Talking Heads – Remain in Light – 1980
David Byrne sounds like a shaman on “Born Under Punches”, the opening super-percussive salvo. Only this time I get the real sense that he has, dare I say it, a sense of humor. “Some of you people just missed it!” is a line that just strikes me as funny.
So, I’m reading about Remain in Light and one thing that makes a LOT of sense while listening is that the band, specifically Weymouth and Frantz, were tired of being Byrne’s back up band. Which is what they sound like on all the previous records, to me at least. They decided to start working together to create jams, keying off “I Zimbra”. And that’s very obvious on Remain in Light. “Crosseyed and Painless” has a driving beat and shuffle that makes it ripe for sampling. Talking Heads seem to be even further embracing the burgeoning african music scene, whether, as Wikipedia says, it’s because they saw Hip Hop as the future or this was a natural progression from punk/new wave. Some were following Don Letts into Reggae and others were embracing more tribal rhythms. Remain in Light comes out the same year as Adam and the Ants’s Kings of the Wild Frontier. I don’t think this is an accident. But, Adam’s global success is due to his understanding the importance of structure and the Heads refusal to embrace structure. In fact, they seem hell bent on decon-ing the structure whenever possible.
Gosh, just reading about the egos involved here…Eno wanted to be listed as a 5th member of the band. Byrne instructed the designer to credit it as “by David Byrne, Brian Eno & Talking Heads”. The arrogance and control freaksim is astounding. Consider: this is a record that is dependent on the interplay between percussion and bass. Without that foundation there is no record. Period.
The lyrics, while they might offer something of interest, are just as often if not more just another instrument. Almost like Byrne and the singers are…speaking in tongues. And yet, there was an attempt to minimize Frantz and Weymouth…
No wonder they created Tom Tom Club.
But, how is the music? Inspired. Take, for instance, “The Great Curve”, a masterwork of rhythms, stilleto guitar work (by Adrian Belew), the harmonies, all of them make for one of the best tracks in the band’s catalog.
This is also the record with the first bona fide big hit for the band: “Once in a Lifetime”. This is the one with the video of Byrne in the big suit. As strange as that video, the song is a slap in the face to consumerism and blind grasping for stature. The mid-life crisis in song. Feels like it. (I can also hear the roots of some of Eno’s work with U2 in here) You might find yourself getting annoyed by the end, the polyrhythms never end and each song begins to blend into each other. “The Listening Wind” is a good example of this. But it reminds me instead of the deeper cuts on the Bowie/Eno records of the 70s or even a progression from Eno’s Ambient music toward some hybrid animal of base human/programmed fairlight robot. Lose yourself in it. The album’s coda “The Overload” could be seen as a sequel of sorts to Bowie’s “Warszaw”. It’s dense, ominous, sad, plodding and funereal. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard from the before or since but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Just…different.
1980 was a great year for music. Adam’s Kings. Bruce’s The River. Laurie Anderson’s O Superman. The Clash’s London Calling. And this.
If you only want to hear one Talking Heads record to get a sense of what the band was doing and why they rank so highly in the history of rock if not New Wave and punk, this is the record.
Grade: A+
ASide: Crosseyed and Painless, Once in a Lifetime
BlindSide: Born Under Punches, The Great Curve, The Overload
I have to admit I've never much liked this album. Nor the next one, except for a couple songs. Though I like the two albums after that, and "Flowers" is just a great song. But I have a strange relationship with Talking Heads. I like them more now than I did then, and have come to adore David Byrne when he used to irritate me.
What happened? Byrne left Talking Heads and never looked back. Love his solo career. He just follows his interest and explores musically. He has fun. He sounds vibrant and so does the work. Beyond the obvious reasons, I didn't really know why this would make that much of a difference, but then I finally saw the Demme movie and it explained it all. The band was superfluous. That movie was a document of a band falling apart because the leader who did everything realized he didn't much need them – and actually, they weren't really up to it anyhow. He had to augment the damn band with an entire second band in order to get the sounds he wanted. He controlled the stage and the only point the others did was during the Tom Tom Club song – which only served to highlight how useless, dull, and standard those three were.
So in my eyes it's become fuck Talking Heads, yay David Byrne.
Once again, you are dead on, sir. I will say that, while you like Byrne's solo stuff, not a lot of other people do. There was a certain alchemy to the group, be it that they were the right pieces of clay for a tyrant or something better than that, I think they worked best together.
I find it interesting that over the next two studio albums the sounds becomes more and more accessible to the point where Byrne is actually singing (a point I never forgot made by the village voice when they reviewed the album and they were rather impressed and incredulous) and the songs are actual…songs.
I don't know why but I do know that I loved this record and its the first time that the band worked as a collective of equals. I don't think that's why I loved it. I think it just worked for me.
Much in the same way that later Cars material worked less and less as Ocasek became more and more of a tyrant.
I do find it interesting, though, that both of those bands contained ex members of The Modern Lovers.
Makes me wonder about Jonathan Richman a bit.
Well moving on as an artist and seizing control of your own creativity to do what you want and see your work as a journey rather than a settlement doesn't sit well with some people. They prefer Sting or Phil Collins.
Have you read any of Tina Weymouth's account of this album? She's a very angry woman and she seems particularly pissed off about this album. It seems like the band was actually a bit shut out of the process by Byrne and Eno, who apparently mostly only spoke to each other during the recording.
Oh, I thought of another bit of proof that the other members of the band are crap – The Heads. You ever heard that? No talent going on there.
Jonathan Richman is alternately wonderful and tiresome – it depends on the song. He has these brilliant, playful upbeat songs that almost sound like childrens music – Vincent Van Gogh, I'm a little airplane, Abominable Snowman in the Market, Government Center, all this wonderful stuff that I can listen to endlessly and it makes me happy – and then he has these slow, meandering love songs that are like nails to my ears.
I have no intention on every hearing The Heads.
As for Richman, I couldn't agree..less. I almost never enjoy anything by him.
The Wikipedia article pretty much depicts the anger and discomfort and resentment. It doesn't go in to much detail but it's obvious that Byrne thinks he is above these players.
However, that said, what's he ever going to do in 1975-76 without them? He's not really a musician. Nor is he a singer. Nor is he a comfortable singer. He definitely needed them and he made them rich. (I am assuming this, of course, but their albums did do well and Tom Tom Club's hit was a monster).
Tyranny vs the collective.