Right now and been creeping up to me for the past several months. Ladies & Gentleman,the name of this band is Talking Heads.
Favourite Band Ever…
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
And the same thought has been creeping up on me in the last week – been listening to “The Name this Band Is Talking Heads” live Album. Their peak I believe.
An oblique tribute comes in the form of a Bellowhead piece called ‘Crosseyed and Chinless’.
The Rolling Stones –
Dartford, Cheltenham, Ealing, Richmond to ‘Let It Bleed’.
Early 60s to late 60s.
Singles and EP r ‘n’ b group, NOT ‘band’.
Anything with a tongue logo, T-shirt, baseball hat, view from three miles away in a stadium, or any record only available in stereo, released with any other number than 6 as the third digit of the year, or without Brian, or at least the ghost of Brian on or near it, need apply…..indeed, it can piss right off.
There was a thread about great backing vocals a while ago. If it comes around again, I would nominate The Great Curve. Amazing.
(sings)
“A world of light…she’s gonna open our eyes up
A world of light…she’s gonna open our eyes up”
Oh yes. Marvellous.
My favourite band ever are of course Pink Floyd, and why wouldn’t they be? And it occured to me the other day that yer Floyd never recorded a cover version on any of their albums. Not one. Not even on the live albums. I was wondering if any other really successful band or artist can claim the same? I can’t think of one, but I’m sure you can.
I don’t think Genesis recorded many covers. But someone will probably come up with one.
As far as I can recall, there are no cover versions on any of the studio albums, but then they did the “oldies medley” in the middle of “Turn It On Again” when they performed live (and is on some of the live albums) – a selection of 60s should classic (+ Karma Chameleon !)
stupid auto correct – that should read “soul classics”
Phil Collins used to do a burst of ‘On Broadway’ at the end of ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’ when he sang it. Is on the version of TLLDOB on Seconds Out.
Ver Floyd did a smashing cover of Comfortably Numb. Almost as good as the the Scissor Sisters’ original. 🙂
That reminds me of some kid at the crowd during The Stone Roses’ notorious Reading ’96 set. “Who’s that bloke trying to be Liam Gallagher?”
Having gone through the thread, I am dismayed to see no mention whatever of the Dan. Admittedly they did knock off one or two covers throughout their career, but bearing in mind that Donald Fagen famously spent decades suffering from a combination of writer’s block and stage fright, it’s not a bad effort really.
Anyhow. Favourite band? That’ll be Steely Dan, then.
I would probably also go with Steely Dan if Elvis Costello and the Attractions doesn’t count as a band which I thin it should do. Listen to Live at the El Mocambo to hear how exciting they were.
My favourite band ever are Depeche Mode. They also have never recorded a cover version that they have put on an album.
They have done 3 one-offs that aren’t on any album – Route 66, Moonlight Sonata and So Cruel (U2)
I would put that Anton Corbijn Concert film alongside this one. They seem to be brothers.
@black-celebration
Whatsisname did a covers album didn’t he…including a Comsats cover.
Yes – Martin Gore released two collections of covers, Counterfeit and Counterfeit 2.
Haven’t they been performing ‘Heroes’ on the last tour?
Have Kraftwerk ever done a cover version ? Kate Bush ? Sleaford Mods?!
https://youtu.be/Zv81scScSto
Kate did Donovan’s Lord of the Reedy River on the b-side of Sat In Your Lap. Who the hell else was listening to Donovan in 1981?
Ms Bush had a bit of a hit Sir Elt’s Rocket Man.
Favourite band? I can’t think of one right now…
My favourite band du jour is Suede – only cover version I can recall off the top of my head was “Brass In Pocket” put out on the NME’s 40th anniversary album “Ruby Trax”. Worthwhile tracking down. Decent. If for nothing else to hear Billy Bragg doing the Three Degree’s “When Will I See You Again?”
and Vic Reeves interpretation of Vienna
Suede also covered Shipbuilding on the ‘Help’ charity album if I recall correctly
There are frustratingly brief snippets of them covering Bo’ Rhap’ and A Day in the Life in dubious corners of tinternet (ahem). More legitimately, they did a live version of Rent but Neil Tennant was on it so is that really a cover version? Who can say?
