Forty Five Minutes Of Talking Heads And Friends

Update Sunday 10.00 am. The original version of this post received a sensitive content warning and was put behind a warning message. I think this is because in my description of Azealia Banks' 212, the final track in the mix, I used a word that starts with the letter C and then sounds like honey lingers. I'm reposting the post here with the offending word removed- partly just to see if it now gets through Google's censors. 

I started a Talking Heads Sunday mix a year ago and couldn't get it to work. The early stuff, New York art- rock didn't seem to sit well with some of the later stuff or the remixes/ edits etc I was trying to fit in. Many of the songs I was attempting to segue started and ended very suddenly which was tricky and the whole thing made me quite frustrated so I shelved it. Seeing Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew play Remain In Light at The Ritz recently and the Leo Zero edit of Azealia Banks' 212 which splices Azealia's blinding debut single with Once In A Lifetime got me thinking I should try again. I've left out anything from their first three albums, much as I love all of them, and gone for a Talking Heads mix that is unashamedly dance music with some remixes, edits, side projects and solo works and covers- more an Inspired By Talking Heads mix than a strictly Talking Heads mix. I think it works now.

Forty Five Minutes Of Talking Heads And Friends Mix

• Jezebell: Swamp Shuffle
• David Byrne: My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)
• Talking Heads: Burning Down The House (Pete Bones Remix)
• X- Press 2 and David Byrne: Lazy
• Rheinzand: Slippery People
• Tom Tom Club: Wordy Rappinghood
• Brian Eno and David Byrne: America Is Waiting
• Azealia Banks: 212 (Leo Zero Edit)

In August 2023 Jezebell released Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1, the first full length album from Darren and Jesse, twenty tracks of 21st century pick and mix/ club culture dance music. It closed with Swamp Shuffle where David Byrne's 'high high high high high' chant (borrowed from Talking Heads song Swamp, off 1983 album Speaking In Tongues) surfaces and resurfaces. Speaking In Tongues doesn't get the respect it deserves I sometimes think- it's the last of the classic run of Talking Heads albums and has a very glossy commercial production, recorded (without Brian Eno unlike the previous three albums, a decision the rhythm section demanded) at Compass Point in the Bahamas, taking aim at the big charts with thumpers like Burning Down The House. It also has the sleeper song, the one that has over the decades seeped into wider popular culture, the wonderful This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) which should be on this mix but isn't.

In 1981 David Byrne released an album, The Catherine Wheel, a score for a Twyla Tharp dance project of the same name. My Big Hands is a sign of where Byrne might go under his own steam, shimmering, juddering art- funk. He'd go there with the other three Heads too but already in 81 he was exploring outside the band. 

Burning Down The House was their breakthrough chart hit (as mentioned above), a song inspired by Chris Frantz shouting the title phrase over a riff the group were playing, himself inspired by Funkadelic and Parliament. This Pete Bones remix, pretty unofficial I think, streamlines it for modern dancefloors. Could be wrong but it isn't, it turns out right. 

Lazy is from 2002- I can't believe this track is already that old, an X- Press 2 single which Byrne sang on after he approached the duo to be his backing band. They turned him down, feeling they were unable to provide him with what he wanted but they got this song out of it, a gloriously catchy housed up 21st century Byrne. David has since then recored a version with an orchestra and played it live- he did it in his American Utopia tour in 2018, a tour I was lucky to see at a very memorable night at the Apollo.

Rheinzand are a Balearic dance act from Belgium who I love. Their debut album came out in 2020, an album released just as the world went into lockdown and with this cover of Slippery People on it, Ghent's finest rejigging Talking Heads into super sleek modern Balearic house/ disco. 

