. This is Scott. And this is Scott. And today we're talking about... It's a subject matter... God, how would I describe this? It's kind of Nanya.

Honestly, it's Nanya. Right? It's kind of Nanya. Nanya. Hey, Nanya. Hey, Nanya. Nanya, Nanya. Nanya.

Oh, Nanya. Nanya. Nanya. oh nanya nanya nanya nanya nanya nanya oh little nanya little nanya come here little nanya

such a cute little nanya we'll see you next time bye bye of Nanya. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. In any case, we are talking about Bang. Yeah. And yeah.

So that's the Big Bang. Basically, there's a whole theory about it. An important event, according to some people. Where would we be without Young Sheldon? Some people think it's total

bullshit. Yeah. Most people, most thinking people think it's total bullshit. That's right. They think that basically it's such a strange collection of people who think, I mean, we have an instruction manual for life just sitting around there and it's called the Bible and it tells us how the world was created. So this whole Big Bang Theory, it's like, you know, come on, guys. Check out your Genesis.

Check out your Exodus. Check out your Leviticus that's right check out your deuteronomy first and second yeah we're talking uh matthew mark luke john acts intelligent design intelligent intelligent design exactly thank Remember that? Remember when that was the thing they were going to be teaching in schools right alongside evolution? Right alongside. They were going to basically have two teachers, one teaching evolution and another one teaching intelligent design right next to each other. At the same time. Holding hands. At the same time. While holding hands. Speaking at the same time. It was going to be confusing.

It was. I mean, i think that was what the deal breaker was about it was these teachers didn't want to hold hands i mean some of them were married some were in romantic relationships some wasn't abstaining from really it was inappropriate and they were both both teachers would be talking at the same time and uh but they had they were they had to scream uh everything said, it had to be a full scream. Full scream. Why wasn't the Scream franchise called Full Scream? Or Full Scream.

Well, the box set of all the Scream films, the Blu-rays, it's called Full Scream. It's just full on scream. Full on screaming with the Scream gang. And there was a television show too so that's in there too oh that's full screen also anytime anyone screams in a movie you know which movie by the way there are tons of screams in and i know this this is i know that we're sort of infringing on our sister show i love films at this point but i don't think they'll mind but uh a little movie from i believe 1960 with tony perkins in it called pysycho oh yeah i've heard of that movie yeah there's a one

or two screams in that that are pretty blood curdling if I do say so myself. Yeah, I think so. There's also, there might be a couple of little pitter-patter screams in a movie I like to call Jaws. The big guy. The super big guy. The super big guy. Yep.

Jaws. Jaws. Jaws! All right, we'll see you next time. Thanks, bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. all right we'll see you next time thanks bye bye good shit that was really good it was uh longer than uh than they any other app that they've ever done yeah um why were we talking about, why did we even get in there?

Well, I do want to welcome everyone to the show. This is, oh, that's right. We were talking about the title. You Talkin' Talking Heads to My Talking Head. And an abrupt left turn from our last episode, in the middle of last episode, where, well, in the middle of the episode of our sister show, uh,

are you talking RHCP Rimi? Um, where we figured out that, uh, perhaps, uh, uh, we were not having as much fun,

uh, doing the RHCP show is as we wanted to be having, uh, after our taste, uh, was wanted to be having, uh, after our taste, uh, was sort of, uh, uh,

it was not necessarily tickling our fancy, if you know. I think fun and red hot chili peppers are two things that go together like peanut butter and jelly. As far as I'm concerned, they go hand in hand, like two teachers teaching about evolution and intelligent design. That's right.

Um, but i think i think maybe those early albums we just weren't as uh psyched about i maybe one day we'll return because i at least started being a fan uh later on and and i i do like them but for the time being we decided to diverge into the talking headsads, and it feels like the right place. Have you seen those Divergent films? Oh, yeah. That's what I was hoping we would talk about. Why don't we do a different show about the Divergent film series?

Well, yeah, there is a different show about the Divergent film series. What is that? It's called Different Show About the Divergent Film Series. And is this an episode yeah hey everyone welcome to different show about the divergent film series this is scott and this is scott and we are look we have to establish we are a totally different show a different show i mean not definitely not the same no no no no no no show that that you were just listening to no no no this is about the divergent film series yes but it is a different show uh about the divergent film

series we're talking divergent we're talking the divergent series insurgent we're talking Divergent. We're talking the Divergent series Insurgent. We're talking the Divergent series Allegiant. These three films are probably the best three films in the Divergent series. Yes, they are by far the only ones, but also by far, and it's not mutually exclusive, the best ones. Definitely. And we're talking producers Lucy Fisher, Douglas Wick, Poya Shabazian even. We're even talking them. We're talking director Neil Berger of the first Divergent movie, which is the titular Divergent.

Neil Berger, who also directed the movie where Bradley Cooper takes the pill and he knows everything. I want that pill. Limitless, of course. Give me that pill. By the way, did I ever tell you about Limitless? I've seen it. You don't have to tell me about it. I saw that movie. But I do have a story about Limitless that I also wanted to tell you after I told you about the film Limitless. you about the the film limitless um i uh i once rented a house in uh sort of sort of on the west coast on the west side of los angeles and uh i don't want to give too many details about the

house but it was a very interesting house which i can tell you about offline but i don't want to point to who this gentleman is uh unnecessarily and give him any unwanted attention. Oh, I want to know everything about what you can't say right now. And I feel like if I gave you the details of whose house it was, maybe some person who knows this person would say who it was. But I will say part of the appeal of renting the house supposedly in the ad was that it had a 24 seven caretaker who was always around to chat. If you want it, is this an attribute? That's what we could not figure out.

So, you know, tall John, of course. Yeah. Um, we were on the very last day we'd rented it for a week. And the very last day we were in the pool and it was some

of our only alone pool time we had just me and my bro tall john what do you mean alone pool time because the caretaker was around so much no because well because our our uh significant others at all oh i see okay gone off on a hike or something like that so we were we were talking and then within 10 minutes the caretaker came and got in the pool with us and then talked to us for how long would you guess an hour three hours why oh god why would you stay for three hours because i i have a a thing about seeming rude yeah and so i just didn't want to be like okay bro see ya so it was a dude that that was the care was he just a lonely caretaker who bothers everyone that rents the house i think so but i will say the funniest thing that he said was we were just talking about our

lives and he was like well yeah i do this is my side gig and i'm actually uh a writer and i created the the movie in the tv show limitless what i said oh wow that's so cool i mean i really like the movie limitless um so your name is you know on the movie or did you clearly not believing him right out of the gate if you're asking if his name is on the credits. Well, I think he had a unique name, which I had never heard of. So I think I was trying to suss that out. But I was like, so did you get rewritten? Or was your name actually on the credits?

And he goes, oh, no, no, no, no. They ripped me off. Right. And made the movie. And I'm going to sue them. So I got that going for me, so everything's pretty good. Yeah. I would say, and I'm all for credit where credit is due,

but I would say- Sure, you got to put credit where it's due. Absolutely. That's where you put the credit. That's where it belongs. But I would say that you're a few steps away from being able to to tell people i created the movie and the tv show if you're just a lawsuit away from even getting them to pay attention to you and he hadn't even

started the lawsuit was the impression i got you know he was like i'm gonna have a lawsuit you know but i admired the chutzpah of it um it reminds me of when i was 13 i was in eighth grade and i used to draw a lot i don't know if i've ever talked about that on the show but i used to want to be a cartoonist when i was uh in probably like 10 to 14 i i want maybe to have like a daily newspaper strip or something like that i think we all went through that stage but i was a i was a pretty good artist and uh i sort of wanted to draw comic books and that all ended when i got into high school and my friend phil who had been the best comic book artist in his junior high and i was the best comic book artist in my junior high we suddenly came together and were in the same classes and he was way better than me yeah so i

was like all right i'm gonna quit and then he went on and he's one of the most successful comic book artists ever phil jimenez shout out that's incredible uh drew the x-men and and wonder woman wrote the wrote wonder woman and all sorts of stuff in any case so i wanted to be a uh i wanted to be a an artist and so i remember uh uh like mad or cracked or one of those they they used to have parodies of whatever the popular tv shows were oh yeah at the time. They both did, essentially. Yeah, so if it was the A team, it would be like the B team or something.

And then every character would be like, Hannibal would be cannibal. And it would just make fun of the shows and all the cliches that are on the shows. So I remember drawing one of these sort of inspired by a television show at the time and i remember a friend of mine came over and was like um wow that's really good you know i have a a cousin or an uncle who works for mad magazine and he would totally buy that wow and i was like whoa okay and you were like 12 13 13 yeah i was like great let me know um i go i go how much they usually pay for that he goes oh they pay like

150 dollars whoa and i was like okay great let me know and i went for all year thinking it was gonna happen and telling people like i'm gonna be in that magazine soon that's right they're gonna buy my drawings right and then i also remember that uh my parents had started giving me allowance at the time i think they gave me 75 a month or something like that but i i had to buy all my clothes or whatever i wanted any move you know anything i wanted to buy and i remember them yelling at me for spending all my money on comic books like way too early in the month like it was all gone yeah you know like by the fifth or whatever and in my mind just thinking like you guys are gonna i don't care about money i have 150 dollars coming to me i'm gonna wave 150 dollars in your face in a matter of months. And then I remember around the end of my eighth grade year, just me thinking like, huh, that never happened.

Yeah. And he never mentioned it ever again. I feel like my friend might be full of shit. Or just he thought it was good and then brought it up to someone and his uncle or whatever was like, no. Did you ever get clarity on whether he actually knew someone that worked at Mad Magazine? No, no. There are several things that I've never gotten clarity about in my life. I think I've talked about them either on this show or another show. The main two. And that's one of them? Well, that's the third. The main two are my friend from college, who weirdly I was just on a Zoom call with, and I didn't have the stones to bring this up and ask him for clarity on it.

