These Memories Can't Wait--Talking Heads

Everything has gone very quiet

Everyone has gone to sleep

I’m wide awake on memories

These memories can’t wait.

Talking Heads, Memories Can’t Wait (from Fear of Music, 1979)

I’ve been in a strange frame of mind for the past week, ever since I started listening to the Taking Heads again.  I hadn’t listened to their music in quite a few years, other musical genres like flamenco, Latin pop, Early Music, tango and Cantopop have taken up all of the available airtime in my busy life.  On a whim, I loaded Sand in the Vaseline, the first Talking Heads compilation (1992) onto my IPod and set out on a walk.  I had forgotten just how good their music was—a potent mix of punk, new wave, world music (lots of Afro-pop influences when the band was under the influence of Brian Eno, and after), art rock, pop, basically whatever fit the tenor of the times and the mood of the band.  The early lyrics often reflected the angst of an impersonal modern life in the big city, and the later lyrics sometimes morphed into non-sequitur laden adventures in free association that somehow still managed to make a great deal of sense—Listen to Girlfriend is Better and hear what I mean.  There was often also a political undertow to the lyrics which, in later years, became more obvious and pointed.  Yeah, there really was only one Talking Heads, and I was lucky enough to discover them towards the beginning and follow their career step by step until the band fizzled out around 1990.

My first contact with Talking Heads music was at a party in the winter of 1980.  A bunch of University of Chicago students were having one of our typically not quite hip parties when a bunch of punked out art students came in, commandeered the stereo (strictly vinyl in those days) and put on a crazy song that had the whole room pogo-ing like crazy.  This was a third floor apartment in one of those ca. 1900 apartment houses on the south side of Chicago.  Soon the floor was bouncing up and down until the radiators were rocking back and forth and, finally, the speakers fell over.  Yeah, we were really into it.  The song:  Psycho Killer.  Right then and there I knew something interesting and slightly eerie was happening in rock music.  Baptism by fire.

Soon I was collecting Talking Heads albums as they debuted.  By 1989, I had every one of their studio albums on vinyl.  Too bad I got tired of lugging around all that heavy vinyl.  I just hope whoever has those albums now realizes what a treasure they are.

In the early 80s, the band was hip enough to attract director Jonathan Demme and, together, they made history with the concert documentary Stop Making Sense.  I was lucky enough to see the Stop Making Sense tour when it came to Chapel Hill (though I won’t say I “heard” that concert since the acoustics were so bad I couldn’t recognize a single song they played).  The band’s music videos were groundbreaking in their day and many of them still hold up surprisingly well.

Enough talk:  here is a taste of what all the excitement is about.

Video: http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:47442

Video: http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:54246

Video: http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:54247 Oh, and if you want to listen to some audio tracks, visit the band's MySpace site:  www.myspace.com/talkingheads1