Tom Tom Club were Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz's side project, formed in 1981 because they were pissed off Byrne had gone off to do other things. They recruited a load of players including Adrian Belew, Steve Scales and Wally Badarou and made an album that chimed perfectly with 1981 New York's collision of rap, art, dance, graffiti, and fashion- Genius Of Love and Wordy Rappinghood were both hits which irked Byrne- proving Weymouth and Frantz's point that he should be sticking with them. Wordy Rappinghood was their debut single, a joyous thing with Tina's sisters Lani and Laura on backing vocals and utilising a typewriter, a Moroccan children's song and some French language lyrics about words. 

Also released in 1981 was David Byrne and Brian Eno's truly groundbreaking, visionary sampledelic, worldbeat, Afro Beat, found sound opus. Eno described the album as a 'vision of a psychedelic Africa', something that Adrian Sherwood and African Head Charge were taking note of in the UK. The album opens with America Is Waiting, a track that still sounds like it comes from the future while also rooted in turn of the 80s Cold War, moral majority, advent of Reagan paranoia. The voice is Ray Taliaferro, a US radio show host, taped off the radio.

Leo Zero's edit of Azealia Banks' 212 is one of the most exhilarating things I've heard recently, Azealia's celebration of youth, Harlem, sexuality, and her own prowess riding on top of Once In A Lifetime, some sirens and a rattling drum machine. As the kids say, it slaps. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Talking Heads And Friends

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Forty Minutes Of Jezebell

A Jezebell mix for this Sunday to go with their weekend takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden with the emphasis on dancing. Jesse and Darren's music, edits and remixes have been one of post- 2021's joys starting with Thrill Me in November 2021, taking in various EPs and singles, an album and most recently Cream Tease (wordplay and sexual innuendo are a Jezebell speciality. Personally, I'm not a fan of innuendo- if I see one in my writing I whip it out, straight away*). 

Forty Minutes Of Jezebell

• Bibbles (Pots And Pans Mix)
• Re- birth
• Perfect Din
• Citric
• We All Need (Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix)
• The Jezebell Spirit
• Darren's Theme

Bibbles is by Brighton Balearica duo Andres Y Xavi, a single on Higher Ground in February 2024. Jezebell did three remixes, the Pots And Pans Mix being my favourite, all manner of whirrs and clicks and abstract rhythm sounds.

Re- birth first saw the light of day on the Diavol edit label and then on Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1, a shimmering, shuffling, woozy piece of edit work. 

Perfect Din is from Shelter Me, a compilation released in April 2024 to raise funds for Crisis, a homelessness charity. 

Citirc was one of four tracks released as the Weekend Machines EP, machine funk for cyborgs to strut their stuff to. Hand claps, hi hats, guitar riffs, synths, all synced up for endless, beautiful repetition.

We All Need is one of the songs on A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This album, one of 2024's best records. Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix came about when ACR's Martin Moscrop was record shopping in Berlin and found and bought a copy of Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1. 

The Jezebell Spirit takes one of the key tracks from David Byrne and Brian Eno's groundbreaking 1981 album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and Jezebells it, the 808 cracking away under the sampled American TV preacher. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is a seminal album, a record streets ahead of almost everyone else in the early 80s. 

Darren's Theme is from Cream Tease, a track and EP with its tongue firmly in its cheek and possibly its trousers undone as well. A snatch of vocal from Karen Finley's Tales Of Taboo, a 1986 song with a lyric that could be described as sexually explicit. 

* Thanks are due to Kenneth Williams for this joke obviously

Do You Hear Voices?

After their summer highlight Jezebellearic- nine minutes of warm sounds, waves lapping on the shore and the voice of Ibizan DJ Alfredo- Jezebell have returned for autumn with some electro, cunningly renamed as Jezebellectro. The title track, Jezebell Spirit, is six minute long tour de force, funky as a mosquito's tweeter, pummelling dancefloor electro, recasting a familiar song into new shapes. You can get the EP complete with another track Dumbell and a pair of remixes at Bandcamp. 