But a friend of mine from college mentioned that the gin blossoms were traveling through his town, and the drummer broke his foot that day and so he stepped in and drummed with them that night he learned all their songs and drummed with them that night and i have never believed it yeah and so but i always want i i need to talk to someone in the blossoms or wait how long ago did he tell you this this was he told me in 1993 it must have been or 94 or something and ever since then you've been like huh okay i've looked for articles yeah have did the drummer of jim blossoms ever break his foot has he ever talked about it i've never seen and you and you didn't bring it up because you thought it might get weird or you forgot i did i just kind of like asked him questions about it not believing it the whole time trying to see if he if there would ever be any holes but but he was committed

to it and then and and and anyone else i talked to about it was like oh yeah that's bullshit but i mean like the other day when you're on a zoom with him you didn't bring did you think of it and didn't bring it up the minute he he came on, I've thought about this story for years. And the minute he came on, I went, oh, wow, I could ask about this story if I had any courage. But it was a Zoom call. It was like a college reunion Zoom call with like 30 people. And it didn't seem like it was the time to go like, hey, were you lying? You should email him because I want to know if that's bullshit or not.

Well, here's the other one. The number one that I think that I've always wondered about is in 1990, it must have been 92 or 93. I was in Orange County. And I remember I would go to video stores and look for new releases of movies and videotapes and stuff and constantly buy them. And I would always just, out of hope, look in the Twin Peaks section because they had released the pilot as a single videotape. it as a single videotape and then they'd released i think episodes one through eight or two through eight as as a box set but they'd never released any of the the second season um and so i would always in kind of in vain i would go to to the tv section and look under twin peaks and see if there had been any release or anything and there never was but so i was in this this video store in orange county and i um asked the clerk there

hey has anything new in twin peaks come up and the guy looks at me he's got kind of like long hair right yeah in a ponytail and he goes oh you like twin peaks uh i wrote on twin peaks my name's harley payton and i knew the name harley payton from the show right so i'm like holy shit wow and i was always i was in in my mind i was like well why is he working in a video store and then i thought well of course i mean writing tv can't pay the bills all the time you know like maybe he's like a quentin tarantino kind of guy who works in a video store who also writes you know right um and but i just don't think it was him in retrospect because Harley Payton is on Twitter right now

and I've never written to him to confirm this, but it just doesn't seem like he came from Orange County or ever lived there. Did you ever like look him up on Wikipedia or anything? I could right now. I did, yeah. And it never mentions anything about uh uh orange county or anything like that but let's check out harley payton here he went to harvard and stanford does that sound

like a guy who's going to be working in a video store and and and he also like he wrote an uncredited revision of the three musketeers and that was in that same era that's in that same era so why why would he and he wrote the screenplay to less than zero sounds like the guy working at the video store knew a name of someone that wrote on twin peaks was really proud of that fact figured no one would call him on it and just was bullshitting i certainly did not call him on it but i've i i do uh and and and maybe i should before this comes out uh uh reach out and get some some clarity on this but those were my my number three questions well i mean there's also my question of like who robbed my condominium

that uh that i lived in uh quite a few years back when i stepped out for an hour left the door unlocked uh and came back and when i came back 500 of my dvds were missing ah that's a total bummer and i i remember i sat down i turned on the tv and i looked at my shelves and i was like i did like a quadruple take and i was like what the did i take these down what did did I put these at? What happened? And just realizing someone had come in and just ripped me off. I always, I figured it was my across the hall neighbor, but I've never got confirmation on it. Because back then you could just take DVDs and bring them to Amoeba and get some quick cash.

But I also, she was nuts. So I don't think that, that, that she did anything with them. was nuts so i don't think that that that she did anything with them i remember kulop knocked on her door to let her know that someone did come in and robbed me and the first thing she said was do you want to check my apartment there's nothing here uh yeah so i'm pretty sure it was her she was missing half of her brain she told me the first day I met her. Okay, okay. Well, listen, either she was missing half of her brain, or she thought she was missing half of her brain. Either way, I feel the story, it all kind of makes sense.

You know, I have one thing, only one thing in my life that is 100% unexplainable that I've never been able to piece together. And I don't believe in ghosts or any sort of supernatural anything at all. But this is the one thing. You don't believe in heaven or souls? I don't believe in heaven or souls. Or I don't even believe in the souls that are on shoes. Yeah.

I mean, I've always noticed you sort of Flintstones it. That's right. You have bare feet under those. Bare, very calloused feet. When I was like 12 or 13, same age, my friends and I were walking around at night because we had nothing to do and didn't know anyone who drove a you know it's that age before you're friends with people who drive or whatever and how how deepened in the night is this is this like i mean it's probably like eight or nine o'clock uh out in capitola which is like a section of section of Santa Cruz because I was spending the night at my friend's house.

Anyway, my friend, my friend's brother and I were just walking around in Capitola. And we had, I think between the three of us, we had like $4 or something. That's not bad for back then. Not bad. There's a drive-in movie theater, right? The Skyview drive-in. And we're walking by and we're like i wonder if they would let us in and we could just go sit and watch a movie like because there's like a swing set there or something

like i wonder if we could just go and sit down so we are walking towards the entrance and we're like we only have four dollars between us i don't know how much it costs and on the ground there's a manila envelope but it's a a manila envelope in the shape and size of like cash like those ones they you actually put cash in and give meaning rectangular or rectangular a small rectangular no but it's like unlike other envelopes this was rectangular but No, but it's for the purpose of putting money in. It's one of those. Okay. Okay. Sure.

And I go, what if there was the exact amount of money in this envelope that we would need to get in there? Again, not knowing how much it would cost anything. And we're like, that would be amazing. I pick it up. I open it. We all look into it and it's empty. Okay.

Like, oh, whatever. We throw it back on the ground walk up to the entrance where cars are going in and out and ask the guy who's just like these dumb little kids are trying he's like between the for the three of you you need eleven dollars get out of here i'm busy whatever and we're like so you need seven you need seven more dollars need seven more dollars okay we are walking back out like shit what are we going to do for the rest of the night until 10 when we have to be back whatever it was and we come across that manila envelope again and i say to the other two guys what if we open that envelope now and there is seven dollars in there and they were like okay yeah whatever

i go i grab it i open it there is seven dollars what in the envelope the hell that that's the craziest story i've maybe ever heard happened i mean the crate the craziest part to me is that movie tickets at this drive-in cost three dollars and 66 cents a piece well the drive-in was super cheap do you remember did you ever well sure but it's just such a weird price well it was three dollars and 66 cents a person it was like ten dollars a car or something and he was just like cutting us a deal whatever it was i don't remember you pay one more dollar i don't i don't remember the price structure all i know is when we opened that it was the exact amount we needed and that that thing was so crazy this sounds like a like a magic envelope like like the magic box and lock in lost or something where like you could ask for anything from it and it would appear in there. That's right.

Did you keep the envelope? No, I took the money out of it and threw the envelope back onto the driveway. And we didn't even go back into the drive and we just went and spent the money on, I don't know, candy or something. Meaning... If you had $11, you'd rather spend it on crack uh amazing that is a weird easy i wonder if these other two guys the keitel brothers uh would remember this story as well i i it seemed how could you ever forget something like that i know um and you know you know what i can't forget is the one time i went to a drive-thru and I saw the movie Divergent.

All right, we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Wow, interesting ep. That was a long episode. Long and not very informational about the the divergent film series other than casually mentioning the producers at one point yeah i think there's one writer plenty of info in there scott yeah that's true well speaking of info i need to give some info about this show um i i hate

to go so long without having introduced ourselves but uh my name is scott ackerman i am the the uh host of comedy bang bang uh director of the Between Two Ferns movie, other things. Adam almost needs no introduction, but I'll let him introduce himself. Go ahead. Hi, guys. My name's Adam. I hail, which means I come from Northern California. It's where I grew up. I'm down here in Southern California now pursuing a career in show business. I have a family. I have a house. Very lucky.

And I use Kleenex from time to time, just like anyone. What do you use Kleenex on? Well, it depends. You know what? Lately, if there's gunk in my dog's eye, I'll grab a Kleenex and I'll try and get it out of there. Oh, yeah. That's prime Kleenex usage right there. But it's not limited to that. I use it for all kinds of stuff.

Okay. But would you say 90, 95% of the time it's to take gunk out of your dog's eye? Well, yeah. I mean, I think that's mostly what kleenex is meant for so that's mainly what i use it for it's the eye gunk cleaner uh kind of subset brand of kleenex that they that they put out there did you know that kleenex kleenex originally was called gunk out yeah yeah that's right um but then they thought you know what everyone when they're talking about tissues it says grab a kleenex i forget what the term for that is where a product name becomes the the accepted name of something well it's called gunk out because the kleenex was the first one so it's just called right because it's a gunk out everyone was saying like oh grab a kleenex grab a kleenex

and they're like this is a golden opportunity yeah we should just call ourselves kleenex you gotta do that, yeah. Q-tip is another one of those. Yeah. What is the term? That's gonna bug me, so I'm gonna look it up. Do you mind if I look that up? I'm gonna Q-tip that right out of my hair,

that sort of thing. I'm looking up Kleenex and Q-tip. Eponym, eponym. That is what it is. Wait, let's look at the list of brands that own the market. Other eponyms are band-aid coke coke escalator escalators in eponym escalator fedex that's a that's a brand name yeah apparently

google i guess ask jeeves is so pissed off about google jeep obviously jeep by the way was a poppy term i believe they called it a jeep because uh that was a character in Popeye. I'm going to look up that. I mean, you're learning a lot on this. It says there that Netflix owns the term for DVDs by mail. So that website is brand new. Jeep and... It's not on their Wikipedia page, but let me look up Jeep and Popeye. Okay okay and let's see what comes up jeep and popeye here we go eugene the jeep was a character in the popeye comic strip this is weird this is a weird one and uh i believe the makers of jeep called it that because of popeye but there's nothing on eugene the jeep's wikipedia page page either. But I'm fairly certain that maybe there's some money changed hands of like, hey, let's never talk about Popeye's connection to Jeep.