My favourite band would be Van der Graaf Generator. A heritage band who got back together and continue to move forward, rather than living on past glories…gloriously unpredictable gigs (how far forward will they go? How far back?).
Not much love for ver VdGG here, even among the prog heads…..maybe because they didn’t record any covers…
I like much of their work. Saw them play live in their pomp.
Did not record any covers? *coughs* what about this then?
https://youtu.be/rGHat7IeNaA
(….I’ll get me coat…)
I like them too. Favourite work: that 2nd album The Least We Can Do.
Who’s my favourite band? Oh, tough one. I don’t really have a favourite …
Only kidding – that honour belongs to Stiff Little Fingers (I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it before?)
Cover versions?
One on every album in their original incarnation – including “Love Of The Common People” on Now Then, which they decided not to release as a single after Paul Young expressed an interest in doing so.
The first album after reformation didn’t include a cover version, but did include some of the last recorded work by Lee Brilleaux and Rory Gallagher
I think I’m right in saying that Squeeze, one of my favorite bands, recorded only one one cover version in their career (Bobby Womack’s “Looking For a Love”) which was only available in the “Six of One” box set.
Pardon the indulgence ….
I was inspired to put together “my favourite band” personal history – ie the band or artist that I would have declared to be “my favourite” at any particular time in my first 30 odd years when I was obsessed with music, to the exclusion of important things like relationships and career paths.
1963 – 1972 – Beatles (of course. I have an original 1968 Hey Jude given to me as a present).
1972 -1974 – John Denver. (Hey, I’m 12 years old. Give me a break).
1974 – 1975 – Pink Floyd. (DSOTM blew my thirteen year old mind.)
1975 – 1976 – ELP. (Bought all the albums one summer. Cant stand them now).
1976 – 1978 – Genesis. (TOTT started it all but I became a Gabriel era fanatic. Killed when Hackett left and punk happened).
1979 – 1980 – Joy Division. Saw them in 79 at Eric’s in Liverpool. Loved them (never cared for New Order in quite the same way.)
1980 -1981 – The Jam
1981 -1984 – Talking Heads. Started with the South Bank Show and Fear of Music. Peaked with Speaking in Tongues. Ended before Little Creatures.
1984 – 1988 The Fall joint champions with Tom Waits
1988 -1991 – REM
1991 – 1994- Massive Attack
After that things get too messy and I started caring less. Of all these Talking Heads has best stood the test of time.
That movie with Meryl Streep and Rick Springfield ..Ricky and the Jets has
Bernie Worrell on keys in her band. Man has he aged -reminded me of Gil Scott Heron.
Then again I suppose it was the late eighties when I saw him with the Heads.
They were my favourite band, probably around 81-82. Went off them a bit when Speaking in Tongues came out which, for me, was a pale shadow of the previous 2 albums.
They didn’t make another great album and I eventually grew somewhat weary of Byrne’s frankly extremely limited vocals.
Never saw them live, but did witness many superb solo Byrne gigs.
Don’t think they have aged too well, again mainly due to Byrne’s mannered and annoying vocal style.
They were one of the very best live bands. I saw them at the Hammersmith Palais in 1980 and Wembley Arena in 1982. I would put the Wembley gig in my all time top 3 gigs list.
I saw Talking Heads live:
3 February 1978 – Civic Hall, St. Albans
9 December 1979 – Pavilion, Hemel Hempstead (the day that I passed my driving test, if anyone’s interested)
2 December 1980 – Hammersmith Odeon
All three were five-star flat-out-brilliant gigs.
I believe Kaisfatdad was at the Hammersmith Palais gig (the night before the Hammy Odeon show), so you could’ve bumped into him, Alias!
Would 1978 be the “supported by Dire Straits” tour? Imagine how much that would cost to see now.
1978 certainly was the “Supported by Dire Straits” tour.