You'll probably recognise the source- underneath the pumping drums, rattling snare and fizzing synth lines is a Brian Eno and David Byrne ground breaker from 1981, polyrhythmic Afro- beats and the disturbing found voice of a TV preacher performing an exorcism. I bought My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts back in 1987 and it's an album that still holds a huge amount of power, the layers of electronics, sampled voices and drums and rhythms borrowed from African and Middle Eastern cultures. They encountered a certain amount of legal action at the time and since and have recently been accused of cultural appropriation but it remains a staggering, forward thinking, pioneering record. 

The Jezebell Spirit

Half An Hour Of Eno

Some Brian Eno for Sunday, mainly focussing on his ambient and/ or soundtrack music but with a more meaty cut from his 1981 collaboration with David Byrne thrown in for good measure, the perfect relaxed start to a Sunday in May. There could easily be another three of four follow ups to this mix without even scratching the surface of Eno.

Half An Hour Of Brian Eno

• Lizard Point
• Dover Beach
• The Pearl (with Harold Budd and Daniel Lanois)
• Always Returning
• An Ending (Ascent)
• Mea Culpa (with David Byrne from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts)
• Theme From Top Boy
• Deep Blue Day

V-Funk

Earlier on this year I wrote about Manchester band Rig, one of the groups making a noise thirty years ago, caught up in the excitement of being in a city which had become the centre of the world for a while. Rig formed in south Manchester, the Didsbury/ Withington/ edge of Stockport part of the city and signed to Cut Deep Records. They supported Inspiral Carpets on a nationwide tour and contributed songs to two well received compilation albums, Home and Hit The North. Home had songs by Mark E. Smith, Milltown Brothers, New FADs, Paris Angels, World Of Twist, Rainkings, Swirl, What? Noise and Peter Hook's Revenge. Hit The North split it's two sides of vinyl into rock and dance sides had several of the above as well as The Man From Delmonte, Rowetta, Ruthless Rap Assassins, Krispy Three and a few others of whom I know nothing/ remember little (The Australians, The Bedflowers, The Jerks, All Of My Life). Between them they sum up something of the spirit of the times, lots of bands exploring new ideas, dance rhythms moving into rock music, guitar bands growing their fringes out, DJs and rappers, and some of the bigger players on the scene doing something on the side. 

Killing time in lockdown Rig's guitarist Darren began to go through his archive of posters, flyers, music press clippings and photographs and put it all into one place (a blog, here). As he began to write about the story of the band and Tweet links to the posts, Rig's former record company Dead Dead Good got in touch and said they were interested in re- releasing the band's singles digitally. Dead Dead Good was set up to release The Charlatans early records by Northwich's Omega Records shop owner Steve Harrison but also had a massive hit in 1991 with the pop- rave classic Insanity by Oceanic. 

One thing led to another and Darren began to tidy up Rig's back catalogue and got hold of the original master tapes, boxes containing DATs, reel to reel tapes and cassettes. He then came across the mini- album they recorded in the spring of 1990 at Suite 16, a recording studio in Rochdale previously used by Joy Division, Gang Of Four, The Fall and Teardrop Explodes. For some idea of the blue plaque worthy history of the place, Joy Division recorded Atmosphere there. Between February and April 1990 Rig recorded at Suite 16 with Manchester legend Stuart James producing and Swing Out Sister (and ex-ACR) Andy Connell playing keyboards on some of the songs. The songs were then shelved when Cut Deep Records were bust and Rig moved on to Dead Dead Good, re- recording some of the songs while also moving onto new ones.

Lost albums, thirty years old, recovered and restored are a great story, all part of the fabric of music. Rig's tapes were baked to remove the moisture from them, digitised and then Italian producer and engineer Matteo Cifelli remastered them. The six songs recorded in Rochdale, never previously released, have compiled alongside their cover of ESG's Moody which came out as a white label (produced by ACR's Martin Moscrop), the pair of songs from Home and Hit The North (B.R.O. and Thud) and another unreleased one called Spoilt Bastard. I posted Moody (Dance) back in September, a 1990 take on the Scroggins sisters early 80s punk- funk with a sample from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts but it's well worth another airing. 