Yeah, probably. Also, Saltines. You were right about Q-Tip. Saltines, Polaroid. Q-Tip right there with a bullet. Rollerblade, that's, of course, another eponym. Taser, TiVo. TiVo, not as popular.

TiVo really went for it. Oh, yeah. For a minute, TiVo was going to be the eponym. Taser, TiVo. TiVo, not as popular. TiVo really went for it. Oh, yeah. For a minute, TiVo was going to be the eponym of all eponyms, but then people just said DVR. I feel like the DVR market just really pushed for people to stop saying TiVo. I feel like people still say TiVo sometimes, though. Sometimes. Did you ever sign up for the TiVo lifetime service? God, I don't know. What was that that was it like 400 bucks or something i think it was only like um around what i would have been paid for mad magazine back of the day 150 or so but um

because it was like a monthly service but you didn't have to pay for tivo you just it was just a recorder that you bought no you did you had to buy the recorder and then hook it up to the internet and to use it you had to pay like a monthly service or you could pay the lifetime service no i sorry go ahead no no no i'm wrong or no you never did no i i'm just thinking of the very first tivo i had was not internet uh compact you did not hook it up to the internet you just hooked the little uh ivr tabs up to your cable box and it would turn the channels for you and record whatever it was do you remember that look at it tivo is still charging by the way 15 $15 a month, a one-year commitment. For what? For what? That's the thing. You get TiVo, like every cable company or DirecTV gives you a free TiVo now. It gives you a free DVR.

Oh, it says TiVo targets cord cutters with a DVR. So they must be providing coverage? Who knows? TiVo, you got a bad business plan although if you wanted to sponsor this show i would heartily endorse you absolutely i i didn't even know they still existed did you cut your cut cord yet cut cut no i've i've not cut the cord um i have cut the cheese occasionally yeah yeah i mean i i don't know what you mean but what does that mean how did that ever start cut the cheese i don't know but i still love that up i i realized that this has become the uh the looking stuff up on wikipedia show but it's i still love cut the cheese why did they call it that the idiom references the foul smell emitted by some cheeses. That's exactly what I thought it would have been.

Many of which have a rind that keep the odor in, and then once the rind is pierced, a.k.a. cut, as in the case of slicing it, the smell is released. Oh, and we have the pronunciation of cutting the cheese. Should I play that clip here? Yeah. Cut the cheese. Wait, what? Play that Yeah. Cut the cheese. Wait, what?

Play that again. Cut the cheese. Wait a second. Wait a second. The English guy doing it is the best. Can we add another pronunciation to Wikipedia? Because I feel like that. We should just add one that's just totally because that's anyone can edit wikipedia so we should we should add our own yeah let's do

it cut the cheese cut the cheese i feel like who did they get to do this that guy was actually talking about cutting some cheese. He was not referring to a fart. Oh, what if they hired that guy to do it? But then as a verb, it says, hey, who cut the cheese? Yeah, use it in a sentence. Hey, who cut the cheese? Wow. So good.

Not bad. wow oh so good so good not bad um all right well we're going to be talking about more songs about buildings and food today this is exciting talking head second album we're going to be talking about it but we do need to take a break when we come back we will be talking about more songs about building and food we'll be right back with you talking, talking heads to my talking head. We are back. You talking, talking heads to my talking head we're going to be talking about more songs about buildings and food today but before the break adam scott um and i were talking about mad magazine and adam you mentioned you went you went to the offices of Mad Magazine with all the usual. What is it?

The usual gang of idiots? Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. When I was, I believe, like 11 years old, I took my first trip to New York with my dad and stepmom. Did you go to the statue? We did not go to the Statue of Liberty. We went and saw a broadway

show though we went and saw little shop of horrors wow or the original the original cast i don't think so i feel because i think i had already seen the movie so it was like a revival the movie came out in 87 if i had to guess i would yeah i was gonna say 86 i feel like this is 80 this is probably 84 85 since i was like 11 86 yeah december 19 of 86 is when it came out huh so maybe this was before that yeah so you were 11 what year were you 11 in? 84. So, yeah, this is probably like one of the original. This may be the... Off-Broadway was the 1982 production. Yeah, it was after that. So it would have been somewhere in the 84, you say?

84, 85. Okay, well... Anyway. Oh, okay. in somewhere in the 80 84 you say 84 85 okay well anyway uh oh okay you uh you probably saw claire moore who replaced uh ellen green ellen green and you probably ellen green probably saw uh zeta messiah who took over as chiffon in 1984 as well yeah probably probably oh we also saw dames at sea uh which my uncle roger mor Morgan did the lighting design for. My step uncle, Roger Morgan, who's great. Anyway, we were in New York and the whole time before we left for New York, I had looked at the front page of Mad Magazine, like the masthead, way down at the bottom in tiny print, it shows the address and address for the magazine. So they had that on like DC Comics, which was on 666 Broadway or something like that.

And so I always thought, oh, how cool it would be to go to New York and just go to the office. That's right. So my dad and I, I just wrote down that address that's in Mad Magazine and we went to the office. On what? Just like a slip of paper. What do you mean by a slip of paper? Like a, I don't know how to explain it. You know paper, right?

Just like regular dime store paper. Everybody knows paper, of course. Comes from trees. Yep. If you please. Regular tree paper. I grabbed a piece of that that was probably like eight by ten feet. Did you get it from the tree itself?

I got it. We had a tree in the backyard that we would shed paper off of. Super thick paper. So I wrote it on that. Anyway, we went to the Madison Avenue and just sort of went up to the 18th floor or whatever it was and knocked on the door of this office. And my dad the whole time was like,

this is probably just gonna be, you know, just some like receiving, mail receiving room or something you just thought it would be like yeah a post office box yeah like that and we go in and they're like hey how you doing and william gaines you know the like yeah big dude the big bearded guy uh they brought us around to all the artists and writers rooms and i got to go into william gaines office and meet him and they were all so cool um i think al jaffe was there oh don martin was not there that's who i was like most excited for but what about sergio aragone no he was not there by the way we have so many Sergio Aragones books here because you can find them on eBay

and they're all like out of print, but they're like two bucks and they're all worn out, but they're all there. All those little paperbacks. Yeah. Well, he wasn't there either, but it was awesome. And they let me take as many Mad Magazines

as I wanted from around the world and all these different languages. So I just filled my backpack with, uh, with all these, uh, it was the coolest. Was there anything that was previously in your backpack that you had to throw away in order to make room for? Let's see. What did I have in there? I had a lunchbox of course, because I was in New York.

Of course. Um, and then I had a sushi making just one of those bamboo things you can roll. To roll up the rolls, yeah. That's right. So I had three of those because it was New York. I had to throw those in the garbage. And then just like a really small but very, very heavy glass bottle collection that I would carry around with me because it was in New York. Sure. Oh, you were in New York. Yeah. Yeah. So I had to throw that out.

And then just a pistol. Oh, yeah. Because I was in New York. I mean, back then, in those days, you could take anything on a plane you wanted. Could take it on the plane. Everyone in New York had a pistol that they would just have in their hand and they would walk around with them. When you took a plane ride back then, everyone would have a gun in the cabin and just be like shooting them off. Yeah. Various times. Especially when I was that age, I was going through a stage where I always, always carried a piece.

Sure. A sidearm. A sidearm. As we called themarm back then that's right um that's an incredible story did they mention that this would happen all the time or were they did they i remember them saying every once in a while a kid shows up with his dad or mom and and uh and but it doesn't happen all the time or anything and they're always really happy to have them and it was that must be amazing i mean i i i uh please don't ever come by the earwolf studios but but if i were making mad magazine and trapped in an office and doing i mean doing a creative job

that's fun but you're in a new york office all day yeah how fun would it be to have a little kid who like idolizes what you do come by the office one day also we took a trip to la when i was like 10 or something and i had i remember i freeze framed freeze frame a tv show and got the address of paramount Studios and we went or it was for Arsenio Hall show. So it must have been later. But I freeze framed the end of the show and got the address of Paramount and made my dad drive there thinking I would just pull up to like a house and Arsenio Hall would be there and I could go talk to him. But it was we pulled up and it was just giant studio. Was there a dog pound there or?

But we pulled up and it was this giant studio. Was there a dog pound there? I did get to go in the studio audience of Arsenio Hall a few years later when I moved here. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's incredible. And I was not in the dog pound, but I did give him a couple of those. The finger. Yeah.

Fuck you, man. I went to, I think my friend was directing the Bill Maher, what's the show he does now? Real Time. And I went and was in the studio audience in that and was embarrassed because they made us give him a standing ovation. They came out to coach the audience beforehand. Like, you all love Bill and want to give him a standing ovation, don't you? And so there must be an episode out there where I can be seen in a crane shot giving Bill Maher a standing ovation, don't you? And so there must be an episode out there where I can be seen in like a crane shot

giving Bill Maher a standing ovation. Wait, is that the show he's doing now? Or was it like politically incorrect? Remember that one? No, it's the show he's doing. He's been doing it for a while, I think. And I remember it was right above The Price is Right. It was over there in CBS Television City.

It was right above The Price is Right. And my friend took me down there to spin the wheel. Oh, yeah. I sat in the audience of Price is Right once. Did you... Get up on stage? Were you hoping to get called? No, I was not. So, Kulop and I, when we first started going out, her and her three roommates, we were all going to go to Price is Right.

