Dec 14

Talking Heads

Greatly Appreciated

TALKING HEADS
 
 
Talking Heads  were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.  The new wave style of Talking Heads combined elements of punk rock, art rock, funk, avant-garde, pop music, world music, and Americana.  Four of the band’s albums appeared on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; and three of their songs (“Psycho Killer”, “Life During Wartime”, and “Once in a Lifetime”) were included among The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
As it turned out, three competing and complementary strains of music arose seemingly overnight by 1974:  In addition to power pop, they were what most of us know as “punk rock” – e.g., Ramones, Sex Pistols, Patti Smith Group (with Lenny Kaye on lead guitar), Dead Boys – and “new wave” – e.g., Elvis Costello, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Runaways – the latter band, the first successful all-female rock band, is now the subject of a major motion picture. 
 
(April 2010)
 
*       *       *
 
Sam Ugly (who was only 16) and Tony Torcher had played together in a Anglophile band called the Markeys that played a lot of early Stones, Yardbirds, Animals, Kinks, and Who songs.  After they heard the first Ramones album, and after several of the early punkers came through town – Patti Smith, Talking Heads, and Iggy Pop – a new direction was clear; and the band brought in lead singer Mike Nightmare and his brother Raymi Gutter (when original Markeys guitarist Brian Vadders wouldn’t cut his hair) – good thing, too, because it is Gutter’s guitar that really stands out here.  The band started out with the name Rotten and changed it to the Ugly when they heard about Johnny Rotten.  
 
  (November 2011)
 
*       *       *
 

While they never quite reached those heights again, their later albums explored Gordon Gano’s upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister.  James Christopher Monger writes in Allmusic of their second album (released in 1984):  “After the surprise success of their landmark debut, Violent Femmes could have just released another collection of teen-rage punk songs disguised as folk, and coasted into the modern rock spotlight alongside contemporaries like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads.  Instead they made Hallowed Ground, a hellfire-and-brimstone-beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike.  Like Roger Waters purging himself of the memories of his father’s death through [the Pink Floyd albums] The Wall and The Final Cut, bandleader Gordon Gano uses the record to expel his love/hate relationship with religion, and the results are alternately breathtaking and terrifying.”  

 

(November 2014)

 
*       *       *
 
In seemingly no time, the music scene was crowded with top bands and artists whose work has held up well over the decades since, among them Patti Smith Group (whose debut album, Horses came out before Ramones, in December 1975), Television, Richard Hell, the Heartbreakers (the punk band not Tom Petty’s group, though he was a part of the scene as well), Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Blondie, the Clash, the Cars, Elvis Costello, Pat Benatar, Joy Division, the Specials, the Go-Go’s, the Police, etc., etc., etc. There were so many that rock critics and others began distinguishing bands in the safety-pin set as “punk” and others that were less confrontational as “new wave”.  
* * *
Another important band of the same time period, the Modern Lovers was formed in 1970 by guitarist and singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman with John Felice (guitar), David Robinson (drums), and Rolfe Anderson (bass). Richman had spent 9 months in New York City after becoming infatuated with the Velvet Underground before returning home to Boston and forming the band. The Modern Lovers played their first date in September 1970, barely a month after Richman’s return and became a hot live band. Anderson was later replaced by Ernie Brooks, and Jerry Harrison (a future member of Talking Heads) joined up on keyboards.
 
(December 2016)

Last edited: March 22, 2021