All posts tagged Talking Heads

The Pitchfork 500 – New Prince Heads

The next bunch of Pitchfork songs aren’t quite grouped in the same way as previous sections, in an easily discussed theme. Instead, the thing that unites these songs is that pretty much everyone knows them, and by and large, they are pretty damn good. And yes, I know I promised this back in August 2009. I’ve been busy, alright?

New Order – Blue Monday
Prince and the Revolution – When Doves Cry
Talking Heads – This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)

New Order’s “Blue Monday” is one of those songs that is groundbreaking in so many ways, it’s almost impossible to know where to start. Unique melding of early ’80s New York Disco with Mancunian post-punk? A dance tune that isn’t about anything remotely funky or sexy? A record that was so expensive to manufacture that despite being the best selling 12″ ever, it managed to lose the massively entertaining but entirely hapless Factory Records money?

Having spent much of the Eighties listening to New Order, I know this song inside-out. So writing about it 25 years (25 years! Sob!) later is a bit odd. And personally I’d have put “Thieves Like Us” on here instead. It’s a much better song. (Funnily enough Peter Hook agrees, saying “I honestly thought Thieves Like Us, the single after Blue Monday, was far superior.”) If anything, New Order wrote at least three better songs (“Thieves Like Us”, “True Faith” and “Bizarre Love Triangle”, and I’m taking requests for “Temptation” too), but this is arguably the first song to ever mesh dance and rock. Few people have done it since (if you say Primal Scream, or Stone Roses, you can leave now, as you are beyond redemption).

Because, at its heart, “Blue Monday” is barmy. At the time, everyone knew New Order were unusual, and probably unique – the combination of their record label’s laissez-faire attitude to release cycles, their own obstreperousness, and their open-minded attitude to music (and drug-taking) made them quite like anyone before or since. “Blue Monday” mixed the dance beats they had heard during their New York trips with their own dour Mancunian heritage, producing something quite astonishingly different. And you’ve got to love their live version recorded in a sweltering Maida Vale studio:

After moaning about Pitchfork’s choice of Prince song earlier, they’re far more on the money with “When Doves Cry”. It’s an odd little song, veering from a declaration of lust into how people take on characteristics of their parents. Again, Prince is happy to show us just what a marvellous musician he is. Lucky get. Have a look at this rehersal footage (apologies if it’s been taken down):

Just look at the ease with which he sings and dances around; just listen at the elegant simplicity of the song, a dance record with no bassline. What a mover. What a singer. Git.

Talking Heads managed to combine out and out kookiness with a sharp sense of melody, and this track – cunningly subtitled “Naive Melody” – had this in spades:

But again, I can’t say it’s my favourite song of theirs¹. I just can’t get that excited about it. One of their more funky little numbers, it gracefully showcases their ability to mix their fluid post-punk with soulful backing vocals and Nile Rogers-esque guitar lines; but despite all that, it all feels a little cold to me. Saying that, you can hear their influence reverberating through the music of today.

In fact, all three songs (and the artists that made them) had a huge impact on modern music that is still being heard now; everytime you turn on the radio or listen to your iPod or Spotify or whatever, you’ll likely stumble across something that owes a massive debt to these bands. What’s curious is that the three musical geniuses on show here – Bernard Sumner, Prince, and David Byrne – are so different. Sumner can almost be called an accidental genius; despite his obvious gifts, he always gives the impression that he’s stumbled across this great song by accident (he once said something along these lines in an interview, that songs were gifts falling from the sky at night. But he had clearly been drinking). Prince, on the other hand, shouts “GENIUS” at you whilst dressed in purple pants, playing five instruments simultaneously whilst simulating sex with three semi-naked models. Byrne is somewhere between the two; he wears his cleverness and talent on his sleeve but tries to stay cool about it.

No matter though. All three changed pop music and helped diversify it with soul, disco, house, funk, and all sorts of “World” music (I hate that phrase). Without these three musicians, popworld would be a much duller place.

¹ That’d be “Once In A Lifetime”, of course, with “Road To Nowhere” as backup. Oh come on, you know I’m right.

You can read the rest of my Pitchfork 500 articles here.

MP3: Blue Monday by New Order

~~MP3: When Doves Cry by Prince~~
This ain’t here no longer. As per the note below, there has been a DMCA takedown request. Unbeknownst to me, this track got referenced by someone saying their blog hosted Soundcloud, but then referred it to me. Thanks, folks. In any case, fair cop, removed now, and I’m pretty sure the little fella is up in heaven playing all the instruments God can find him, making some fucking incredible music, whilst Lemmy and Bowie and Reed and Brown look on going “Fuck’s sake. Imagine what it’s going to be like when Dylan pops his clogs”. And he’s looking down slyly going “Man, I love lawyers”.

MP3: This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) by Talking Heads

Buy “The Best of New Order” (CD/MP3)

Buy Prince’s “Ultimate” (CD)

Buy “Once in a Lifetime: the Best of Talking Heads” (CD)

Some content on this page was disabled on May 8, 2016 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from PRS for Music. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

https://en.support.wordpress.com/copyright-and-the-dmca/
Some content on this page was disabled on October 14, 2020 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Warner. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

https://en.support.wordpress.com/copyright-and-the-dmca/

The Pitchfork 500 The End Of Year Zero – Costello to Talking Heads

Elvis Costello and the Attractions – Radio Radio
The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry
XTC – Making Plans for Nigel
Blondie – Atomic
Talking Heads – Memories Can’t Wait

Here we are at the final five songs of the first chapter of the Pitchfork 500, 1977-1979. Three bands from England and two from the US; both US bands are from the edgy, glamorous, centre-of-the-universe city that was New York in the late ’70’s, and the English bands are from Crawley, Twickenham and Swindon. Swindon, I ask you.