And I had a different friend who worked as a page at the Price is Right. And she said, okay, I can't tell them to bring you up on stage to be a contestant, but what I can do is give you tips on why the types of people that they will call. Because they go around interviewing everyone in line before they get in they go first of all look look the people right in the eye when they're talking to you seem excited to be there but not insane okay but because they said when the adrenaline comes in if you're already like insanely excited it doesn't it's gonna get really weird on tv yeah but if you're just like seem like a regular person and seem you know fine then uh the adrenaline will like push you up to kind of insane looking levels you know um and so we we were gonna get up i remember i remember

reading about how early you had to get there right yeah because it says 8 8 a.m taping and i remember i remember reading about how early you had to get there right yeah because it says 8 8 a.m taping and i remember reading like you got to get there at 5 in the morning in order to get in right christ so we all um so even though you had a friend that was a page you still had to do all this shit yes oh so we went and made t-shirts for Kulop and her three roommates that said Barker's Beauty in Training. And they were all matching t-shirts. Jesus Christ. And we were like, one of us is going to get called out, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. Did you wear one of those? No, I think I had something, but I can't remember what it was. But it obviously wasn't that. So we set the alarm for like 4.30 whatever oh slept through it woke up at like 6 15 yeah i think and and then went down to the studio got there by 6 45 had to wake up all the other roommates like hey we overslept we overslept yeah got there at 6 45 or 7 and they were like no no everyone's already in are you kidding get it yeah so we never we never got in oh my god i remember standing in line for a long time and i was kind

of embarrassed because i was an uh actor already but i was just doing like guest spots and stuff and you're not supposed to do it if you're in show business because they ask you what you do for a living. And I was like, I work at a dry cleaners as if I had some big career that they would damage. Right, check up on. But I was like embarrassed. And I didn't know, I didn't have any connection or anything. So we did have to stand in line for like two hours because it was my girlfriend's mom wanted to go or something. I don't know. Was it fun though? It was fine. I don't really remember that much,

but I also was, I was in the audience on, uh, for the Dennis Miller show. Do you remember that? His first talk show? Oh yeah. Is this the HBO one or? Oh no, that's right. This is, this was the syndicated one that was on, I believe KTLA out here. Yeah. that's right. This was the syndicated one that was on, I believe, KTLA out here. That's right. And I remember really wanting to enjoy it a lot because I was a big Dennis Miller fan. Yeah, me too. Yeah. R.I.P. His comedy career, I mean.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Not him. He's still with us. Not him, he's still with us. He, I remember Cowboy Junkies were on the episode I saw and I yelled during a moment of silence that in the Cowboy Junkies song, because I thought the song was over. And I just went, yeah. And then the song kept going

and you could totally hear it. And after they finished, Dennis Miller gave me a bunch of shit and that was he like pointed you out oh totally like talk oh wow he pointed me out and but they didn't turn around and get the audience uh but he was it made it to air him like giving me shit but they didn't like show and i remember i wished that they would because i wore an rm shirt and i wanted to be on camera um is is that on your reel right now tell me the truth yeah absolutely god i wonder if that's uh on youtube or i'm sure it's not oh yeah look up cowboy junkies dennis just look up

dennis miller junkie okay let's see what we got. Yeah, if that's up there. Actually, I'll look it up because we can't hear it if you just play it. But Cowboy Junkies Dennis Miller Show. Here we go. Video, Concrete Blonde and the Cowboy Junkies in 94. Is that it? Or Concrete Blonde? No?

Cowboy Junkies? No? It would have been probably 92 92 or 93 oh this is uh cowboy junkies this is jay leno obviously not uh dennis miller uh the poor man's dennis miller as we used to call J-Leno. Really? Concrete Blonde Joey. Oh, no, you're not talking about Concrete Blonde. You're talking about Cowboy Junkies.

Cowboy Junkies. And as of press time, I cannot find this video, but sounds like a wonderful television program that I would like to see if I ever had the opportunity. But today is not for talking about Dennis Miller nor the Cowboy Junkies. It is for talking about Talking Heads to our Talking Heads. Is that right, Adam? That is correct. And we are talking about a certain Talking Heads album called More Songs About Buildings food buildings and food wow and food 1978

is when this album came out this is of course the uh follow-up to 77 which we talked about last episode and uh let's give a little bit of background on this this album what do you say chum sure uh okay so their first album we were talking last time how it had the uh producer who is john bon jovi's uncle now a little tidbit that i found out uh in between our last episode when i wasn't prepared and now is that they intentionally uh we talked about how he's sort of a disco producer. The record label intentionally gave or sort of forced Talking Heads to work with him because they wanted him to sort of make them sound

not as weird. Right, like more poppy or whatever. As they normally do. Yeah, so for this record, they were able to ditch that thinking. Instead, and boy, here's a character we haven't talked about in a good long while. But they get old Sourpuss.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Of course. Of course he has to show his face again. Of course he's got to pop up like a bad penny. We're talking about Brian Eno, Mr. Sourpuss. Sorry, Scott, I just have to interrupt you for a second. I can't let that slide by.

I know it's just an expression, but as far as I'm concerned, there are no bad pennies. That's true. I mean, wait, is this? I forget what our coins show was. No, it's not talking about money, although that's a great show. But there was something about coins two episodes ago that I can't remember. I don't even remember that. I don't even remember, but it is not an episode of that because were it to be, I would remember it. So, yeah, Brian Eo uh we talked about him a

lot on our u2 show so uh we can talk about him here by the way uh great coins was i'm being told it was our great coins great coins j is scott and we're look we're talking about great coins there are so many on our last episode we admitted that we hated coins but then suddenly scott over here brought one up and i knew we had to do an episode the little one cent coin himself with mr stinking lincoln on it we're talking about the penny stinky linky good old linky stinky um yes that's right one of those rare human beings to be shot while watching a play. Listen, it's the simplicity of the penny. And I always, if you know me, you know that I take issue with anyone who's talked smack about the penny.

That's right. It is worth one cent. One one-hundredth of a dollar. That's right. You get a hundred of them, you got yourself a dollar. Okay? With a dollar. And that's legal. That's right. You get a hundred of them, you got yourself a dollar. Okay? With a dollar... And that's legal.

That's legal tender. That is legal American tender. U.S. tender. Anyone has to accept that. You bring a penny into the U.S. Treasury, knock on the door, Washington, D.C., hand them a penny. They'll be like, all right, come on in. It's a penny. Get in here, bro.

Yeah. And you got yourself a job running the u.s treasury that's right um are they square a penny yeah well that's a really uh really good question i would need to i don't have one in front of me so uh i don't know i guess we're gonna have to wait till next episode to answer that question because i i, I, unfortunately I don't have, I have a quarter here. Uh, that square.

Well, let me take a look. Um, Hmm. No, it's not square. Uh, exactly.

But in certain light, maybe you could say it's, uh, it's square ish. But, uh, for now I'm just going to say it's it's not uh but as far as a penny goes i have no idea thought it was a penny but it's not that's gross quarter all right we'll

see you next time bye bye good shit i never thought they'd come back again after that last episode when they admitted they hated coins yeah you would you would think that's kind of a deal breaker yeah you can't you can't continue the show after that sure um a lot like our sister show are you talking rhcp reme um it'll be back it'll be back uh so brian eno uh we talked about him a lot during our U2 show, but let's recap if people have just joined us. He, of course, was this English dude. He still is an English dude as far as I'm concerned. He met Roxy Music's Andy McKay on the subway station, at a subway station. And they, I don't know, they to jump brian eno into the band

even though he couldn't play an instrument uh he joins roxy music where he doesn't even play on stage with them for most of it uh when they play live he just like sits off like in the back of the house sort of like with telling them what they're doing wrong he's like messing around with tape recorders and like quote treating unquote their sounds which who knows what that means um but basically just scowling at them the entire performance and then at a certain point he realizes in the middle of a roxy music gig that he's thinking about how he's going to do his laundry the next day, and he realizes that he needs to quit the band

two records into Roxy Music. Wait, what? He's so bored that he can't even focus on playing the gig. He's just like mentally checked out and thinking about doing his laundry. So he quits the band the next day.

Was Brian Ferry like, well, fuck you. Your laundry? Your laundry. Look, Eno, I'll sing about laundry if that's going to keep you in here. Yeah, I mean, good God. I guess he had been having some disagreements with Brian Ferry as well. So he just was like, you know, according to your friend Dennis Miller, I am out of here.

And he scribbled on a bunch of papers. And shot it off into the ether. So that was in the early 70s. We pick up the story with Talking Heads. This album came out in 1978. And basically, like, Ryan Eno, old sourpuss, he comes out. He has a solo career. he has four really good records uh which are sort of glam uh records and yeah those are terrific he uh also starts producing with

david bowie where he does the uh berlin triptych um and at this point he's done low already. In the same year, I think, he's done low. He also does, he produces Devo's Are We Not Men this year as well. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible. How he gets intertwined with Talking Heads. Now, there are a couple of stories that I've read. One, and the one that's more commonly accepted, is that Talking Heads heads to promote 77 they were on tour with the ramones and where they were opening for the ramones and they were in

england and uh the ramones were getting really sick of talking heads because they they talking heads were just playing uh james brown in the van constantly and the ramones didn't like that because they liked like surf music and girl groups like the chiffons and everything and talking heads wanted to play james brown constantly and so they were getting getting very upset they didn't like this european tour um they hated the food they wanted to find a mcdonald's and they do it oh my god how great would it be to be fly on the wall in that van with the ramones and talking heads like hating each other like just getting not getting each other as much as they were like, yeah. Just like waspy, passive-aggressive annoyance. Yes, exactly. So they go to England, and this is according to one story,

and they do a gig, and old Sourpuss is there, presumably arms folded the entire time, shaking his head no directly at the stage, which endears him to Mr. Burns burns the uh our lead singer mr burns right excellent brianino is here um so uh brianino asks talking heads to come back to his flats as they call it oh yeah uh in england which is look it's just a fancy way of saying apartment. Yeah, but I love it. I love hearing the word flat. Why do they even call it a flat, though? It's like...