On May 30th 1990 Rig played at the Richmond in Brighton. This video catches them playing V-Funk, all youthful energy, frenetic rhythms, noisy- funk and wah- wah guitar while singer Adam's stream of consciousness rides over the top. V- Funk in it's Suite 16 form opens the album, a big, brash blast of  mutant south Manc indie- funk. 

Rig's album, ten songs in total, was released by Dead Dead Good last Friday and with some typical Mancunian confidence is titled Perfect. It was recorded when the group were all twenty and is being released as they all turn fifty. It's available digitally from all the usual streaming sites and some download ones too here. It's funny how sounds and styles swing in and out of style. There's much on Perfect, given a buff and polish this summer, that really doesn't sound three decades old, that actually sounds very contemporary-the heavy duty rhythm section, the off kilter mutant sax and keys and the rapid fire, choppy guitars, Rig sounding like a band who have arrived thirty years too late but bang on cue. 

Monday Mix

A few weeks ago I got a message from Tak Tent Radio, an internet radio station broadcasting out of Edinburgh, asking if I'd like to do an hour long mix for them. I was flattered, obviously, and said yes. Ali said musically Tak Tent is a total 'free for all so play whatever you like'. If you have a dig around on their website you'll see that it is with everything from Italo and electro to gospel and Scots folk, ragas and psyche- pop and Aiden Moffatt to Richard Youngs playing Hawkwind and Flux Of Pink Indians. In the end I put together an hour of music that follows in some kind of line from the Isolation mixes I was doing in the spring and summer, ambient and tracks with found sounds, drones and noise, some Durutti Column, some Two Lone Swordsmen and some clattering, spooked out Eno/ Byrne style stuff. The samples in Maurice And Charles's I, Carpenter and the voice of Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken gave me a title and a reference to the ongoing horror show/ political reality TV show that is going on in the USA. It went out yesterday morning  and you can find my Find The President mix to stream at Mixcloud here. 

I almost titled it after Snake's line in this clip... 

Tracklist

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song Gospel Oak FX/ Speaking In Tongues 
• Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Interrupted By The Cloud of Light
• Glok: Pulsing (Citadel Ambient Version)
• Jan van den Broeke: Memories
• Jan van den Broeke: Who Is Still Dreaming?
• Steven Legget: Still
• Richard Norris: Water
• Rick Cuevas: The Birds
• Durutti Column: Bordeaux Sequence
• Calexico: Untitled (Two Lone Swordsmen Virus Style Mix)
• Brian Eno and David Byrne: The Jezebel Spirit
• Maurice & Charles: I, Carpenter
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Smokebelch (For Ali)
• Daniel Avery: TBW17

Talkin' Funny And Lookin' Funny

Mentioning Brian Eno and David Byrne's 1981 album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts earlier this week sent me back to it once again, a record that still sounds fresh and contemporary despite being four decades old. Byrne and Eno's use of found voices and rhythms prefigured a lot of what would become standard later on in the decade and after. On Help Me Somebody they took a sample of the Reverend Paul Morton and laid him over some busy, funky percussion. Morton is all fire and brimstone while the guitar riff chatters away- 'you make yourself look bad/ help me somebody/ take a good look at yourself/  and see if you're the kind of person God wants you to be'. An African highlife guitar riff comes in. Ghostly noises echo around, like a short wave radio between stations. The combined effect is like standing and waiting to cross the road at a junction with three different buskers playing within earshot, a street preacher venting forth and the traffic flying past noisily- but in a way that makes you want to stop and dance and lose yourself rather than cross the road and get to wherever it is you are going

Help Me Somebody 

As the song gathers pace the Rev. Morton carries on , swallowed up at times by the incessant rhythms and looping melodies, 'There's no escape from Him/ He's so high you can't get over Him/ He's so low you can't get under Him/ He's so wide you can't get around Him/ If you make your bed in Heaven He's there/ If you make your bed in Hell He's there/ He's everywhere/ Help me somebody'. 

