Talking Heads - Talking Heads: 77
ARTIST.....: Talking Heads
TITLE......: Talking Heads: 77
LABEL......: Rhino Records
URL........: http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=76449
RIP DATE...: Oct-16-2006
STORE DATE.: Jan-10-2006
GENRE......: Rock
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 8,1 MB
Track Listing:
01 - Pulled Up 04:09
(Live At Sproul Plaza, Berkeley, Ca 1978)
02 - I Feel It In My Heart 03:07
(Live At The Kitchen, New York, NY, 1976)
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07:16 min
Release Notes:
Though they were the most highly touted new wave band to emerge
from the CBGB's scene in New York, it was not clear at first
whether Talking Heads' Lower East Side art rock approach could
make the subway ride to the Midtown pop mainstream successfully.
The leadoff track of the debut album, Talking Heads: 77, "Uh-Oh,
Love Comes to Town," was a pop song that emphasized the group's
unlikely roots in late-'60s bubblegum, Motown, and Caribbean
music. But "Uh-Oh" gave away the group's game early, with its
nervous, disconnected lyrics and David Byrne's strained voice. All
pretenses of normality were abandoned by the second track, as
Talking Heads finally started to sound on record the way they did
downtown: the staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, the odd
guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, the
non-rhyming, nonlinear lyrics that came across like odd remarks
overheard from a psychiatrist's couch, and that voice, singing
above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries
resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal. Talking
Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a
sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. The music was
undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on "Psycho
Killer," Byrne's supreme statement of demented purpose. Amazingly,
that song made the singles chart for a few weeks, evidence of the
group's quirky appeal, but the album was not a big hit, and it
remained unclear whether Talking Heads spoke only the secret
language of the urban arts types or whether that could be
translated into the more common tongue of hip pop culture. In any
case, they had succeeded as artists, using existing elements in an
unusual combination to create something new that still managed to
be oddly familiar. And that made Talking Heads: 77 a landmark
album. [In the fall of 2005, Talking Heads' catalog was finally
remastered and reissued as DualDiscs, containing a CD on one side
and a DVD with 5.1 mixes, along with bonus video material, on the
other. Initially, the DualDiscs were only available as a box set,
but in 2006, the albums were reissued individually as digipacks
(the box set contained all white jewel cases). Talking Heads: 77
has the singles "Love = Building on Fire" and "I Wish You Wouldn't
Say That," plus the B-side acoustic version of "Psycho Killer" and
"Sugar on My Tongue," which previously appeared on Sand in the
Vaseline; there's also a good previously unreleased outtake of an
early song called "I Feel It in My Heart," which is on the DVD
side as a compelling video performance of the band playing at the
Kitchen in 1976 as well, while there's also a video of the group
live in 1978 playing "Pulled Up."]