Because all apartments in England are round, so you would think they would call it a round. They call it a sphere, at the very least. Yeah, exactly. Like a biosphere. Good movie. This is not Isle of Films, though. This is definitely not Isle of Films. No, no, this is definitely no no no no no but at some

point we have to talk about biosphere so that's one version of the story that happened in england the other version i read is that andy warhol was a big fan of talking heads in the early days um so much so that he he and i haven't been able to track this down, but he even recorded a commercial for this album, More Songs About Buildings and Food. And he told Brian Eno when Brian Eno was over in New York, hey, you gotta go check out Talking Heads at CBGB's. Brian Eno went to the gig, supposedly,

really loved it, came john kale from the velvet underground also was there at this gig saw old sourpuss talking to talking heads talking to their talking heads and was like hey hey dude dude dude get away from them i want to produce them i want to produce them but old sourpuss fucking got it done and he landed the gig. So he invites Talking Heads back to either his flat or his apartment, depending on which country they're in. To his sphere. To his sphere. And sphere of music.

And he is just like playing records, getting to know him. And he puts on an album by Fela Kuti. is just like playing records getting to know him and he puts on a uh an album by fella cootie um and basically i i saw an interview with brianino where he was talking about fella cootie and and talking about how in the mid 70s i think he would just go into record stores and say give me something that i've never heard of like just like give me music that that's totally unlike any music i know and he saw this fella cootie album and with a bunch of musicians on the back and was like oh i have this interview he's like i wondered what this group of musicians would make so i bought the album exciting story from old sourpuss wow that is such a sourpuss story so uh he plays the

fella cootie album to to uh talking heads and he says this is the future of music and uh david byrne at the very least like goes wild for it and loves it we'll we'll talk more about fella cootie on a a different episode because it plays more into talking heads history but that's how brian eno got to know them and uh he decided to work with them and here's here's like a really strange fact before he decided to work with them he's putting the finishing touches on his album before and after science, which came out in 1977, the year of our previous episode,

he puts out a song called King's lead hat. Now King's lead hat. If you have a mind like mine, you immediately see that and say, Oh, well, that's obviously an anagram for talking heads. Oh,

right. Because you tell me any combination of words and I can tell you what the anagram is. Really? Yeah. Seriously? Yeah, anything. Okay. Printed ceramic mug.

Printed ceramic mug. I would say probably recriminated yes that's really that's pretty incredible thanks i mean it's just something i can do pretty easy yeah you did that really fast um blame game just but oh you sounded like you were gonna continue i was going to and then i stopped well uh the the largest word you can create out of it would be either embalm or emblem or beetle wow um that leaves a few of the letters off but uh yeah so okay how about how about fart source fart source well um fractures definitely fractures which is ironic considering that when a fart comes out of your fart source it fractures your butt sometimes every time sometimes every time don't threaten me with a good time um so uh yeah anyway he he puts out this uh song king's lead hat which let's hear a little bit of

it uh it's sort of his tribute to talking heads i guess because it to him it sounds like a talking head song so uh let's hear this is king's lead hat We'll be you next time. What do we think? I mean, that sounds pretty rad to me. It does sound like a definite nod towards talking heads. He's sort of yelping around like in a david byrne impression sort of um anyway the remix of that became a single remix not commercially available on cd i will say um but uh uh so brian eno and david uh mr byrne's old and old sourpuss they hit it off really well and decide to work together. One thing I wanted to mention, by the way, because I read a lot of reviews of this album, like from Rolling Stone when the

album came out, and everyone brings up the word preppy, which is something that I don't think we really talked about last episode, which is interesting. Okay, so the bands look, right? So when you're talking 1977, 78, rock bands generally look a couple of different ways. They look like the fucking Eagles, who I don't like to talk about, as well you know, with their fucking long feathered hair and their big ass beards and their jeans tied around their butts

and flared out around their ankles their jeans tied around their butts tight around their butts and they sometimes they have jeans tied around their butts sort of like how you take a jean jacket and you tie it around your waist sometimes but they would take another pair of jeans tied around your butt. This actually is not a bad idea and perhaps a fashion choice for the future, especially during quarantine times. Anyone could do it. Send us your pictures of your jeans tied around your butt. But you also could look like disco was sort of starting around this time.

But it's basically the seventies. Everyone just looks like, you know, a coke head or a scumbag. Right. That's right. So, but then you have talking heads and they are all wearing eyes odd shirts,

right? Lacoste shirts. They have very short hair. Um, they, and they all, uh, it's kind of like one of the first norm core bands, you know what I mean?

Like they're, they're trying to look as normal as possible. And, uh, you know, David, Mr. Burns, he, he like is always wearing button up shirts with the button all the way up to the top. It kind of reminds me of like Vampire Weekend when we talked to Ezra about his dress code in the early years, like what he would or wouldn't allow people to wear. Yeah. So it was a very striking look for a band to come out and essentially, it's like Weezer also in a way. Yes. Like just looking like normal nerds david burr mr burns looking like um you know a skinny weirdo and i guess in concert sticking his neck out a lot and emphasizing like how skinny he was and

how long his neck was um so that was another the the visual style of the band was something that was was very striking at the time which we didn't bring up last time. Yeah. That's all you have to add is yeah? Well, yeah. And you know, as, I mean, you can hear it here, but as time goes on, you can definitely hear Vampire Weekend

in Talking Heads. You can hear a lot of influence there. I don't think we ever asked Ezra if Talking Heads were a big influence on him, but I would imagine they had to be yeah and we should have ezra back on for i'm sure he would be into talking heads right talking about talking heads to our talking head that's right um so anyway that is the background they they uh old sourpuss took the band to uh jamaica i believe to record this and uh they recorded all the uh basic tracks in about five days and then took like months and

months for all the overdubs and all the old sourpuss adding is like i think this should sound with more echo i think you're doing this wrong so that is the background for the album um and did they end up recording quite a bit at this studio in the bahamas it was the bahamas yes uh i mean like i say they did they did the basic tracks in five days and then spent a long time no i know i mean like future records i think they ended up maybe yeah maybe and you know what another album that was recorded at this same studio hit me with it baby the infamous around the sun from rem oh interesting i would say uh if you had to put them side by side much like two teachers holding hands i would say that this is the better album to come out i would agree with you whoa all right well we're going to be talking about this album we're going

to go go through track by track when we come back we do need to take a break though when we come back we are going to be talking about more songs about buildings and food we'll be right back with more you talking talking heads toin' Head after this. Welcome back. You Talkin' Talkin' Heads to My Talkin' Head. And we're talking about more songs about buildings and food today we're going to be going through track by track adam there is one thing that uh i want to talk about which was the title um because there there's a lot of uh uh differing opinions on who gave mr burns the title more songs about buildings and food tina very mouth she says that she came up with it

uh-huh um i read one account that chris farts says that he came up with it but then um andy partridge from xtc claims that he gave it to mr burns and mr burns received it and said yes excellent a wonderful title how weird um and and that's in uh the wikipedia and it the footnote uh uh link goes to a tweet that has been deleted by andy partridge so i don't know whether he recants that now but i read it in more than one place that and Partridge says that he gave that to Mr. Burns. So there we go. You would think that something like that would would have one one person narrative that everyone could sort of gather.

Well, you know, it happens with artistic ideas like take, for instance, the Comedy Bang Bang TV show. Anytime anyone brings up a sketch um you know i'll say oh i wrote that and then our writers you know might disagree or whatever but uh usually i'm the one being interviewed so and not them that's why you don't interview writers you know what i mean is because right yeah so uh i wrote everything i know that uh you mentioned this on the last uh the first episode of the show but um i read an article over the weekend about how chris farts is coming out with his memoir it's out when people are listening to this it'll be out oh right okay we have not received it yet so but by our next episode i plan to have read it and so we'll

have i am so excited about that we'll have a little more background at least from chris farts's point of view and perhaps tina very mouth's point of view george harrison from the beatles there's a lot written about him it's crazy it's crazy that there's so much written about george harrison's career but it all focuses on beetle stuff. I know, because it's just, I was thinking about that too. Like George Harrison was in the Beatles and then he- Traveling Wilburys.

Then Traveling Wilburys and then straight to Talking Heads. Straight to Talking Heads. It's crazy. Oh, by the way, I have, speaking of Traveling Wilburys, this crazy, I don't think I told you about this thing that happened like a year ago when I was...

Were you asked to be in the traveling Wilburys? I was promoting Big Little Lies and I was doing Colbert, right? And when you're doing a talk show, you try and come up with stories and bits or whatever that you can do to fill the time on the talk show, right? So I'm trying to think of stuff to talk about. And I come up with this idea of comparing Big Little Lies with saying that Big Little Lies is the traveling wilburys of tv shows because it has so many like yeah so many like superstars and comparing each traveling wilbury with one of the female stars of so nicole kidman wait or harrison i would say dylan or harrison nicole kidman was george harrison i think yeah from talking um meryl streep was bob dylan she's dylan she's obviously dylan um laura dern was roy orbison because

roy orbison was the one that everyone in the traveling wolverine looked up to yeah they're like can you believe we're fucking in a band with roy orbison and laura duran is such a great actress yes and totally and uh yeah george harrison was nicole kidman because nicole kidman was in days of thunder i think think that was my reasoning. And Shailene and Zoe Kravitz were both Jeff Lynne because he was like the secret weapon that might be the best one or whatever it was. Better than all the rest, perhaps, and perhaps the most responsible for the success of the group. Yeah. So I had this all mapped out and i and i pitched it to the colbert show and they loved it and and i and i asked them if they if they could

even mock up like the yeah their faces on the album cover right oh okay and so they did that and so i go on colbert and we run out of time and at end, but I'm so preoccupied with it because I'm trying to memorize like what each one was and not forget. And so the whole interview, the whole interview, I'm like preoccupied with this. And then we run out of time. And so afterwards he's like, oh man,

so next time we'll get to this. And he pulls up, he had the album cover there with all the ladies faces. Like, so a couple months later I'm doing, uh, Corden and I'm like, oh shit, I can do the traveling Wilburys thing on, on Corden. And so go through the whole thing. I pitch it and then they mock up the album cover. So I'm on Corden and he's like, okay, so you have this traveling Wilburys thing.