Very Moody

Thirty years ago a second wave of Manchester bands came through following in the footsteps of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, who as far as guitar bands go had made 1989 their own. The city's practice rooms, rehearsal spaces and recording studios buzzed with people eager to get their sounds out into the world. The second wave included The Charlatans (not actually from Manchester), Northside, Paris Angels, World Of Twist and Rig. Looked at now these bands have little in common with each other musically. Rig, from the south side of the city, the Didsbury/ Withington/ Stockport area, were young and fired up by Talking Heads, ACR, the Mondays, ESG, Tackhead, James Brown, Public Enemy- noise plus funk is what they were aiming for. Several sessions in Stockport's Strawberry Studios and a record deal with Cut Deep and then with Dead Dead Good saw them put out some singles that have just been made available digitally for the first time. Debut Dig (on Cut Deep) in an eye catching, day glo pink and yellow sleeve, followed by Spank in 1991, a white label release for Moody and then the catchy Big Head in the same year. 

Moody, produced by A Certain Ratio's Martin Moscrop, is a cover of ESG's 1982 NYC proto- house/ disco/ hip hop classic. Rig's version, with a sample from Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, is a dancefloor groove, house rhythms and percussion, piano, wah wah guitar, cowbell and singer Adam's vocals floating on top, the sample weaving in and out. Sounds like a bit of a lost gem to me. 

Their back catalogue is on all the digital services and guitarist Darren is reliving the band's past in a blog here with stories, photos, posters, gig tickets and flyers. Dig in. 

Waiting For A Message Of Some Sort Or Another

In 1981 David Byrne and Brian Eno released an album which they'd been working on since 1979. It still sounds remarkably fresh today, even if some of its key features and devices have become pop culture cliche- ranting evangelical preachers and TV announcers. I remember buying My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts in the late 80s and finding it bewitching and startling then and on Side A as funky and rhythmic a record as any contemporary ones. Eno and Byrne relied on some happy accidents, syncing up found voices with tape loops, dropping in rhythm tracks recorded using boxes and plastic containers as drums, recording people off the radio, but they also had some serious, heavy duty rhythm sections at their disposal too, Chris Frantz, Prairie Prince, Bill Laswell and Busta Jones. The opener was/is this one, a song that explodes out of the traps, bursts of bass and guitar and loops, ominous and tense but definitely capable of causing some shapes to be thrown.

America Is Waiting

Byrne was into the idea of the songs having vocals but not having to write any lyrics. As a vocalist he found he was expected to express himself through the words to a song. What he says he often found was that the music and the lyric triggered the emotion in him rather than the other way around. Using sampled and recorded voices (and this was pre- sample clearing days, which held up the release of Bush of Ghosts), voices where the speaker was already expressing high emotion such as preachers, in a different context, dropping them into music they'd already recorded, took the original voice and vocal elsewhere. This became standard, the sampling of voices and using them in dance records, but it's pretty forward thinking here.

Side B is less voice focused and more moody, ambient and less based around rhythms to make the listener move. In 2008 a re issued CD version came with seven extra tracks. The running order and track selection of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts changed several times during its conception and according to Byrne's liner notes any of the extras could have made the final release if they hadn't been constrained by the limitations of vinyl's running time. This one starts with a burst of noise, silence and then a fade in, percussion, a repeated bass riff, a distorted noise, chimes and what could be a cuckoo clock. Short but intriguing. I wonder if the title refers to the then balance of power within Talking Heads and their producer (Eno and Byrne versus Weymouth, Frantz and Harrison).

