Talking Heads
Once In A Lifetime
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Talking Heads
Once In A Lifetime
Warner Bros., 2003
RiYL: Devo, Brian Eno, David Bowie |
Once In A Liftime is a wonderful if incomplete introduction to the work David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison (along with innumerable guest musicians) made between 1977 and 1989. The boxed set comes packaged in a long, thin (and essentially impossible to shelf) box decorated with folk art images of naked men, women, and children frolicking with wolves. The image, typically, has nothing to do with the music contained within. Indeed, few late-20th century artists were as skeptical of the simple life than Talking Heads.
"I wouldn't live there if you paid me," Byrne crooned on "The Big Country." In the post-apocalyptic fantasy "(Nothing But) Flowers," Byrne bemoans the loss of TV and fast food restaurants, concluding "I just can't get used to this lifestyle!"
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The boxed set begins with the few singles the group recorded before its debut major label album. (It leaves off one track, "I Want To Live," from its two-disc predecessor Sand In The Vaseline.) The best of the lot, "Love -> Building On Fire," is the best studio example of the acoustic guitar-driven, rhythmic sound of the band as a trio before Jerry Harrison came on board prior to the recording of Talking Heads: 77. About two-thirds of that album appears on Once In A Lifetime, with "Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town" and "New Feeling" appearing in not-all-that-different alternate versions.
77 probably deserves to be heard in its entirety, like all of the Heads' first five records, but the boxed set does a reasonable job capturing the album's best tracks -- the legendary "Psycho Killer" being the obvious standout. Personal favorite "Who Is It?' is excluded, but the manic "Pulled Up" and oblique-statement-of-purpose "Don't Worry About The Government" are here in force. This is the closest the Talking Heads ever came to being a "normal" rock band; the jaunty tunes have verses and choruses and simple beats driven by Frantz's insistent drums and Weymouth's instinctive bass grooves.
More Songs About Buldings And Food, released the next year, began the band's fruitful relationship with Brian Eno. Much darker than the first album, it still manages some of the Heads' most lovely moments, like the chipper "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel," the long, oddly structured fadeout of "Found A Job," and their famously dispassionate cover of Al Green's soul staple "Take Me to the River." Personal fave "With Our Love" is sadly excluded here, as is "The Good Thing," although "The Big Country" and "Warning Sign" happily make the cut. Eno begins to make an impact on the latter, with its heavily reverbed drums and waves of interweaving guitar.
The tracks from the first and second albums are somewhat intermingled to suggest forward progress at all times. As a bonus, the song "A Clean Break," which never received a studio treatment, is presented here in the same version that appears on the The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads reissue. "Heaven" from third album Fear Of Music is shifted over to the second disc as to suggest it was a throwback at the time it was recorded.
That's an argument I don't want to get into, but Fear Of Music, released in 1979, was a step forward in every respect. Opener "I Zimbra" (wisely sequenced as the first track on the second disc of Once In A Lifetime) added for the first time a number of things that would become Talking Heads staples through the early '80s -- armies of hand percussionists, mass backing chants, decidedly non-punk rock rhythms.
The rest of Fear Of Music is less ambitious, though wonderful to listen to. On "Cities" (here presented in another alternate version) and "Life During Wartime," Byrne further streamlines his lyrical delivery, singing in the first person but giving his narrator fantastic landscapes to explore. "I've changed my hairstyle so many times now I don't know what I look like," he sings on "Wartime," probably abstractly referencing how the pop music machine chews up and spits out talent. "Heaven" outlines Byrne's ideas about theology: "It's hard to imagine how nothing at all could be so exciting." "Memories Can't Wait" is as close as the Heads ever got to heavy metal. "Air" takes Byrne's only partially feigned paranoia beyond reasonable limits: "Air can hurt you too!"