And I'm on there with Mindy Kaling too. She's the other guest and you're all on together i'm like oh yeah uh so traveling what and i kind of launch into this thing and right away right away it's abundantly clear that no one in the audience knows who the traveling wildberries are they just don't this is more of a colbert bit right his audience would love this yeah exactly so i go through the whole thing and it takes so fucking long like it feels like it's like an hour but once you start you can't yeah you can't just abandon it and say like there's no jeff lynn right so mindy's kind of politely smiling through the whole thing james is kind of looking at me like dude shut the fuck yeah dumb but the whole i have to get through the whole thing you dumb shit get

in my car and sing karaoke right so i get through the whole thing and it's not great and the audience was politely chuckling i had to stop and explain who the traveling Wilburys are. It was terrible. So after the show, we asked them like, can you just not put that in the show? Because I was doing Conan like a week later

and I'm like, this is perfect for Conan. This will be better on Conan. Yeah. So they, I don't think it took much convincing for them to cut it out of their show. You said, would you please?

And they said, done. Yeah, exactly. They're like, we had already done that. So they don't use it. I go to Conan, same thing. They generously mock up the album cover for me. So you have three of these album covers. At this point.

So I go on Conan. Which one was the best mock-up by the way if i think colbert it from what i remember it was the actual like record that they had with okay but but they were all uh wonderfully similarly ill-conceived and 100 my idea so i go on conan and you know halfway through the interview or whatever conan's like so what's this about you know uh the traveling wolverines and and i launch into it and it goes way worse than it did on on on uh on uh cord. They all have such similar names. It's hard to, Corden, Conan, come on, guys.

So, immediately, right when I start, it's, it is silent. Right? Because when it really comes down to it, the audiences for these things are all kind of the same.

It's just tourists. Yeah, they're all like rando tourists who are like, ooh, TV show. They're waiting out in the sun and they don't remember the traveling Wilbur. And it's not like the traveling Wilbur is- People in the sun don't remember traveling Wil're waiting out in the sun and they don't remember the traveling over and it's not like the traveling wolverine people in the sun don't remember traveling

wilbur no the sun sucks the wilbur they're a moon band but it's not like the wilburys have been kept afloat culturally it is only people like 40 and up who even i mean you got jenny lewis doing a cover of handle with care Care. 12 years ago. Yeah, exactly. So I start. Boy, to start so long, you have to take a sip of water just to get through it. Oh, coffee. To keep myself awake. So I start and it's even quieter.

And I make a joke about if you're not 2000 years old, you don't know the traveling Wilburys. And I start going into this and it's like the audience is way less polite than it's eating something that ate shit than Corden. Yeah, it's awful. And I stop and and make a joke about how terrible this bit is. And Conan and Andy are like laughing along with me at how shitty it is. And we make bits about how bad it is, but I do go through the whole thing and it's awful. And I was really like embarrassed and felt badly that Conan was like

letting me do this bit. Cause usually I bring bits on or I try to bring bits on. And sometimes they're, they're always better than that or had always been better than that. Anyway, we get done with it. And I asked them, ask the second producer, if they would please not air that. Anyway, we get done with it. And I ask them, ask the second producer

if they would please not air that. And he was like, yeah, we're already there. Don't worry about it. So there is- We talked to Corden's people already. There is still, yeah, exactly. There is still the lost, Big Little Lies, Traveling Wilburys bit

that has yet to- So you got to swing back around and do this on Colbert I know I really do and then tell this story that you just told on Corden and Conan oh man and you know what after the Conan bit I realized like it's it it it's not funny it's not culturally relevant obviously and that's part of what was maybe going to be funny about it but it was so culturally irrelevant that people just didn't know what i was talking about i think so here's how i would

here's how i would punch it up instead of putting them all on one album cover together you want to see them one at a time you want to see essentially like if you're saying meryl streep is dylan you want to you want to say that and then up comes a picture of Bob Dylan wearing his like flat hat or whatever his bolo hat with the beard and then put Meryl Streep's face onto his face and do that one at a time and you'll get five laughs.

See, that's what I should, rather than having them mock up a thing and then them just like, and then you just pop it up. For a long time. Yes, exactly. I should have had a card with a famous photo of each of them yes and they get more ridiculous and and then you split zoe kravitz and the other person in half when it's right to jeff lynn but the thing is jeff lynn beard on both the fatal flaw in the entire thing is that

my and the entire premise the comedy premise was based on everyone knowing exactly who the traveling wilburys were and how funny it was the each kind of comparison wasn't even that funny it was all depending on how funny it is to compare these iconic actresses with traveling wilburys yes no one knows who the traveling Wilburys were at least in these audiences so there was no way no matter how many pictures I had it was going to work but it but you're right if I had just kind of shifted the premise it would have I think the fatal flaw here is that you have a bad brain yeah that it was just terrible to begin with and I tried it three times you never learned your fuck like did they did colbert really run out of time exactly for that bit you know or is he or is he actually being way kinder to you

than cordon and conan is exactly did he know like not only do i conan god guys come on cut it out not only do i barely find this funny my audience is really not gonna think this is funny well i think it's a good uh story for this show and especially germane to the talking heads because george harrison is a full-fledged member ever since 1977 that's right george harrison it's just three bands beatles three bands traveling over his talking heads i mean paul mccartney he could only stomach two iconic bands yeah the jets and uh whatever uh the beatles he the jets though had a lot of hits traveling wolverines had like one hit sure but a solid we we should do a show about that that album because of that the jets the well sure we should do something about the jets as

well um but uh uh why are we talking about this? Because we were talking about George Harrison. In any case, yes. More songs about buildings and food. The title of the record is More Songs About Buildings and Food, which is a funny play on the fact that the previous record, 77, the subject matter of all of the songs had to do sort of with uh unexpected subject matter that songs normally didn't talk about yeah so um also we should mention the cover of this record

is really good it's uh probably if i had to guess it's 250 to 500 Polaroids, individual Polaroids that they put together into a collage of the band, which is really cool. Oh, 529, right there. They're all dressed in cool, like, normcore clothes. Yeah, they're all just wearing, like, I mean, George Harrison is wearing jeans. That's as rock and roll as it gets with them. The others are wearing, like, khakis. rock and roll as it gets with them the others are wearing like khakis um so this was released in 1978 in uh uh what's funny is wikipedia doesn't even know they're like oh no no they do july 14 1978 so um i was looking at the recorded date um no released in july july 14 1978 approximately exactly uh how long ago approximately 201 uh years and 10 days after the

declaration of independence was signed that's right that's that's the kind of marker and time you use for everything right sure definitely yes um so you want to brian you know old sourpuss produces adds a lot of clicks and whistles to it do you want to go through, you know, Old Sour Puss produces, adds a lot of clicks and whistles to it. Do you want to go through this thing? Yeah, it's so good. All right, here we go. This is the first song. This is Thank You for Sending Me an Angel.

You're welcome. Oh, baby, you can walk, you can talk just like me You can walk, you can walk just like me You can look, tell me what you see You can look, but it doesn't hurt me You can walk all over the world All right. What do we think, Adam? I mean, the one bummer about doing Talking Heads is I feel like more often than not, I'm just going to be like, I love this. I think it's interesting.

It's sort of a bridge from the previous album to this. There's not a lot of additional instrumentation that Old Sourpuss adds. It's kind of a little more of the classic sound of the previous album which is for sure and the album slowly sort of gets weirder and weirder as it goes along yeah but this is uh this is definitely one of the good good songs on the record and um those the interplay between george harrison's The interplay between George Harrison's guitar work and Mr. Burns with his rhythm guitar. Yep.

And then listening to Chris Farts on these drums. Yeah, he's badass. I turned it up when he wasn't playing. And this song is sort of about love. There's a lot of relationship drama on this record well or like from a distance from a distance here's the thing is is there are a few songs on on this record which are about the subject matter of love which i would say is the most common subject matter uh in in music not only rock and roll and i think mr burns coming from his art school background, and also Chris Farts, he went to art school. And Tina Weymouth.

Wait, what's her name again? Weymouth? Weymouth. Like way, very, very mouth. Okay. Sorry. So they all went to art school. So I think that they're approaching, in this early record, they're approaching the subject matter of love

and trying to do a twist on it and trying to do something different. More from a scientific point of view or anthropological almost. And so Mr. Burns, with his lyrics, he seems to be more, on that song, He seems to be more, on that song, sort of examining a relationship and pointing out kind of the flaws to it, as far as I'm concerned. You can walk, you can talk just like me.

Like, I don't know. To me, it's always been something about, like, couples who get together and start acting like each other. That's right. And there's a lot of, like, you're a girl, I'm a boy, this is what we do on this album. On this album, yeah. It's funny because this is one of those songs where I'm so used to the version on Stop Making Sense.

And even on Apple Music. The version of which song? Of this song. It wasn't on the original Stop Making Sense. But it's in the movie and then it's on the like special edition of the album that came out 10 years ago or whatever. But, um, uh, but even on Apple music, if you play this song on this album, they play the stop making sense version.

