#270
October 15 1984
Talking Heads
Stop Making Sense
5 out of 5
Highlights:
The whole thing.
Psycho Killer
Swamp
Slippery People
Burning Down the House
Girlfriend Is Better
Once in a Lifetime
What a Day That Was
Life During Wartime
Take Me to the River
It's my list, dammit and we are going to listen to this album if for no other reason than we need a palette cleanser for some of the garbage we have had to sit through. (This is just the LP release, fyi)
I know, we don't do live albums but this one is special. In its own way it's a different beast than just a "live album", it's a New Wave reckoning, a genre validator, the album that made people understand that there was a new sound out there and that was part world beat, part performance art, part rock, part party. In one fell swoop, the Heads wiped away all the corporate ideas and clamor for sales and radio play and made it safe for something different.
This is, if I may, the bridge between Duck Rock and Graceland and yet unlike both of those records while wholly similar.
Oh my non-existent god, this is spectacular.
I need to interject by stating that I have not always loved the Heads. In fact, it's not until Remain in Light that I actually gave them a rating higher than a B+ and I really didn't care for Fear of Music (I know, I know...shut up).
But, let's be clear, Remain, Tongues and even Little Creatures are some of the best American music of the era.
But, you can't really talk about Talking Heads without mentioning Stop Making Sense. Not the film, which I LOVED and watched just a couple weeks ago. No, the album. Because a band which always came across as slightly calculating and precise and the opposite of "loose" put their money where their artsy fartsy mouths were and showed what they could do.
It's electric. You can't not move to it. It's the Pringles of New Wave music, once I start, I can't stop.
Highlights?
The entire record.
Jeez, just listen to that percussion on "Slippery People".
And, even though I butchered it live, backed by the game band, "The Andersons" at a Wheat From Chaff festival, "Life During Wartime" remains one of my favorite songs of all time.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/stop-making-sense-live-special-new-edition/290073030
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