Talking Heads- Classic or Dud?

otm

i've been called worse things, i'll accept that

hey, opinions formed while high as fuck are opinions too, you know

especially opinions about fear of music and remain in light

Would not be good listening if you're paranoid-when-high.

Eazy OTM, "Drugs" is a bad trip

Lost my shape!
Trying to act casual!

they only have one genuinely bad album and that album is True Stories.

and it's puzzlin' evidence either way

so wrong Turrican, most of the time you are OTM. not even close on this one.

― Bee OK, Saturday, 9 September 2017 01:11 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I am profoundly disturbed by this post.

Good!

But yeah, I have tried a lot with this band - particularly since their so-called "peak" years (1977-1980) fall within one of my favourite periods of time for music ever. There is the occasional song I like here and there, but I find a lot of their material a little on the tedious side. I'm often left with the impression that they're a white funk band for people who perhaps consider themselves a little too artsy and deep to listen to the real deal, with some superficial "African" elements sprinkled on top and a thoroughly annoying vocalist bulldozing his way through it all, and I can tolerate seal-bark Andy Partridge just fine. Perhaps this description is a little harsh, but that's the impression that I get. The post-Remain in Light particularly comes across to me as quite bland.

It is, of course, undetstandable why there are fans of Remain in Light that haven't taken to their other albums - it sticks out like a sore thumb in their discography.

*understandable

their entire discography is sore thumbs

I'm often left with the impression that they're a white funk band for people who perhaps consider themselves a little too artsy and deep to listen to the real deal

Yeah, there's so many of these types around isn't there?

I think you can chart a pretty clear progression - you can see what ideas they're playing with and where they're going with them - from the beginning to the end, but none of their albums really sound like each other. Each one is in many ways a departure from the one before it.

a white funk band for people who perhaps consider themselves a little too artsy and deep to listen to the real deal

ad hominem bullshit

What century is it again?

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Do I wish I got more out of this stuff than I do? You bet I do. Particularly since folks like Shakey and McBoing-Boing like 'em.

truly insane argument by Turrican, especially considering Tina Weymouth is in the band - one of the funkiest bass players ever.

I don't think of TH in terms of funk tbh. I don't think they are ever really "funky" in the conventional 70s-funk-by-black-artists sense. They borrow (liberally) elements from funk but I don't think they ever really get there, or even intended to get there. I think of them more like CAN - interested in building a musical vocabulary that deliberately excises certain things (some of which they were explicit about cf. Byrne's comments about "the blues", major key melodies, etc.) in favor of trying to incorporate genres and instrumentation and approaches that were not normally the province of white America (tropicalia, afrobeat, Brian Eno lol). Somewhere around the end of Speaking in Tongues-era Byrne very clearly *does* turn back towards America and then there's brief period of warped Americana/True Stories/Little Creatures which pulls in these other things like country and zydeco while mashing them together with their previous interests. And from then on Byrne is just in full polyglot cut-up pastiche mode through Naked and into his solo career.

these goddam byrnebros

superficial "African" elements

feel like this is a deliberate misreading as well, since it's not like their tactic was to just threw a ngoni solo on top of standard American pop song. Esp w/Remain in Light they are clearly borrowing compositional/structural ideas - building songs around circular multi-part vocal melodies, or long droning vamps that just alternate around a single tonal center or two-note riff.

I don't think of TH in terms of funk tbh. I don't think they are ever really "funky" in the conventional 70s-funk-by-black-artists sense. They borrow (liberally) elements from funk but I don't think they ever really get there, or even intended to get there. I think of them more like CAN

Kind of agree with this, they were definitely funky, but on their own terms - like Can - and not in some lame 'white funk band' way that Turrican seems to imagine they were.

yeah there is an immense gulf in approach between, say, the Average White Band and Talking Heads

there's this great japanese record called "fine time, a tribute to new wave" where a guy named yasuyuki okamura does "burning down the house". what's great about is not just the performance itself, but the fact that okamura is clearly singing it phonetically. the lyrics sound even better when they're sung by someone to whom they're literally, not just figuratively, meaningless. better than byrne!

i searched to see if it was on youtube, but i only found a version of talking heads' version apparently transcoded from a 32k realaudio file. it has 306 views.

xxpost:

Yes, I didn't expect that description to go down well, but unfortunately - because, like I say, I wish I got more out of their music than I do - it's exactly what I hear.