And so you have to go back to the non-special edition of Buildings and Food to get the album version. See, this is weird. This is why your insistence on streaming all of your music is insanity to me. Yeah, it makes less than no sense, less than that penny that we were talking about earlier on our system. But I feel like even if I download it from Apple Music, it's still going to download the wrong version.

Yeah, that's because, do you mean downloading from iTunes? No, it to download the wrong version. Yeah, that's because do you mean downloading from iTunes? No, it'll download the right version on iTunes. Well, Apple Music and iTunes are the same thing. They're not anyway. You're just exhausting. Oh my god. They're the same thing. Should we listen to the Stop Making Sense version just to see how different it is?

No. We're going to do a Stop Making Sense episode. Oh, okay. Sounds good. You dumb shit. yeah no let's let's not paint outside the lines here all right let's do track two this is with our love listen to the two guitars. The two separate, playing two separate things. It's so good.

It's fucking rad. It's just a look that makes the boys good. Yes, it's me, look. Tina Verimouth is a star on this album, too. Her bass lines are so good on this record. And they forgot star on this album too. Her bass lines are so good on this record. I won't I've got other things to do now I forgot what it was I've got to get to work now

They said I'd make something for us I see it, it can happen to me too And it didn't make any difference to us But I forgot the trouble, forgot the trouble Forgot the trouble, forgot the trouble Forgot the trouble, and forgot the trouble So we're hearing a lot more of old Sour Puss' influence on this song. There's a lot more, especially if you listen to it with headphones on, there's a lot more, like, you listen to it with headphones on, there's a lot more sounds happening in the background and clicks

and the instruments are treated a little differently. It's a deeper sound. It kind of goes further back. It's interesting. When this record came out, it seemed like a step forward sonically to people, where people were sort of like,

oh, you're no longer kind of a television clone uh you've pumped up the dance yeah uh element to it the rhythm element to it and then you've added all these interesting sounds with old sourpuss so it it got them taken seriously a little more than the previous record which to some people sounded a little too akin to the uh punk scene of cbgb's yeah a little too much like television yeah they were kind of carving out their own space here that said not my favorite song i like it not my favorite on the record but i i like it that's one that i have a hard time have a hard time enjoying. I don't know why.

I appreciate it every time I hear it, but I will say with this record, just so you know the prism that I'm listening to it through. So a lot of bands, when they put out their second record, this is usually what happens. They stack all of their best songs on their first record, because it be the only only one that they ever get to put out right right and then they've had you know five years or six years or whatever to write all those songs it's all the best tour them and get them perfect and yeah and then they have like three months to write the second album yeah record it and they usually what usually happens is the second record is a collection of not as good songs and songs that they just wrote like that day or whatever so it's the sophomore

slump usually refers to that where the second record is kind of a disappointment what's interesting about this this album is i sort of feel that way about some of the songs i sort of feel like the songwriting isn't as good as the first record, but sonically it's better. So in any case, that is sort of how I'm listening to this. It's interesting because since I got into them with Stop Making Sense, I went back and discovered these and kind of discovered particularly these first two around the same time.

So I feel like they're of the same era even though they're i mean they are of the same era but i feel like yeah they're only a year apart but yeah but as one rather than as you view them as like a a complete body of work where it's interesting reading about it how much of of just kind of not a left turn this was but it was received as like oh okay we can take these guys seriously now because they're they've expanded their sound a little bit and that does make sense because it does sound a lot better right all right let's hear track three this is the good thing vampire weekend Vampire Weekend. We'll fight, we'll fight with understanding.

In my mind, the weather never changes. Skillful bones, unfavorable conditions. Straight line exists between me and the good thing I have found the line and its direction is known to me Absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction All right, let's talk about this song while it plays in the background, because I love the end of it, by the way. So I want to hear the end when it comes up. But this is from an interview with Mr. Burns in the A.V. Club, where he kind of talks about how he wrote this song. He says sometimes he would write songs based on an instruction he'd given himself, like a point of view.

This was an attempt by him to write a song that sounds like a bad English translation of a red Chinese anthem. Sometimes he would get pamphlets like Mao in art and literature and they had this weird filtered language that I loved because it has this approach to English that wasn't quite Japanese mangling of product names

or catchphrases, but something close to that. He found it very poetic and appropriate. So in these lyrics, you can hear them a straight line exists between me and the good things I have found the line and its direction is known to me

absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction so this stilted kind of language for a song called The Good Thing which is such a bland bland and a good title um but i want to get so funny that makes so much sense this is the part i love tina very well uh so that is the good thing i love that end part that's uh and her baseline is so good on that um i love that song this is that's a really good one um and it sort of slipped under the radar to me

all these years and just uh listening to the album over the past couple of weeks it's become a favorite um this is track four this is warning sign and this is definitely one that brian old sourpuss was like sounds too good make it sound shittier um because if you listen to the song it sounds like something wrong no no no if you listen to the song it sounds like something off of 77 but it's produced you know he put turns a lot of echo up makes everything sound weird anyway Anyway, this is Warning Sign. Here we go. Echo on the drums.

There you go. This is like Octoon, baby. This is exactly, yeah, that drum sound in Octoon, baby. Teksting av Nicolai Winther សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី Warning sign, warning sign I hear it but I ain't know much Hear my voice, hear my voice It seems something is not very nice hear my voice hear my voice it's saying something and it's not very nice pay attention

pay attention I'm talking to you and I hope you're concentrating I've got money now I've got money now come on baby come on baby warning sign of Easter.

So it's definitely an interesting song. The lyrics can be interpreted a lot of different ways. He talks about how he has money now. The part that really sounds like the alien, he's explaining his haircut at one point. He's saying, look at my hair. I like the design which is a funny way of saying that but uh it's very fear of musicy it sounds like it could be

like yeah not quite sure what it's about but uh uh a cool sounding song although i would you know there is an alternate version that you can get on the bonus rarities and outtakes, but it sounds just as weird. I would love to hear just like a straightforward 77 version, but that is not available. All right, this is track five, The Girls Want to Be with the Girls. And this is sort of about love in a way.

Let's hear it. See you. And the boys say, what do you mean? The boys say, what do you mean? Well, there's just no love When there's boys and girls And the girls want to be with the girls Girls want to be with the girls What do you think, Adam? I mean, I like the way it sounds. It's not the, you know, I wouldn't put it up there as an example of great songwriting of David Byrne.

Mr. Byrne. Interestingly enough, I think on The Tonight Show, Cindy, Cindy Williams who played, uh, Shirley on Laverne Shirley. She, for some reason, I read the story that she held up the record and pointed out this, this, uh,

the, the title of this track and said, the girls want to be with the girls and kind of laughed about it. Like it was weird, but also she was intrigued by it. Um, I don't know whether the band was on the tonight show or they must have been otherwise why would she be holding up the the record but i think that's an interesting show business story strange

um i lack in context i like two-thirds of that song i would say i i love the beginning and the second part and then the third part loses me all All right, but this is, in my opinion, a Stone Cold classic, an SEC. This is Found a Job. This ends side one of the record. Let's hear it. Found a Job. Found a job. Don't get upset, it's not a major disaster

There's nothing on tonight, she said I don't know what's the matter Nothing's ever on, she said So I don't know why you bother We've heard this little scene We've heard it many times The fighting over little things And wasting precious time They might be better off, I think

The way it seems to me Making up their own shows Which might be better than tea Judy's in the bedroom Inventing situations Bob is on the street today Scouting up locations Making list to the other family Making list to the groove at the end which is just unstoppable so this is a song basically about a couple who are they they each have jobs and they're fighting uh when they're together at night about what's on tv and how there's nothing good on tv and um they they sort

of realize that they're unhappy in their jobs and so they decide to start making their own TV shows, which is the Judy's in the Bedroom Inventing Situations, Bob is on the Street Today Scouting Up Locations. They've enlisted all their family. They've enlisted all their friends. It helped save their relationship and made it work again, which is such a funny idea for a song, like a couple who's decided to make their own TV show.

But there's some lyrics at the end that says so think about this little scene apply it to your life if your work isn't what you love then something isn't right which i i can't tell if mr burns is like making fun of these this couple or whether he he legitimately thinks this is a lesson people need to learn, you know, quit your job if it's not making you happy. I don't know. I have a hard time really sensing what is sarcasm and what is not in this song. I don't know.

I think like a lot of Talking Heads stuff, it's just kind of, he just kind of sets up these weird parables and lets them just sort of lie there and lets you kind of make what you want of them. But he has a lot of judgment in a lot of his parables, you know, where he's sort of sneering at some of the people a lot of times, especially early on when he's fresh out of art school and he's kind of young and just like you know he seems judgmental about things and i can't tell whether he's judging the couple involved or whether oh here's the here we go yeah yeah this is so good someone should sample this for a song it's such a good part i i uh one day when i was in college in acting school my music teacher my friend jeremy who's great guy we're still friends now uh he was on the bang bang tv show a couple of times his husband was on a couple of times um i i came into a classroom i think for a

private tutorial with him and he was just completing doing aerobics to this song and so anytime i anytime i hear this i imagine him dancing to it which is like not such a bad memory to have when it comes to a song it's a good aerobic song actually it really is um this is also a great uh stop making sense track oh totally um anyway great song oh by the way we didn't talk about how the transition from the previous song the girls want to be with the girls into found a job is like an amazing sort of i don't remember what that is here let's just hear the end of The Girls Want to Be with the Girls. And we'll hear the transition into this.

