Talking Heads - Remain In Light poll

was in the mood to listen to this album and found out that we have not polled this album properly.

pretty sure we've polled this

nope, only the second side.

HAH

voted for don't you miss it! don't you miss it! SOME OF YOU PEOPLE JUST ABOUT MISSED IT!

THANK YOU
THANK YOU

dddDON'T EVEN MENTION IT!

this album is all about sounds: shrieks, howls, two basses burbling discrete rhythm lines, Eno multitracks, Adrian Belew peels. I may vote for "The Great Curve" because they come together in the last 1:30. But Mojique in the village dreaming of blowing up foreigners in the free trade zone still spooks me.

mojique. waits. for news. in a quiet place.

The center

is missing

I've kind of worn out side A. Side B is definitely spooky.

this might be my favorite album

these days I think Crosseyed & Painless for the relentless groove, but tracks 4-7 have all been my favorite at some point. nothing to say right now, really, but I like Heylin's writeup in Rip It Up

feeling like The Great Curve is the one at the moment

"Crosseyed" i guess. one of the most frontloaded albums ever?

Facts are simple ... voting Crosseyed & Painless.

The Great Curve

check out the Simply Red track that royally rips it off, even down to the bongos and the Belew-alike guitar solo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr9x0lTTUi8

For an album that's all about the sounds and the groove, RiL has amazingly quotable and engaging lyrics.

i only just recently discovered that Houses In Motion had a 'special re-mixed version' on the single. can't find it on YouTube tho..

gotta go with the dust in my head. it kinda reminds me of something off Simple Minds' New Gold Dream. belew's chorused guitar ripples especially.

Well I never - released 3 days after I was born, and one of my favourite records. A bit front-loaded but I love the eerie second side a lot. Cross-eyed and Painless is brilliant but I prefer the live version. Same as Once In a Lifetime. I'm going to go with The Great Curve.

bron under punches

The Great Curve. Can follow these bass lines for days.

Oh, in case anyone is unfamiliar with this album, here's a YouTube that could help you out.

http://youtu.be/thUbCqYkDog

voted for don't you miss it! don't you miss it! SOME OF YOU PEOPLE JUST ABOUT MISSED IT!

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, October 9, 2014 12:55 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm.

Honorable mention to "Listening Wind," which could be embarrassing but actually works.

The cross-chanting vocals part of "The Great Curve" is one of my favourite things ever, so it has to be that.

First time I heard The Great Curve, I had just woken up (in fact I think I was woken by the song) and my slightly misplaced interpretation of the lyrics got it in my head it was about a medium:

'She is moving through the sprite world / She has messages for everyone / She is viewing by remote control' etc...

My gut instantly says "The Great Curve".

Can't choose. Every note of this album is amazing, from the opening "AH!" to the final droning "ooooverlooooaaaddd...." I've probably played it more times than any album ever.

That "AH!" is the best opener since Sweet Leaf

The island of doubt
is like a case of medicine

I wonder how much truth there is in the story around The Overload. It's a bit too cute, and I have a hard time imagining that Eno, at least, hadn't heard Joy Division.

The final track on the album, "The Overload," was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of British post-punk band Joy Division. The song was made despite no band member having heard the music of Joy Division; rather, it was based on an idea of what the British quartet might sound like based on descriptions in the music press. The track features "tribal-cum-industrial" beats created primarily by Harrison and Byrne.[28]

also voting for "Crosseyed and Painless." wonder if it would be released today how successful it would be?

this is one of those albums where every song is a favorite at some point

Crosseyed is so good on SMS.

this is one of those albums where every song is a favorite at some point
otm - seen and not seen might be my fave at the moment

What better opening lines are there than "Lost my shape / Trying to act casual"?

hey this is 34 years young this week, i did see dog latin's post but didn't really pay attention to the date i posted in the original post.