When Dire Straits came on, there weren’t many people in the audience at the Civic Hall, as I remember. But they played an excellent set, and by the end they got some really warm applause. I never imagined that they were going to be world-dominatingly huge, but I did think they were a good little band. I still like and occasionally play the first Dire Straits album, as a matter of fact.
Incidentally, did any Afterworder catch Talking Heads on their very first tour of the UK, supporting the Ramones?
The tour started on 12 May 1977 at the Rock Garden in London and concluded on 6 June back in London at the Roundhouse.
Yup. I may have told the tale before but I was social secretary at Leeds Poly when we promoted a date on that tour. It was in the same week as the Clash/Subway Sect tour so we hosted a week of punk with discos and local bands. I sold a Ramones/Talking Heads poster for that gig last year through Bonhams for £1000 and a Clash poster for £950. They had been in storage for most of the time so I decided to part with them and use the cash for food and bad records.
I saw them at Stratchlyde Uni in ’77. Talking Heads were magnificent; much beefier sound live than was subsequently recorded on their first album.
The Ramones (whose first album I’d bought on import) were so stupendous that they completely wiped the floor with TH.
I’ve been made aware that name-dropping particularly annoys one dullard on here, so I’ll continue. While dancing frenziedly to the Rams, this short, older, quite attractive woman in front of me kept turning back to look at me and give me a beaming smile. At the end of the gig, while I was still gazing in wonder at the empty stage, she approached me and asked if i’d enjoyed the gig. ‘Loved it’, i told her. ‘Would you like to meet the band?’ ‘Most definitely’. ‘Well, just stay here with me.’ ‘Fair enough’. We chatted away and, once the place had been cleared, out came the Heads and the Ramones. I chatted for a long time with both Dee Dee and Joey who told me their influences were not only the obvious British Invasion ones, but also Herman’s Hermits and The Bay City Rollers. I have to admit that I thought they were indulging in some NY snark, but they were deadly serious. The short woman came back and we carried on chatting. She turned out to be the co-manager, Linda Stein, wife of Seymour. We got on phenomenally well, to the extent that, on the spot, she invited me to come on the road with them for the following week. I was guttted to have to turn down the offer to run away and join the circus. If I’d been working in Glasgow that week, I’d have called in sick in a heartbeat, but, annoyingly, I was working on an assignment in the Borders for that week and also had responsibility for driving a few of my colleagues to the job. It was a heartbreaking offer to have to turn down.
Linda and I kept in close touch and I saw her and them in Scotland again and then in London over the next five years. I became close to her and Dee Dee, in particular.
She had a fantastically warm, open, feisty and funny personality and I’ll never forget how stricken I was when I read of her murder.
@ianess Can you refrain from continually insulting me in passing while posting on various threads on here.
If you are trying to drive me away from posting on here, it won’t work.
And note that I have addressed this to you and not the cowardly way you bury insults in other posts hoping that I stumble upon them and hopefully upset me.
Please stop.
If you can’t take it, stop dishing it out yourself. That also includes your moronic habit of appending ‘Up!’ to any post disagreeing with me, which itself smacks more of ‘bullying’. (For some reason I imagine you saying this a la Arthur Mullard)
No point in whining and playing the ‘victim’. Nothing ‘cowardly’ about my approach- I’ve no fear of taking you on.
Another insult, you really are something else aren’t you.
As for the up thing I was agreeing with the poster which is allowed as I understand it, it’s not always about you.
You are a bully as the constant insults show, which are designed to do one thing I think.
Shame on you.
It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me whether or not you post your Student Grant banalities. Again, stop whining. If you have a pop, expect it back with interest.
Lovely stuff Ian. Back of the net.
More of this stuff please.
Only time I saw Talkinh Heads live they were supported by Jonathan Richman, great show but from memory very short. Although I think it was supporting their second album so they didn’t have a big catalogue to choose from . David Byrne solo gigs rate as some of the best gigs I have seen.
