Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food Poll

That's the '77 cover, aint it?

Take Me to the River...I think. I should really listen to this album again.

yeah it's the back cover, i googled More Songs... and got that.

the big country, in a big country,

All beautiful and strange in their own eays, but "Stay Hungry" gets my vote for the eerie fade-out: the jittery guitar, Tina's bass pokes, and Eno's synth.

Warning Sign

thank you for sending me an angel

Impossible. The best I can do is say that I wouldn't vote for "With Our Love" or "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls," but I don't think I can narrow it down any further.

1 Warning Sign
2 Artists Only
3 I'm Not in Love
4 Stay Hungry
5 With Our Love
6 The Big Country
7 Thank You for Sending Me an Angel
8 The Girls Want to Be With the Girls
9 Take Me to the River
10 Found a Job
11 The Good Thing

Found a Job. Probably my favorite short-story song, and that outro.

I'm Not In Love

Found a Job, followed closely by Thank You for Sending Me an Angel and I'm Not In Love

I'd like to be less obvious and vote "Stay Hungry," but really, it's "Take Me To The River." I could play this 100 times in a row and get excited each time.

DAMN THAT TELEVISION

I have adopted this and made it my own:
Cut back the weakness, reinforce what is strong.

Yeah really! VERY easily "The Good Thing" which is probably by favorite Heads song apart from that "woman's hips" one (the name of which always escapes me cuz it's not called "Woman's Hips"). The climactic "watch me work!" section is the most kinetic moment in their catalogue and proof positive that Byrne viewed "wasting precious time" negatively.

11 The Good Thing = wtf???

DAMN THAT TELEVISION

― Matos W.K., Wednesday, February 11, 2009 6:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Was going to post exactly this!

xxpost

Actually, that end should read something like: proof positive that Byrne viewed a time-efficient work ethic negatively.

"I'm Not In Love", with "Found A Job" hot on its heels. TH sound/feel so intense on this album.

11 The Good Thing = wtf???

Yeah, I was trying to do that and play a poker tournament at the same time. I'd put it #6.

this was the second album i fully digested by the Heads and is still my favorite. this, however, is a fluid situation as i'm still going through their catalog. i'm now convinced that they are one of the best bands ever!

voting for "The Big Country"

i live in Los Angeles, BTW.

For me it's the first song versus the last song.

If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right. If your work isnt what you love, then something isnt right.

apply it to your life

bump

Found A Job.

DAMN THAT TELEVISION

― Matos W.K.

Was going to post exactly this!

― Mark G

I can't really think of another song that immediately jumpstarts as effectively as "Found a Job". I love how everyone plays like they're walking a tightrope for the first 3 minutes, before the amazing closing instrumental section where Jerry Harrison looses those little plucking guitar lines. I was just watching this clip from 1978...

...and it reminded me that as cool as their touring lineup for Fear of Music onwards was, there are certain Talking Heads songs (like this one) that benefit from not having dozens of people onstage, auxiliary percussion, backup singers/dancers, another guitar player, keyboards, etc. I love certain aspects of their expanded lineup's sound, but I'm fairly certain my favorite Talking Heads era will remain the early stripped down stuff.

I heard somewhere that the final section of Found a Job was a nod to Minimalism, like John Adams and Nixon in China...anybody know any more?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Thank You for Sending Me an Angel

1. This is too hard. I dearly, truly, and eternally adore this album.
2. Tina Weymouth was wearing a pink hooded sweatshirt I'm pretty sure, drinking MILK before the show when I saw them play at SUNY Binghamton campus in 1978. RICHARD BELZER was the opening act. One of the songs that played on the PA before the show was THE ROBOTS by KRAFTWERK.
3. The musical interplay on this record is deliriously beautiful in a way that I have never heard anywhere else, including any of the other Talking Heads records.
4. OK, Found A Job is my favorite.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I can't believe "Artists Only" only got one vote. Otherwise pretty fair.

One of the weirder polls so far.

Other than First, Second, and Fourth picks (or Tracks 6,10, and 10) all the songs on this record I find completely interchangeable

6, 10, and 1

I'm surprised "Warning Sign" got so little love. That's probably my second fav on here.

results aren't surprising at all in the sense that well over half the votes went to the 3 songs that were played in Stop Making Sense.

wow funny results.

I thought The Big Country would get more votes.

I wouldn't call the songs interchangeable, and I think the results here are an anomaly based on so few people voting. "Found a Job" is fine, but... what?

I'm surprised "Warning Sign" got so little love. That's probably my second fav on here.

The hands-down scariest track. "Psycho Killer" has nothin' on it.