It's all one long song.

that's a nice way of looking at it that I had never considered

seen and not seen has great kafka/twillight zone crossover lyrics

Love how no one is going for Once in a Lifetime. May go for Once in a Lifetime a song that sounds like everyone is starting at a different count in the measure, and probably is, making it almost unplayable live as recorded, which may be why the T Heads, who generally don't radically deviate from the records, rearranges that one live. Same with Zep and Black Dog, though of course Zep was a lot looser live.

On the cusp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wp2qhoop9U

"Born Under Punches" for me...Belew's anti solo is phenomenal

On any day the answer could have been any of them, but today "The Great Curve" takes it - their most furious collective groove.

I really want to know whether Belew's "Born Under Punches" solo was actually played that way, or was it edited together from a dozen different bits.

Likely Belew through a guitar synth and/or being manipulated via Eno, a la Manzanera's "Gun" solo.

Curiously, Byrne plays it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVIKF03KkVM

4:20.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

born under punches

Seriously, though, is there a single TH song you'd cut from the setlist if that's what it took to include the TTC song?

Jaames brooown!
Jaaaames broooown.
Check it out!

If that song weren't so amazing that shit would be unforgivable

i hate how they dubbed over CF's original mid-song mention of "snow white" on the newer versions.

Man, I need to hear this Chris Farley vocal.

Seriously, though, is there a single TH song you'd cut from the setlist if that's what it took to include the TTC song?

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, October 19, 2014 11:42 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep, either "What a Day That Was" or "Making Flippy Floppy."

sometimes we feel that the poll is wrong

Making Flippy Floppy is so classic in the movie

"what a day that was" is my favorite song in the movie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

jerry harrison sucks imo but tom tom club is obviously great. still, their performance during stop making sense is abysmal. somebody needs to poll the shit that chris frantz yells out ("the girls can do it too, y'all!!!!!!!!"). and tina's...dancing?...near the end is somehow the most embarrassing dance in a film full of humiliating limb movements.

http://i.imgur.com/1oYJq7H.jpg

^ Got no problem with that first TTC album in general, but I really hate that song in this film. They might as well have renamed it "Costume Change."

When I was little I always thought Robin Williams sang "Once In A Lifetime".

I never got into this album like the first three. Maybe I need to go back to it.

xpost it wasn't even supposed to be in the film, according to wikipedia

Tom Tom Club appeared in the 1984 Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense performing "Genius of Love," although this incarnation of the group did not include Tina Weymouth's sisters Laura and Lani. Director Jonathan Demme added "Genius of Love" to the concert primarily so that David Byrne could exit the stage and change into his oversized suit, and he assured Weymouth that the performance would not be included on the final cut of the film. When Weymouth saw an early screening of the film she was thus surprised and irritated to see "Genius of Love," but Demme refused to change anything before the official release.

to be fair, I misinterpreted you, Josh. I thought you were disparaging the TTC album.

*puts glove back on hand*

don't understand some of the assumptions made from the results. you could only vote for one song. doesn't mean that you don't love all the others.

anyone ever see this? i think whoever filmed it musta held onto it for years as it seems to have only recently surfaced. the last performance by Byrne, Frantz, Weymouth and Harrison until that Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame lark. DB looks.. sheepish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ephPxOu0uDQ

Chris Frantz needs a haircut.

Needs more conga.

To his credit, Frantz invented normcore in Stop Making Sense.

OTM

Had to look up Normcore. Was disappointed that it had nothing to do with George Wendt.

anyone know why the tracklist on the back cover of RiL is out of order?

which release?

oh. all of them, i guess. i never noticed that!

http://classicalbumsundays.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/backcover-700x701.jpg

yeah, i know the back cover was originally supposed to be the front cover and vice versa, title was changed at the last minute, I assume the tracklist went through the same kind of changes. glad it did - no other opener than Born Under Punches.

yeah shit i never noticed either.. no way is ..Curve an opener, much as i love it.

yeah wow didn't know. hard to imagine a better opener for any album than drumroll-AHH!