Two Against Three

I Guess I Must Be Having Fun

David Byrne played at The Apollo on Monday night and it was quite a night. Byrne had promised in advance that this tour was ambitious and it definitely did things differently in terms of staging and presentation. The stage was completely bare of any of the standard rock 'n' roll equipment- no amps, no drum riser or drum kit. As we took our seats all that was on the stage was a metal legged table and a chair under a single spotlight. At 8.45 he appeared, singing Here to a rubber brain. Dressed in a grey suit and shirt and barefoot, grown out white hair, he looks every inch the intellectual and artist. But things heat up very quickly after this arty intro. My friend, DJ, who got me the ticket, saw the show in Birmingham the night before and said that the crowd remained mostly seated throughout until the encore. From the moment the band hit the opening notes of the second song, his 2002 hit with X-Press 2 Lazy, the Manchester crowd is on its feet and dances until the end.

The band are all, in Byrne's words, 'untethered'. All dressed identically, grey suits and shirts and barefoot, the eleven players are free to move around. The guitar and bass have no leads, the keyboard player has his keys in front of him on a harness, again no leads, there are two hardworking backing vocalists/dancers and anywhere up to six drummers, standing up samba-style playing a variety of drums and percussion instruments. The show is highly choreographed. No backdrop or projections except for a silver metallic curtain and at one point a light as a TV set but the lights change the shape of the stage. Lit from low down hge shadows engulf the back wall during one song, genuinely exciting to look at. At times the eleven band members stand in a line, at times they move in circles or file in and out, some walking forwards as others move back. Lots of this seems to be a visual nod to Stop Making Sense. At the close of one song the lights go out and when they come up again the band are all lying down. On another they all stand on the right hand side and then stagger to the left, as if at sea in rough weather. All of this is very clever and very stylised and could run the risk of being too theatrical were it not for the playing and the songs. At no point do I wish they'd drop the artifice and just play the songs. The songs, the dancing, the show- all add up to something hugely imaginative. 

Lazy is bright and breezy, full of bounce, and followed by I, Zimbra, monumentally funky and African influenced. They follow that with Slippery People. At this point I'm pretty much in David Byrne gig heaven- his voice is strong, his dancing energetic (and at times wonderfully in sync with his backing dancers) and the band are playing fully realised versions of the Talking Heads songs you want played at a gig. He throws in songs from other projects he's had along the way, one from the album he did with St. Vincent and one from his record with Fatboy Slim and a few from solo records (Like Humans Do). The songs from the current album American Utopia slip in seamlessly, less arch in concert than on disc. Anyone else who had written something as influential and massive as Once In A Lifetime would play it as an encore. David Byrne plays it at about the half way point, a single spotlight following his jerky dancing along the lip of the stage. It's all astonishing stuff- loud, clear, full of energy and the band and David are clearly enjoying the songs as much as we are. The set closes with two Talking Heads songs, first a blistering version of 1988's Blind, a song I hadn't expected and have loved since the day it came out, and then a red hot dance through Burning Down The House, the stage drenched in red light. To top this the first encore gives up The Great Curve (to join Remain In Light's Born Under Punches, played earlier), groundbreaking funk in 1981 and still ahead of the curve now. The group then stand in a line and play a cover of Janelle Monae's Hell You Talmbout, minimal drumbeat and chanting voices- essentially a list of black men killed by white Americans. The tour is sold out. David is bringing the show back in December, to arenas. My advice, if you want to see someone doing something other people don't or can't and doing it as well as you can imagine, is to get a ticket. The heat goes on, as he reminds us forcefully in Born Under Punches, the heat goes on. 

Lazy (Full Version) 

America Is Waiting For A Message Of Some Sort Or Another

I remember clearly the first time I heard David Byrne and Brian Eno's 1981 album My Life In the Bush of Ghosts. This would be circa 1988 so it probably didn't have the same shock impact it may have had on listeners in 1981- sampling voices from the TV and radio was all over the place in the late 80s, as were drum machines and tracks constructed from loops and treated instruments. But it still made my head spin. America Is Waiting isn't necessarily the best song on Bush Of Ghosts but it seems the most relevant today. Snatches of ranted vocals ('we ought to be mad at the government not made at the people', 'no will whatsoever, absolutely no integrity'), distorted funky guitar from Byrne and a clattering rhythm track.