Your glassy eyes and your open mouth
Take it easy baby, take it easy,
It's a natural thing and you have to relax,
I've got money now, I've got money now.

Actually, every lyric on this album is written through the POV of a total sociopath. If this is the only Talking Heads record you ever heard, you'd start investigating David Byrne for unsolved murders. He just hates people the whole way through it.

Or at least reduces them to math.

But... that's why I love it. Don't get me wrong... I do not share Byrne's apparent views on love and life and work, and I do not imagine that he does, either, not at all. He's weird, yeah, but the lyrics on this record are NUTS. And that's kind of what it is, as a record -- it's the record where David is a sociopath. He meant it that way. Him and his weird Eno friend.

People who think "art rock" is Rush doing a Coleridge poem are bloody morons.

Hang on wooah he doesnt hate anyone on FOUND A JOB. Quite the opposite.

No, he's very happy for the people who found something better to do than watching TV... by making TV shows. Way to break free of those constraints, etc.

are nwot.

I always appreciated Sand in the Vasline for including the non-single "Warning Sign" -- it was the extra bit of taut weirdness that convinced me to buy the damn thing.

And for Sugar on my Tongue.

Its a matter of degrees
And that's true
That's true
It's taken to extremes
and that's why we work so hard to
Take that love away

^^^ The theory of emotional relativity

stay hungrayyyyyyyyyy

I searched out this thread to revive it and...apparently make the same comments I already made almost a year ago. Good lord I love this album. Things are puttering along nicely until musical satan descends upon the scene and possesses Talking Heads starting in the last minute of "The Good Thing":

So I say:
I have adopted this and made it my own:
Cut back the weakness, reinforce what is strong.

"Warning Sign" starts after exactly a bar of empty space, and is creepy as fuck. Putting aside the lyrics, listen on headphones with the volume turned up and witness the really subtle swirling backward vocals leading into each phrase. At first I tended to agree with the person upthread who thought that Eno's presence on this album was largely unnoticeable, but after about the billionth listen his influence is apparent. "Girls Want To Be With The Girls" is a fine song, but to be honest for me its primary value is to serve as the perfect setup for "Found a Job", which again starts after a 4 beat pause and makes people shit their pants.

I love MSABAF more and more with each year, and now it's my favorite. One of the best things about Talking Heads is that each one of their first four albums have been my favorite at some point, and each time I couldn't conceive of a way that it could be any other way. What a great band.

Gackazoid. Bottom seven songs are the whole entire reason this album rules. Single vote getter "With Our Love" is merely the greatest TH song ever & one of the greatest period (period). "Found a job" is the merest of conceptual clams next to the pink hearts exploding "girls want to be with the girls" but when they don't

fuh-huh-huh-huh-huckle-fuck-already

No wonder "Remain in Light" keeps winning polls as best Talking Heads record: because of this most utter fuckerottering tastelessness. If David Byrne comes from somewhere between Jonathan Richman and the Africanized future of pop music (that future that was expected, that future that didn't actually happen,) then the best songs on MSAB&F are the place where he owes nothing to nobody and, more importantly, where the Talking Heads as a band playing together show off their utterly original, dare-taking synthesis of KC & The Sunshine Band & Modern Lovers in the most utterly realized way. It's the second best record Eno was ever involved with after Another Green World.

{& this was the final VP pest at aye el ex}

I first discovered TH in a kind of bulk-buy of albums, starting with SMS and then acquiring all their albums in rapid succession. As such, I never really managed to separate a lot of the material form the first few albums - they all seemed to work together in a kind of temporal soup. But now I'm going through each album in chronological order, their career arc is starting to make much more sense and this is maybe song-for-song one of their best. I especially like the bassline towards the end of The Big Country.

Yeah and Warning Sign and Stay Hungry are both fab.

i love that every song on this got a least one vote. such a great album that i only discovered a few years back, probably 2008 or so.

probably going to spin this tonight because of this bump.

To help keep be focused, me and my guitar teacher have been going through the first three albums track by track. Some strange stuff going on here, especially as far as the song structures go. This is my fave of the first three.

Me focused, not be focused.

That's a great idea. I'd love to do something similar with bass guitar.

"warning song" = weirdest song about sex ever.

i've been listening to the 1975 cbs demos thing a lot recently, which interestingly has like all the songs from 77 and about half of this one it; angel, girls, stay hungry, with our love, warning sign. crazy that they had already written so many of their hits 2 years before the first album was even released. demo version of "thank you for sending me an angel" is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_R3WYryz3Y

yeah, i feel like that was pretty typical back, when back-to-back albums were common and people weren't burning off material on b-sides and side projects all the time -- lotta people built up a catalog before getting a record deal that it took 2 or 3 albums to use up.

typical back THEN

my cardboard fliptop double sire cassette of 77/msabaf from about 82 or 83 is now some rosebud level shit in my memory banks.