It all came together on the masterful Remain In Light, the 1980 classic that secured the Talking Heads' place in the pantheon. Once In A Lifetime resentfully includes only five of the eight tracks and reorders them randomly. If you were to buy this boxed set and one other Heads album, I would recommend the original Light. However "Once In A Lifetime," "Born Under Punches," and "Crosseyed and Painless" are wonderful lined up in any order. Byrne's ever-meandering muse, Eno's ideas about studio production, an army of talented studio musicians, and Weymouth/Frantz's rock-solid timekeeping all combine on songs that appropriate African musical ideas in an honest and unique way. Paul Simon should have taken note. "You may ask yourself," Byrne asks himself, "how did I get here?"
That was pretty much as good as it got. Speaking In Tongues, which benefits the most from the removal of a few weak tracks on the boxed set, took the expanded band and the polyrhythms back to the more conventional pop songs of Buildings And Food. A lot of the time this worked swimmingly, like the deserved hits "Burning Down The House" and the lovely "Naïve Melody (This Must Be the Place)." Some of the album tracks from this period are great as well, like the antic "Girlfriend is Better" and the slinky "Slippery People." On "Swamp" or "Making Flippy Floppy," however, you can hear the band beginning to repeat itself, and Byrne beginning to be quirky for the sake of being quirky.
Before they faded, though, the Heads had one last great album in them. Little Creatures was a complete 180 from the last half-decade of Talking Heads music, but it worked well. Playing live with heavyweights like Adrian Belew and Bernie Worrell had made the core group's musicianship knife-sharp, and Creatures rides on Harrison and Byrne's suddenly confident guitars like a reverse image of Heads: 77. "And She Was" is a timeless pop single with lyrics -- about a flying naked woman -- that could only have been written by David Byrne. The goofy "Stay Up Late" reached nearly as high, and "Road to Nowhere" brought the huge chorus back over simple Harrison synths and a massive Chris Frantz drum performance. Again, the album tracks that are left off of Once In A Lifetime are no great shakes, although I would have exchanged the timely "Television Man" for the sedate "Creatures Of Love."
Although they survived for one more album, True Stories essentially broke up the Talking Heads. Byrne's ego had swelled to the point where he thought fans would buy both the original soundtrack to his vanity film of the same name AND an album of the same songs recorded by the Heads. Not many people bought either, as True Stories is easily the worst album the Talking Heads ever made. "Wild Wild Life," which isn't at all wild, illustrates how close to self-parody Byrne had come. The roaring "Love For Sale," on the other hand, is an adept single. "Puzzlin' Evidence" is a nice track as well. You should hear what they left off the boxed set.
Naked ended the Talking Heads' career (for good?) on a positive if resigned note. The contributions of Harrison, Weymouth, and Frantz had devolved to playing what Byrne told them at this point, so Naked sounds more like a David Byrne solo album than anything by the Talking Heads. That said, a lot of David Byrne's solo albums are pretty good, and so is Naked. Again, the songs included benefit from the boxed set's omission of some chaff. "Blind," with Byrne's nasty vocal, has aged well. So has the witty "(Nothing But) Flowers." The rest of the songs included on Once In A Lifetime, like "Mr. Jones," are merely listenable.
The end of disc 3 again excludes some tracks from Sand In The Vaseline, "Gangster Of Love" and "Popsicle," neither a great loss. The new find "In Asking Land" is no great shakes either. The big bonus this boxed set offers is a new DVD version of the '80s home video Storytelling Giant. Introduced by random interviews with random people are all of the Heads' groundbreaking videos. They were so obviously ahead of their time it hurts to watch. "This Must Be The Place" tugs suitably at the heartstrings, with the entire nine-piece band of the time watching home videos of themselves before going down to the basement to play the song. "Blind"'s visions of glad-handing politicians are no less relevant today. "Burning Down the House"'s video trickery and "And She Was"'s animation are both watershed moments in the form.
The DVD's inclusion makes Once In A Lifetime an interesting proposition -- a good buy for Talking Heads neophytes, and a must-have for obsessives. If you already have the albums and don't feel a need to own the videos, you can opt not to purchase it. It is damn hard to fit on a shelf.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.