Interesting that you went to see them in St Albans. A couple of years ago I was invited to the private view / launch party of an exhibition of the punk and new wave scene in St Albans at one of the museums. The entertainment included a guy playing guitar and singing . He was on the scene and he played covers of songs by bands that played at presumably the same venue. I remember thinking that it must have been great to have seen Talking Heads at a small venue.
Today it seems astonishing now that bands like Talking Heads came over from New York and played at places like Hemel Hempstead.
A couple of mates and I drove to St Albans for that gig. I have a vague memory that the Beeb filmed the gig as I have an even vaguer memory of seeing the back of our heads bobbibg along near the front of the stage. OGWT?
As far as I know, the gig filmed for the OGWT was the Hemel Hempstead show in December 1979 (incidentally, the date I gave above for that gig was wrong. It was 3 December 1979, not the 9th.) I can certainly remember TV cameras being there at the venue. The footage is at the bottom of this page:
http://talkingheadsconcerthistory.blogspot.se/2012_12_04_archive.html
To my knowledge, the St. Albans gig in Feb. 1978 wasn’t filmed by anyone.
The Hemel Hempstead Pavilion wasn’t the most most glamorous venue in the world, but it attracted a surprising number of decent bands. I saw Costello (at least twice), the Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, the Ruts, Richard Hell, the Selecter and the Specials. The atmosphere at that venue was always ace, for some reason.
I must have gone to that gig also. I distinctly recall seeing the back of our nuts on TV. My mate and I were both tall.
I saw the Ruts at Hemel too in 79, Also the Damned. Saw the Buzzcocks also around that time, supported I think by Patrick Fitzgerald but at Hammy Palais ( I think)
I’d like to have seen that exhibition in St Albans – if it was about the local punk scene then a band I was in would certainly have been mentioned.
I saw Talking Heads at Hammersmith Palais Dec 79. I thought of them as probably the best band in the world at that time. I think they most likely were.
Completely agree with you, Duco and Alias. The Heads in Hammersmith were utterly transcendent.
Phenomenal gig at the Palais. Weren’t everyone’s favourites U2 the support at that gig.
They were indeed. And to be honest they didn’t impress me too much even then although I did like the Edge’s guitar playing.
Were you there too? Three AWers to-be in the same venue.
Your story about Linda Stein was amazing. You got the chance to go on tour with that lot and had to say no!
“Gutted” can’t even begin to describe how that must have felt.
I saw them roughly the same time as duco: 2 Feb 1978 Barbarella’s Birmingham, 1 September 1979 Edinburgh Rock Festival and 2 December 1979 Birmingham Odeon. After that, the only UK gigs they did were in London and I didn’t go.
Funny old thing, memory. I too was at Ingliston in 1979 – remember Van, hated The Chieftains, really liked Squeeze. At the time I was in love with Talking Heads – I have no recollection whatsoever they played !!
I went just to see them and The Undertones, who were magnificent. I would have gone home happy before it started to get dark.
Groups who have released at least five albums, even the weakest of which is pretty damn fine:
The Beatles
Roxy Music
Steely Dan
Talking Heads
Pet Shop Boys
Massive Attack
Radiohead
The White Stripes
Super Furry Animals
The Lilac Time
The Replacements
Kraftwerk
The Byrds
Yello
XTC
In the New Year I hope we can add Suede to this list.
Haven’t Suede already released five albums? I’m kicking myself for not including Kraftwerk.
Six, actually. But I think only four of them (the first three and the last one) qualify. Unless you count the mighty Sci Fi Lullabies.
While we’re in the Bundesrepublik, I’m pretty sure Can should be on this list.
Pere Ubu – that’s another.
Led Zep.
Public Image Ltd (though we’re stretching the definition of “band” here)
Led Zeppelin made loads of duff albums. Can and Pere Ubu’s are good shouts.
The Kinks!
Come on, we should probably be deported for not saying that straight away.
*frantically hoists Union flag in front garden*
The Zep? 2 to 4, Houses plus the first disc of Physical. What more dya want?
I meant of their total cannon, which has to be at least five albums long, not a duffer in sight. That’s where The Kinks, The Byrds, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie fall down. They have released at least one that should be binned and never listened to again.