They'd been performing pretty much all of 77/More Songs live before 77 even dropped.

Yeah, there's a fan letter in the liner notes to Sand In The Vaseline wherein the writer lists their fave Heads songs (all from MSAB&F), cncluding "I hope you make an album."

loved how "Warning Sign" shows up on SITV.

i've been listening to the 1975 cbs demos thing a lot recently, which interestingly has like all the songs from 77 and about half of this one

Haven't played those demos in a while but aren't there actually more MSABAF songs on it than '77 songs?

I think it wasn't until "Fear of Music" that a lot of their stuff was jammed out in the studio and sort of assembled later, which partly explains the really weird structures, especially once you get to "Remain in Light." If you've ever seen a band cover (or been in a band covering) "Once in a Lifetime," it's almost impossible to tell where the "one" on the measure is.

I assumed that was down to listening to Fela Kuti

5. The Girls Want to Be With the Girls 1
7. Artists Only 1
2. With Our Love 1

robbed!

girls are getting into
abstract analysis; they want to
make that intuitive leap!
they're making plans with
far-reaching effects!

this is my most listened to Talking Heads album at the moment. also doing a Talking Heads poll sometime in the year 2020.

my cardboard fliptop double sire cassette of 77/msabaf from about 82 or 83 is now some rosebud level shit in my memory banks.

I had that cassette. And likewise about the rosebud effect.

it was fuschia and turquise you know.

or turquoise or whatever, with a big number _2_.

This has fast become like, my joint second favourite TH studio album.

the best thing about it is how short the gaps between the tracks are. a real sense of urgency.

both the first 2 albums are such GREAT guitar records. The way the guitars are arranged, the way they're played, the way they're recorded. I like the fourth world funk dream stuff that came after but their sound on the first records is even more special to me. Meat Puppets Up On The Sun has that same clean, interlocked ecstatic sound.

xpost just as rosebud for me was the special walkman I always played it on. It was the first walkman that was barely bigger than the tapes that went in it. Silver. My friend who was kind of a klepto stole it from me (I know he did). Its constant inhabitants were the 77/Buildings & Food 2fer and this weird Iggy cassette that mixed up tracks from New Values, Soldier and Zombie Birdhouse. And PiL generic.

This one! Rosebud...

http://www.oobject.com/12-vintage-walkmans/wm-10-foldout-tiny-walkman/5510/

I bought it with my paper route money

xxp i must check that Meat Puppets album.

It's not their only great album but it's the only one that has that particular sound. Definitely my favorite of all 80s US indie albums, even edging out double nickels and new day rising.

oh, yeah, i had that walkman too, precisely like that picture, gold and red!

my favorite talking heads album. this album is one of the greatest poems about america ever written, it so perfectly captures the spirit of american culture. "the good thing" is my favorite song on here, and one of my favorite talking heads songs overall.

perfect juxtaposition. listening to this on spotify right now, home depot commercial comes up. "more saving, more doing." could be an unused david byrne lyric.

take "the good thing". song was written in the late 70s, but it could be the religious hymn sung by silicon valley true believers in 2014. say what you want about david byrne, but he got it.

People who think "art rock" is Rush doing a Coleridge poem are bloody morons.

― Bad Banana On Broadway (kenan), Monday, February 16, 2009 2:23 AM (5 years ago)

MSABAF is a decent enough Talking Heads album, not my favorite. "Xanadu", OTOH, kicks all kinds of ass.

huh, it's funny, did some research on "the good thing" and it turns out david byrne's lyrics were inspired by old chinese communist party literature. i remember doing some research on authoritarianism in america, and found surveys and sociological papers that found that america was the most culturally authoritarian-leaning of the 1st world industrial nations, to an off-the-charts degree, in total contradiction of our own view as an individualistic culture, even before the bush/911 years.

guess it was a "happy" accident byrne's cribbing of authoritarian literature sounds so incredibly american. links up pretty well with this thread: Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism weird how we might have more in common with communist china than france or england.

I always thought there was a whiff of Japanese "happy corporate family" culture to lyrics like "The Good Thing" and "Don't Worry About the Government."

Ha! Musically, the verses Radiohead's 'Anyone Can Play Guitar' is identical to the verses of 'Warning Sign', except that Radiohead slowed it down.

This fuckin album.

Not even sure what I would have voted for. Maybe I'm Not In Love. Or The Big Country. But really the whole thing is pretty perfect.

Today, "The Good Thing."

his album is super-economic. no mucking about