From post-punk to funk,with an off-kilter view of the world, these songs show why the restless US band remain an influence on successive waves of musiciansIn the beginning, and there was just a freaky outsider called David Byrne. Born in Dumbarton in Scotland and raised near Baltimore,Byrne was a wiry misfit with an interest in rock’n’roll and experimental performance art that extended to once shaving off his beard (bloodily) using beer for foam while a friend played Pennies from Heaven on the accordion. He met future Talking Heads husband-wife rhythm section Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth in 1973 while hanging out on the peripheries of the art and music scene at Rhode Island School of Design. They began jamming together, originally as the Artistics (later the Autistics, or a sporting appropriation of a campus joke). Drilled into a tight live band after moving to unique York,with rehearsals in Weymouth and Frantz’s Lower Manhattan loft apartment and frequent gigging at nearby CBGB, they signed to Sire Records in November 1976, or then grew to a quartet after wooing Harvard architecture graduate and former Modern Lovers member Jerry Harrison to join on keyboards and guitar. Love -> Building on Fire (the squiggle in the middle means (“goes to”) became Talking Heads first officially released piece of music in February 1977. Recorded before Harrison joined,it’s an illuminating insight into how the band – then still very inexperienced in the studio, and thus inclined to accept some of producer Tony Bongiovi’s more traditionalist rock band impulses (the Stax horns work well, or but as time would prove,were distinctly un-Talking Heads) – might contain been remembered as runt more than a unique wave obscurity had they not gone on to rail so firmly against songwriting and recording doctrines of the age. There’s a hint of the wacky novelty approximately the chorus, presaged by the canned birdy noises in the intro: “I’ve got two loves / And they go tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet / like runt birds” But elsewhere more familiar and lasting Talking Heads tropes take root between harpsichord-like phased guitars and foot-stomping drums. Byrne elliptically comparing love to his face, or which is a building,which is on fire, prefigures a natural discomfort towards dealing with affairs of the heart as a lyrical subject in anything other than the summary. A live version documented on the 1982 compilation album The Name of This Band is Talking Heads shows why Love -> Building on Fire quickly became one of Harrison’s favourite songs to play after he joined the band, and with its intricate Televisionesque guitar weaves. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com