I misunderstood the rules. I therefore withdraw Pere Ubu, Can (that 80s album was shite) Yello (rubbish after Baby) and PiL (9 is bobbins).
The Byrds stands though, if we stop at Farther Along.
By the way, I think you mean canon. Led Zep may well have had a cannon, but it would have been fairly redundant with Bonzo in the band.
Talk to my predictive speller!
I’m suggesting King Crimson as an addition.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, certainly
Jackie Leven
Gillian Welch
Absolutely!
I’ll go along with XTC and a few of the others already mentioned. Based on the rules – at least 5/no duds, some for me although admittedly they have to float your boat in the first place…
Crowded House – Crowded House, Temple Of Low Men, Woodface, Together Alone, Time On Earth, Intriguer
Odds – Neopolitan, Bedbugs, Good Weird Feeling, Nest. Cheerleader
Toad the Wet Sprocket – Bread And Circus, Pale, Fear, Dulcunea, In Light Syrup (probably my favourite, and it’s the B sides and rarities album), Coil, New Constellation
And REM don’t have an actual dud to their name, and that’s across 15 albums.
Sorry: not one group, not one artist has released at least five albums ALL of which are damn fine.
Not even Da Bizkit?
Forgot about them… collapse of argument
The first 5 Led Zep albums are all damn fine
Unfortunately only the first 4 Motorhead albums are damn fine
Hang on a minute – the first 6 Queen albums are damn fine
The first Van Halen album is so damn fine it compares to the first kiss / pint / star wars film / kebab ( delete as appropriate)
XTC – Drums & Wires, Black Sea, English Settlement, Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons, Nonsuch, Apple Venus and Wasp Star. All damn fine albums.
REM
Tiggers’ Rules says “entire canon” not just 5 damn fine albums scattered through a career. I repeat nobody has a history at least 5 albums long without a duffer in there somewhere.
Apart from Limp Biskit that is (and here I must own up to never having heard one note of Limp Biskit)
What a treat you’ve got in store. It will change your life.
XTC’s run of Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons, Nonsuch, Apple Venus and Wasp Star has no gaps between records, thus fulfilling Tigs’ Rules.
Speshly if you include the mighty Psonic Psunspot between ‘larking and Lemons.
Huzzah!
Let me repeat a la Tiggs: if you have recorded at least 5 albums all of which are ace then the prize is yours. If you have released 6 or more albums with one duffer in there no matter in what order then off you go. For example – Steely Dan: first 7 albums are pretty near perfect (although Aja despite some classic tracks skirts with mediocrity) then along comes Two Against Nature: next, please….
My first, my last, my everything would be Creedence Clearwater Revival. Seven albums, four of them magnificent, two very good, and one unequivocally shite. That’s a crap rule, Tiggs….
Ok @henpetsgi, which of REM’s 15 albums is the irredeemable dud ?
@harold-holt : REM have at least 6 bona-fide brilliant albums and they have no wholly irredeemable duds . However, Up, Reveal and all Around The Sun are but average fare – without the magnificent history these would have sunk without trace
The Snall Faces
Snall?
The best band ever is Yes
Maybe, but Tales From Topographic Oceans is pants.
Re: not very good albums by Yes
How about “Union”? – the album that was so bad that Rick Wakeman referred to it as “Onion”, because it made him cry.
Depeche Mode’s career so far is five DAMN fine albums bookended by four good albums either side.
Oh go on then, I’ll tell you…they’re Black Celebration, Music for the Masses, Violator, Songs of Faith and Devotion and Ultra.
Going back to the OP, this version exists from an Italian TV show. Two basses, and (for those who are bothered by such things) Adrian Belew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8lFmsCXhg
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads is the greatest expanded reissue of the 21st century, but shaving that first 90 seconds off of this was literally the worst thing ever to have happened in the history of the world, bar none.
Don’t say I haven’t got a sense of perspective.
Fave band used to be Krokus.
Now it’s The Church.
My fav bands are always;
New Order
Pet Shop Boys
Depeche Mode