Born Under Punches

An extra post for Saturday. David Byrne is sixty four today. Sixty four! This performance by the expanded version of Talking Heads in Rome in 1980 is astonishing. 'Fuckin' nuts...next level shit!' as one Youtube commenter has it.

Eno Returning

Brrrr- it's chilly out. How about some Brian Eno to start the week? In fact, how about an hour long mix of Brian Eno, originally put together by the Test Pressing website back in 2010, no longer available at their website as far as I can tell.

The Producers Series 2 Brian Eno

Many of the tracks selected here have that late 70s and early 80s sound rather than the ambient soundscapes he's as well known for. Strange syncopated rhythms, treated guitars, African influences, multitracked vocals, funk bass, oblique strategies.

Tracklist...
Brian Eno: Sky Saw
Brian Eno: No One Receiving
Brian Eno: Strong Flashes Of Light
Brian Eno: More Volts
Talking Heads: Double Groove (Demo)
Brian Eno: The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch
David Bowie/Brian Eno: Abdulmajid
Brian Eno & David Byrne: Into The Spirit Womb
Brian Eno: St Elmo's Fire
Brian Eno & Harold Budd: The Plateaux Of Mirror
Eno Mobius Roedelius: Foreign Affairs
Brian Eno: In Dark Trees
Brian Eno: Mist/Rhythm
Brian Eno: By This River
Brian Eno: Just Another Day
Brian Eno: Bone Bomb
Brian Eno: The True Wheel

This Must Be The Place

If you click here there's a nice re-edit of This Must Be The Place by Talking Heads, done by Patrice Baumel. It won't embed but at the moment it's a free download. It's not that different from the original but it's all stretched out bit, those keys and picked guitars playing off against each other for a few extra minutes at the start and finish. David Byrne's usual lyrical obsessions with paranoia, anxiety, dislocation, wiredness and weirdness were replaced on this song for some actual warmth. Good for jigging about too.

Actually, there's a potentially very good 80s re-edit mixtape in this- the New Order one I posted last week, that stunning re-edit of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Nine Million Rainy Days, the looped reworking of Wah!'s The Story of the Blues and Siouxsie's Peek-a-Boo for starters. Someone should stick them all together in one seamless mix.

There's A Weapon That We Must Use

This is not exactly a re-post, more a re-write, as I've posted this song before in two variations and typed these words (or some very similar) before too. I posted Fuxa's cover version of Our Lips Are Sealed recently, as song I get obsessed with every so often. The song, as everyone must know, was co-written by Terry Hall and Jane Wiedlin while their respective bands (him The Specials, her The Go Go's) were on tour together and apparently describes their secret relationship. Both The Go Go's and Fun Boy Three released their own versions, the latter being produced by Talking Heads mainman David Byrne. The two videos are worth a compare and contrast exercise-


The Go Go's video is all summer in California, irresistible it is too...



Fun Boy Three's version is all UK, 80s shades of grey and big hair, altogether darker...




And from the 12" single...

Our Lips Are Sealed (Urdu Version)

My Big Hands

Here's the David Byrne post Blogger have lost. They've also lost the comments from the Belle and Sebastian post which is a shame. This is My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks), super funky pop music taken from David Byrne's 1983 album/show The Catherine Wheel. It was part of Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense show and tour.

My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)

My Big Hands

Let's start Friday with some super-shiny, funky pop music from David Byrne. I've got a lot of time for Talking Heads. My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks) is from his 1983 album/show The Catherine Wheel but was also performed by Talking Heads in their Stop Making Sense phase. Top stuff.

My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)