Talking Heads

I can't really account very well for my love for the Talking Heads. I think it has something to do with how much I enjoy dada stuff. Dada doesn't act like the world has much order. It exploits the endless ways that illogical things coexist in the world and turns those incongruities into art, into an expression of illogical relationships and absurdities, often surreal expressions of nightmare-scapes.

I experience the Talking Heads as playful dada musicians, with David Byrne the dada front man. That pretty much inspires the videos I've chosen below.

I wanted to show Psycho Killer because this video is from about 1976 and is a clip of the Talking Heads when they were a trio. I wanted to play a performance of this song before Byrne became more manic with the song. Lastly, CBGBs is one of the most historic venues in the USA. Home to the Ramones, Patti Smith, the Talking Heads and scores of other musicians and bands, it's great just to have some early footage of
the Talking Heads on their home turf.

Psycho Killer at CBGBs



I've always loved the way "Once in a Lifetime" explores the way the temporal things in life like beautiful wife and car come and go and we don't always know how we came to be where we are in life. But while all the mutable stuff occurs, underlying it all is the constancy and continuity of

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Once in a Lifetime



This pairing together of "Burning Down the House and Life During Wartime from the splendid movie "Stop Making Sense" portrays the contradictory nature of The Talking Heads' art at its most entertaining. Both songs are disturbing. But, the performance of the songs is upbeat; I'd call it celebratory. I read it this way: while danger exists in the world, we keep being happy. When "Stop Making Sense" was made, the aerobic craze had been alive and well for over six years. That's about how old "Let's Get Physical" was in 1985-6. The Talking Heads embrace the aerobic energy of aerobic video tapes and people doing aerobic rountines in church basements and community halls across the country, and generate all this upbeat energy and joy while singing songs of paranoia and big brother. It's perfect dada. It's the essence of The Talking Heads, I think.

Burning Down the House/Life During Wartime