But they had lots in common; they could look back at the past, taking disparate influences and turn them into something new but still familiar. All had great pop nous and the ability to make chart-topping tunes that sound great now, thirty years later.

Elvis Costello was a scrawny, geeky, angry type from west London with a history in music long before punk came along. His father wrote, sang and starred in this classic advert from the early ’70’s, with Elvis singing the backing vocals:

You can see the similarity, can’t you?

After forming a number of bands, he finally settled on The Attractions and with them, he cracked the mix of New Wave with Soul that would characterise his music for years to come (just think of the covers of “Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”). “Radio Radio” wasn’t as well known to me as some of his bigger hits, but it’s a spiky little slice of pure EC, down to the sardonic lyrics: “And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools\Tryin’ to anaesthetise the way that you feel”. Yep, that’ll get your song played on the radio. And that was in the late ’70’s; imagine how he’d feel now, in this Clear Channeled world, where every radio station in the whole of the US plays the same songs day in, day out?

The Cure have two types of songs. The miserable, hair-covering-your-eyes-boo-hoo-hoo-I’m-so-unhappy-even-though-I’m-a-really-rich-rock-star songs¹, and the chirpy, happy songs with a dark undertow. This is one of the latter, and indeed, probably the first sighting. The song reeks of the student disco and fey skinny types jumping around with their arms in the air, bless ’em.

What makes the song, if not quite great, then at least interesting, is the air of ambiguity. You’re not sure what exactly he’s done to deserve it, other than “But I know that this time\I have said too much\Been too unkind” and that he’s “misjudged your limit”. Oh dear, Robert, you nasty fellow. Still, could be worse, eh? You could be living in Swindon.

Swindon, for those who don’t know it, is a little like post-Apocalyptic Washington in Fallout 3, except the locals have a West Country accent and there’s slightly less shooting (the Super Mutants are firmly in place, though admittedly drinking cider and wearing short skirts). And from there hail XTC, some sensible cars, Mark Lamarr, and a not very good football team. Of them, XTC are probably the most remarkable. This song, “Making Plans For Nigel”, was one of their biggest hits. It tells the tale of a young man being forced into taking a menial job at British Steel, and his lack of resistance to a life of drudgery. Foreshadowing the destruction of working class ambition to come during the Thatcher years, it’s a tale of inertia and tedium. Andy Partridge would later be crippled by epic stage fright, and after his girlfriend threw away the Valium he took to overcome anxiety, wouldn’t perform live again. Studio-bound, XTC never got the critical mass of a fanbase behind them to really push onto the success their talents could have got them.

Unlike Blondie. Ah, Debbie Harry. Men of a certain age will remember her appearance on ToTP in the last ’70’s wistfully well into their dotage. She was classy, droll and so, so, cool. Men wanted to be with her and women wanted to be her. Injecting glamour and sex appeal into New Wave was her game, and boy, did she succeed. So utterly confident she’d dance round in a swimsuit and a jacket for the video to Denis:

That’s not to say that Debbie was the only thing that made Blondie special. Chris Stein and Jimmy Destri were excellent songwriters, and the band had a superb magpie element, taking songs from other bands, such as power-pop band The Nerves’ “Hanging On The Telephone” and The Paragons’ “The Tide Is High” and making them their own². They could mix the dance and hip-hop they heard on the streets and clubs of Manhattan, with power-pop and pure, balls out rock-and-roll learned from years of playing alongside Television and The Ramones at CBGB’s, with such finesse and style that at their best, they are gobsmacking. Give Parallel Lines, or better still The Best Of Blondie, to your nearest teenager and bet them to find anything released in the last year or so that comes even close to it. Or find me someone in their 30’s or 40’s who doesn’t like them, and I’ll show you a liar.

Saying that, I really don’t think “Atomic” is their best number. Whilst it’s got the futuristic sheen to it, and the sheer nerve of the lyrics (only 11 words used, fact fans!), to me it’s just not got the out-and-out pop brilliance of “Picture This”, “Denis”³ or “Sunday Girl”, or the proto-hip-hop of “Rapture”, or the sheen of “Heart Of Glass”. Still, Blondie beat up many of the bands on this list.

After that, “Memories Can’t Wait” comes as something of a shock. One of Talking Heads’ more paranoid moments, it sounds like the party that’s going on in David Byrne’s head is a particularly unpleasant one. Listening to this is a reasonable approximation of being in a noisy bar after someone’s spiked your drink with Ketamine. Uneasy listening, I suppose you could call it. It’s rather addictive.

66 down, 434 to go. We’ve had everything from the dark noise of This Heat and Throbbing Gristle to the pop nous of Blondie and The Buzzcocks, via Disco, Funk, Reggae, Power-Pop, the first beginnings of Electronica, Punk, Post-Punk, Punk-Funk, Funky-Punk, Clanky-Drummy-Shouty-Punk and Pop-Punk. I’ve rather enjoyed it so far. Hope you have too. There’s loads more to come, you know.

¹ Ok, so he wasn’t a rich rock star when he started writing those songs, but doing it when you’re 50 and rich enough to buy a small African countries is stretching the bounds of credibility.

² So much so I didn’t even realise “Hanging On The Telephone” was a cover until I researched this article.

³ Yep, I know “Denis” is a cover too, but they messed around with it enough to call it their own, French-singing and all.

Atomic by Blondie

Memories Can’t Wait by Talking Heads

The whole list is available here.