It's sort of in the same uh beat like it dun dun dun dun dun yeah three volts cool damn that yeah it's cool um all right this is uh side two uh or the middle of the cd or the playlist however you're listening to it this is artists only so found a job is the last song on side one right yep artists only so found a job is the last song on side one right yep Let's go! I'm painting! I'm painting I'm painting again I'm painting I'm painting again I'm cleaning I'm cleaning again

I'm cleaning Cleaning my brain So This is So this is... The lyrics to this were written by their friend from art school, Wayne Zeeve, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He actually gave them their band name, Talking Heads. He suggested it.

their band name, Talking Heads. He suggested it. And so this is sort of like the lyrics are some cliches about artists basically in art school. You have him say, you can't see it till it's finished. I don't have to prove that I'm creative.

He's cleaning his brain which I guess is a technique to get rid of things out of your brain and just connect yourself. It's sort of the don't think, the UCB model. Anyway, what do you think of the song, Adam? I mean, it's fine. I feel like it's sort of maybe filler a little bit. It's kind of a lesser song on the record for me. It's interesting. A lot of people think this is one of the major songs on the record. Really? Yeah, and I have always had a little bit of a hard time getting into it because of the melody. Yeah.

It's very kind of groove heavy and a lot of instrumental sections, but I never really thought the melody was all that great. No, it's not really hooky in any way, and it hooky album on the most part for the most part but check this out yeah anyway i but a lot of people i think people will be upset that we don't like it but um let's see okay this is the next track this is i'm not in love not the 10cc song this is i'm not in love by talking heads This is I'm Not In Love By Talking Heads. Pretty! What is when you would stop when I think of you? You'll touch me in a minute but that's not what I want to do

We are two strangers we might never have. We can talk for. Understand what you said, but I'm not. So this is... I think the guitar riff is sort of a precursor to Life During Wartime. Yeah, totally. This is another one that is kind of like the last song where I have a hard time getting into it. But I appreciate it.

I love it because of this groove and that riff and and everything um i think interesting lyrics that are examining a relationship uh sort of like an alien would but but for some reason i just i'm not into the melody yeah i i like it sounds like it would be incredible live in 1978 but i agree that it's but hey it's 2020 life during wartime uh is an improvement on the same sort more like light during wartime oh my god thanks bro appreciate the laughs yeah i'll take them where i can get them uh this is stay hungry this is uh the the ninth song on the record. This is a sex song, Adam.

This is a lot like sex rap that we talked about on our sister show. Stay hungry, stay hungry, stay hungry Move and hustle, move and hustle, move and hustle Make a motion, make a motion, make a motion Pull it tighter, pull it tighter, pull it tighter Double beating, double beating, double beating Double beating, double beating, double beating Pop a tension, pop a tension, pop a tension So really, what is the difference between this and sex rap? He's being a little, he's disguising it more. This and sex rap. Because he's, the lyrics are all like

i think that we can signify our love now meaning have sex oh girl you can initiate an impulse of love his boner stay hungry stay hungry stay hungry move a muscle make a motion pull it tighter double beaten palpitation stay hungry here's that rhythm again. Here's my shoulder blade. Here's the sound I made. He's talking about fucking, bro. Gross. Gross, Mr. Burns. We don't want to hear you fuck.

Is this what it sounds like when people have sex? He brings the band in when he fucks. I guess I've never had sex before other than listening to this song. Do you like this? I do. I like this song. I like the chorus of it. Stay hungry, stay hungry.

All right. This is the big hit off the record. Pretty deep in the album. This is track 10 of 11. And this is a cover of an Al Green song. And this is Take Me to the River. We'll play it and we'll talk about it in the middle. I don't know why I love it like I do

All the changes You put me through Take my money My cigarettes I haven't seen The worst of it yet I wanna know, can you tell me Am I in love this way?

Take me to the river Drop me in the water Take me to the river Dip me in the water Ocean of darkness Ocean of darkness So, in the same sort of year, 1977, 1978, four white guys came out with covers of this song.

I think Foghat was first. Yeah. So Foghat was essentially, so Al Green wrote this in the early 70s and put it on his record, but they didn't put it out as a single. Instead, they gave it to another singer on the label who was the sole singer as well. But I think the Al Green song is the classic version. And then Foghat was first, I think. And then Levon Helm from the band came out with it. And then I think Talking Heads was was next and this was a big hit

this was this went to number 23 on the charts which for their second album is pretty big deal pretty big deal they were on snl uh playing it which is a really funny appearance uh from from i think it's funny because for a long period of the song, there's a camera guy trying to crouch and get out of the shot, and he's in the shot the entire time, just so he can get a shot of Chris Farts' drums from underneath the drum, which they cut to it. He's there for so long, like, I got the shot, I got the shot. They cut to it for a second, so long like i got the shot i got the shot they cut to it for a second

and then they cut away from it and then he's just sitting there lying there in the background of the performance the entire time that's hilarious i want to see that but then uh brian ferry put out his version just a couple of months after talking heads really yeah like and and i knew that brian ferry had put out his version and i guess i had always assumed that he was first and talking heads were sort of copying him but no it was it was the reverse no one i don't think anyone was copying each other it's just like very odd that four white guy fronted uh combinations put out a cover of this song at the same time. And Talking Heads was the successful one.

It was kind of doing something with soul music. It was kind of almost a take on soul music. Like, Mr. Burns is obviously not singing it like a soul singer. He's singing it in his yelping, white guy way. And if you watch the SNL performance, he's very in it and very creepy while he's doing it. So it's almost like a commentary on soul music. How old was the Al Green song at this point?

I think Take Me to the River was 72. Let me look that up. It was 74. So really four years old, but when they recorded it, three years old. I can't find the SNL version. Is it on YouTube or is it somewhere else? Yeah, it's on YouTube.

It doesn't necessarily say SNl on it but the first video that comes up um anyway big hit what do you think adam yeah it's great i i prefer the stop making sense version just because it's there's so much more energy to it and stuff but yeah that's great i think i think we probably heard the stop making sense version for sure as well and so we're used we like we like, I became used to that, but I think there, what's interesting about this version is it is definitely weird. And that's the point.

That's the point of it is, Hey, we're going to do this soul cover and make it sound weird and make it sound nervous and, and sketchy. Yeah. And that's what people were responding to when they first heard it of like, Oh wow,

this is, this is odd. Yeah, it's definitely bizarre. And then the stop making sense one is like widescreen fun. And yeah, they actually because they have a lot of people of color in their band, they actually kind of do it a little more like a soul song, which is cool. This is the last song on the record. This is called The Big Country, which the title was taken from a Roxy Music song that was referring to Texas. But this is Mr. Burns' commentary on flyover states, essentially.

This is The Big Country. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់� I see the shapes I remember from maps I see the shoreline I see the shoreline. I see the white calves. A baseball diamond. Nice weather down there. I see the school. And the houses where the kids are.

And the houses where the kids are Places to park So I'm going to talk over it just a bit before we get to the chorus, just because you hear it, you hear the traditional instrumentation, the sort of slide guitar, and he's talking about all this nice imagery. He's like on a plane looking down

and seeing the middle of the country. And here's the punchline. When we come to the farmlands the middle of the country. And here's the punchline. I see the parkway that passes through them all. And I have learned how to look at these things. And I say, I wouldn't live there if you paid me. I wouldn't live there if you paid me. Yeah. I couldn't live like that. No, sirree.

I couldn't do the things the way those people do. I couldn't live there if you paid me to. Essentially like a big, pretty direct, kind of like duping people into a punchline here, which is kind of funny the song ends with him saying like basically making baby noises goo goo ga ga ga goo goo ga ga ga um kind of a mean uh mean song yeah i i i like this song pretty i feel like that chorus should have been more of a big soaring change from the rest of the song well i i think it and would have been if it was a later talking heads if it's a later talking

see this is the thing this is the difference between this period talking heads and later talking heads if this was on little creatures for instance he would have leaned into sincerity at least even if he's doing it at a remove because it sounds like a little creature's song yeah but instead he's doing it basically he's doing like the rope-a-dope and he's he's luring you in so yeah you go wow this is nice and pretty so he can go like fuck you but you can see those same words in the chorus going big soaring going, beautiful, catchy. Here, how would you do it? Go. If you paid me all.

There you go. That's exactly right. But a pretty song. Yeah, it is. All right, Adam. There aren't a lot of, there are a lot of alternate versions, but I don't think any of them hold a candle to the actual versions that came out. There is't a lot of, there are a lot of like alternate versions, but I don't think any

of them hold a candle to the actual versions that came out. There is an interesting Stay Hungry that was, they recorded for 77, I believe, that they didn't use. But other than that, everything is kind of like shittier versions, but, and no B-sides or anything like that. So more songs about building and food. Album number two. How do we feel about it, Adam? I mean, it's terrific. I think the next record of theirs is where they really step up and become like a world-class band. But these first two records are fantastic. They're still figuring it out.

And then they become kind of world-class. I think I mentioned it a little bit beforehand i've always preferred 77 um even though you could look at 77 and say oh wow it sounds too much like other stuff like television or whatever i just think the songwriting is i prefer the simplicity of the songwriting a little bit the directness of the songwriting I prefer the simplicity of the songwriting a little better. Yeah, I get that. The directness of the songwriting. But I do appreciate this record, and I like listening to it.

But I would say if I were putting on a Talking Heads album for enjoyment purposes, this is not one that I always went to when I was younger. For the purposes of enjoyment. Sure. I sound like Mr. Burns. I'm going to put this on for the purposes of enjoyment. It's the name of their new album. All right. Well, that'm going to put this on for the purposes of enjoyment. It's the name of their new album. All right. Well, that's going to do it for us. Next time, we're going to be talking about the album Fear of Music. Are you excited about that? I sure am. That was my favorite

one for a long while. All right. Well, speaking of Little Creat creatures, let's play something off Little Creatures to take us out. That's a little bit akin to that song. This is Creatures of Love, and I'm looking forward to the next episode. Absolutely. But until then, the one thing I will say is we hope that you found what you're looking for. Bye. will say is we hope that you found what you're looking for bye a woman made a man