I think Great Curve works as an album opener. It's more a problem of where else to put Born Under Punches. I don't see it going after Crosseyed and Painless.

did they just not do Curve and Punches on the SMS tour because they couldn't do them justice without Belew? sorta mind blowing that they ditch Belew AND Eno.. then make the best live show of all time.

Xpost, as great as SMS is, I don't think they hit the ecstatic heights of their 1980 tour

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2KQjy02eqOk

Embed fail, follow link for The Great Curve in the Rome show.

Wasn't it quite common back then for vinyl albums to have the tracklisting out of order on the back?

No

lol to be honest at the time i assumed it was some kind of deliberate eno/byrne conceptual thing, like the obscure strategy card said "put the track listing out of order"

can't wait to do this poll. it will be the next one that i do.

Wasn't it quite common back then for vinyl albums to have the tracklisting out of order on the back?

― TARANTINO! (dog latin), Tuesday, August 23, 2016 4:07 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah actually i swear i've seen this before...not sure...

IIRC, Let It Bleed did this.

I'm excited for this poll too, Bee OK!

xps I've seen it a bunch of times. I think Lennon/Ono's 'Double Fantasy' does this. Usually it's because the track order wasn't finalised before going to print.

I'll check my copy of DF when I get home. This might've been somewhat common because the window between mixing/mastering and printing the jackets was so much shorter in the 70s/80s.

40 years old today!

well shit, didn't know it came out three days after i was born. there's a thing

"Listening Wind" is so unspeakably beautiful.

In Kurt Cobain's Journals, there is a page for potential NEVERMIND producers. I
was impressed that he considered Dave Jerden, and he cited NOTHING'S SHOCKING and
his engineering work on REMAIN IN LIGHT

I watched Stop Making Sense for the umpteenth time on Monday and was surprised to notice only two songs from RiL on there. I think they recorded a version of The Great Curve but it didn't make the cut

Setlist FM is good for these things; The Great Curve was last performed in 1981

https://www.setlist.fm/stats/talking-heads-3bd6b808.html

Typical sets for the SMS tour looked like this

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/talking-heads/1983/saratoga-performing-arts-center-saratoga-springs-ny-73d522f5.html

It's amazing they did so little of RIL, although i guess minus Belew some of those songs were impossible.

After doing so many weird extended jams of those songs on the previous tours I'm not surprised they moved away from RiL a bit. That being said Ive always been disappointed that a version of "Houses in Motion" didnt make it into the film, that must have been so great with the SMS band.

Dirty Mind and Remain in Light landing on the same day. A bright spot before a shitty end to that year.

you don't even have to click the link, how convenient:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/nine-inch-nails-trent-reznor-favourite-album-talking-heads-remain-in-light/

First sentence of that clickbait:

There aren’t many musicians in the public eye right now who is quite as expansive as Nine Inch Nails maestro Trent Reznor.

But there is also a link to the real piece, which is here:

https://vinylwriters.com/trent-reznor-on-talking-heads-remain-in-light-1980/

And this is what Reznor said:

There are a few candidates for this question, but one of my absolutely favorite records is Remain In Light by the Talking Heads. It is an album I didn’t understand when I listened to it for the first time in the beginning of the 80s. Back then, I was living in a rural small-town that was widely cut off from interesting culture. And then suddenly this album landed. A strange, synthetic, polyrhytmical piece of art with African influences which confused me in every way. With good albums it is the case that at the beginning you don’t know what you are actually dealing with. But you are fascinated by it, and with about six listens it slowly reveals itself to you. With the 10th listen you are completely thrilled, but even when you listen for the 30th time you still discover something new. Remain In Light taught me that. The record enlightened and changed me. It showed me what music can do, how song structures can look like, or how drum parts can interact with other parts. Since I started making music myself, this wonderful album has been something I can always consult. The great thing is that the record can still be approached from so many different directions without losing its puzzles.

I had the privilege to moderate an evening of public discussion with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne in 2012. He had written a book called “How Music Works” and I was asked to take part in its reading tour. He is a super nice guy and a true gentleman.