I don't see Can as a funk band at all.

One of the great things about TH is that on the whole they appreciated without appropriating music outside their immediate worldview. So when they dabbled with funk and African rhythms, it felt like they'd worked out what made that music great on a nucleic rather than superficial level. They 'got' it. Byrne never tried to make his vocals and lyrics 'funky', it was all in the groove, and even then, even when they were working with members of Funkadelic, it was never a note-for-note rip off of that music or a piss-take. You could tell they'd been listening to disco and funk and afrobeat, but weren't setting out to mimic it.

So, no, I would never call them a 'funk' band, always a new wave band, even though their very earliest stuff had a certain amount of funky drive to it.

v otm

In this case, I think it's irrelevant how they intended to or were setting out to sound, more how they actually do - and for the most part, I hear white funk.

Wild Cherry was doing white funk in case you need a reference point

In this case, I think it's irrelevant how they intended to or were setting out to sound, more how they actually do - and for the most part, I hear white funk.

OK, so you listen to Talking Heads and you hear white funk. Are you sure you're listening to Talking Heads and are you sure you know what funk is?

Why am I even asking the question?

Am I right? Am I wrong?

My God, what have you done?

big fan of the average white byrne

Indeed, why are you even asking the question when you know the answers are "yes" and "yes"?

Yes, Wild Cherry did white funk and so what? Yes and Genesis were both prog bands yet their approaches are different. It happens.

AWB seem clearly to be aiming for some pastiche of "authentic" black funk, for better or worse. Talking Heads are attempting to filter the idea of funk through some notionally white filter with its attendant up tight neuroticism. Not saying this is better or worse. But If someone wants to call Talking Heads a funk band I dont think we need to lose our minds.

it's about as insightful as calling new order a disco band tbh

Indeed, why are you even asking the question when you know the answers are "yes" and "yes"?

If only it was that obvious.

AWB seem clearly to be aiming for some pastiche of "authentic" black funk, for better or worse. Talking Heads are attempting to filter the idea of funk through some notionally white filter with its attendant up tight neuroticism. Not saying this is better or worse. But If someone wants to call Talking Heads a funk band I dont think we need to lose our minds.

― 29 facepalms, Wednesday, September 13, 2017 12:20 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup!

But If someone wants to call Talking Heads a funk band I dont think we need to lose our minds.

Especially if someone is also going to say that Weymouth is one of the funkiest bass players ever. xp

Byrne described the full touring band in their SMS mode a 'disco funk revue' which is fair enough, but calling them a 'funk band' seems reductive or slightly off. Funky band, yes, sure. Even the Smiths could be funky. But I guess this is all semantic. Turrican, have you seen Stop Making Sense? Ironically that's the film that made TH make sense to me.

What genre label wouldn't be reductive?

Stop Making Sense also features Parliament/Funkadelic's Bernie Worrell on keyboards, so it gets blurry. Simulacra Funk.

TH having their own take on funk/disco/afrobeat because they listened closely is true and obvious and the only way to conflate that with superficial bland "white funk" is maybe due to too many indie bands since trying to do the same thing or just plain deafness sorry. Also, I don't know anyone who loves Remain In Light who isn't also into all sorts of r'n'b genres. At least I hope I don't.

A very large portion of their catalog doesn't really relate to funk at all. Not sure how you connect 77 or MSABAF to white funk.

Yeah, I was going to say while TH didn't really appropriate the music that they were listening to, plenty of bands (like Arcade Fire) have made careers from appropriating TH, as well as others. That TH track that samples Francis Bebey and sounds a bit ABBA-ish for example; TH used samples and loved disco but they wouldn't have done something like that. They were quite methodical about it too - like with I Zimbra, the closest thing they came to sounding like afrobeat, using a Dadaist poem as the lyrics etc...