11/15/2022 0 Comments Remain in light talking heads rarThe first four songs, and this one in particular, illustrate how the Heads could lay down some grooves and rock out at the same time. Later on, he deadpans, "Memphis/ Home of Elvis/ And the ancient Greeks," which has always cracked me up. I love the way lead singer David Byrne sings "I think of London/ Small city/ Dark/ Dark in the daytime!"in a slightly exasperated tone, since he captures that burg's rather dank, claustrophobic atmosphere quite well. Tina Weymouth lays downs some really seriously funky bass on " Mind," " Paper" is a quick shot of adrenaline, and " Cities" contains two of my favorite lyrical passages. The next three songs on the first side are much more conventional in structure, but still striking. It sounded to me like the kind of thing that Max Rebo's band would have played aboard Jabba the Hutt's pleasure barge. The first song, "I Zimbra," only piqued my curiosity, with its unorthodox rhythms and nonsense-language lyrics. When I first bought Fear of Music on cassette for a cut rate price at a small record store that soon went out of business in the summer after I graduated high school, I was deeply intrigued by the song titles I saw on back: "I Zimbra," "Mind," "Paper," "Cities," "Life During Wartime," "Memories Can't Wait," Air," "Heaven," "Electric Guitar," and "Drugs." The fact that most of the song titles consisted of one word nouns, along with the corrugated iron cover, lent it an air of mystery. I must admit that that album, for all of its wonderful moments, has a tendency towards heavy-handed political statements and a kind of Third World fetishization that's more than a little problematic. I like Fear of Music best, however, because it retains the song-oriented nature of the earliest stuff while mixing in the Brian Eno-influenced experimental sound and Afrobeat polyrhythms that dominate Remain in Light. I am in the minority with this preference Remain in Light is most consistently considered their best, and those who don't think so gravitate more towards the early, CBGBs-influenced sound of their first two albums. Over the years I have come to conclusion that their 1979 record Fear of Music is my favorite. (The title of the book comes from a Heads song of the era.) I also went back and listening with new ears to some of the artists mentioned in the book, including the Talking Heads. I especially liked how he weaved very disparate genres of music together, showing how salsa, disco, hip-hop, punk and new wave all grew out of a very tumultuous period in the Big Apple's history. I just finished a very captivating book by Will Hermes called Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, which recounts the music scene in New York City from 1973 to 1977.
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