Remain In Light, Talking Heads' 1980 album, remains one of my all time favourite albums. The complexity and density of the polyrhythmic songs is something quite unearthly, something so stunning that it's almost impossible to work out how it was done. The sheer number of overdubs and overlapping vocal lines is astounding.
Yet during the late summer and into the winter of 1980 Talking Heads not only played most of this album live, but they somehow actually improved on many of the songs, live on stage.
I've mentioned the debut show of the expanded Heads before, and if you want to hear what they could do then I recommend the brilliant The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads - one of the finest live albums ever made. But recently a soundboard from the Amsterdam show in December 1980 has circulated. It's not as slick as TNOTBITH, but in many ways it’s more fun as this was what the expanded Heads sounded like in the flesh, warts and all, having an absolute ball on stage. Adrian Belew has a real blast on "Warning Sign" and goes suitably nuts on "The Great Curve", but the whole band is really on form. "I Zimbra" is perhaps the best version I’ve ever heard and "Houses In Motion" is superb too. The only less than successful track is, oddly, "Once In A Lifetime" which appears to be played too slowly and as such it loses all it’s energy. Dolette Macdonald sounds like she’s trying to speed things up with her excellent backing vocals but to no avail. You clearly can’t get Chris Frantz to change his rock solid playing mid song! Very odd, as I’ve never heard a duff version of this song before.
Another recently discovered Dutch soundboard, from Leiden on 01 July 1982 has been tickling my ear hairs too. This was the opening show of the Heads summer 1982 tour and first night nerves are all over the place. The gig itself is full of energy and many of the songs are played with an aggression and sense of excitement that you just don’t get the following year on the far more polished Stop Making Sense. In many ways these 1982 shows are my favourite Heads gigs – Jerry gets to perform “Slink”, Tom Tom Club were the opening act (basically the whole expanded Heads band minus David) and Byrne gets to perform four new songs from The Catherine Wheel (the three “Big” Songs and “What A Day That Was”), all of which are killer live tracks. And they find time to debut the newly written but not yet recorded “Swamp”. So, out of the 14 or so songs played every night, almost half of them were unfamiliar to the audiences.
Yet during the late summer and into the winter of 1980 Talking Heads not only played most of this album live, but they somehow actually improved on many of the songs, live on stage.
I've mentioned the debut show of the expanded Heads before, and if you want to hear what they could do then I recommend the brilliant The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads - one of the finest live albums ever made. But recently a soundboard from the Amsterdam show in December 1980 has circulated. It's not as slick as TNOTBITH, but in many ways it’s more fun as this was what the expanded Heads sounded like in the flesh, warts and all, having an absolute ball on stage. Adrian Belew has a real blast on "Warning Sign" and goes suitably nuts on "The Great Curve", but the whole band is really on form. "I Zimbra" is perhaps the best version I’ve ever heard and "Houses In Motion" is superb too. The only less than successful track is, oddly, "Once In A Lifetime" which appears to be played too slowly and as such it loses all it’s energy. Dolette Macdonald sounds like she’s trying to speed things up with her excellent backing vocals but to no avail. You clearly can’t get Chris Frantz to change his rock solid playing mid song! Very odd, as I’ve never heard a duff version of this song before.
Another recently discovered Dutch soundboard, from Leiden on 01 July 1982 has been tickling my ear hairs too. This was the opening show of the Heads summer 1982 tour and first night nerves are all over the place. The gig itself is full of energy and many of the songs are played with an aggression and sense of excitement that you just don’t get the following year on the far more polished Stop Making Sense. In many ways these 1982 shows are my favourite Heads gigs – Jerry gets to perform “Slink”, Tom Tom Club were the opening act (basically the whole expanded Heads band minus David) and Byrne gets to perform four new songs from The Catherine Wheel (the three “Big” Songs and “What A Day That Was”), all of which are killer live tracks. And they find time to debut the newly written but not yet recorded “Swamp”. So, out of the 14 or so songs played every night, almost half of them were unfamiliar to the audiences.
A wonderful tour and there’s a few partial radio broadcasts of some of the gigs, but this is the first complete soundboard show I’ve come across. As I said first night nerves plague the band, especially Byrne who messes up loads of words; though he rarely stuck the ‘official’ words in concert usually he sounds far more confident that he does here, repeating lines and getting verses the wrong way round which really confuses poor Dolette Macdonald who tries to keep up with him but simply can’t! Jerry’s vocal on “Slink” is mixed rather low too, though this might not be a bad thing as he’s rather off key, but the biggest problem is poor Raymond Jones. He had the unenviable job of replacing Bernie Worrell for this tour but on this opening night his synths really aren’t working properly. His burbly interjections don’t always come in on cue, and are frequently too loud or too quiet or simply wrong. Later gigs that I have are much much better, so it seems his problems were sorted out, but it’s a shame that we have, say, a perfectly good version of “My Big Hands” that is thrown off kilter by his sometimes wayward keyboards. Otherwise it’s a great show, with some surprisingly hard and aggressive playing on tracks like “Life During Wartime” and “Cities” – Alex Weir is perhaps no match for Belew when it comes to bizarre animalistic guitar noise, but he sure has a wonderfully fast, furious and funky style which works brilliantly on tracks like “Big Business”.
And speaking of The Catherine Wheel. I played some of this again the other day, and I still love every single note. I had the LP (which just had the songs) for quite some time before I was able to get hold of the cassette containing the full length work. As a consequence I perhaps love the songs slightly more than the rest of it, but the whole thing is just magnificent. And I was delighted to learn that I perfectly remembered every single word of "His Wife Refused" as I sang along in the car. Mis-spent youth? Well, at least I wasn’t smashing up phone boxes or anything. Learning the words to obscure and bizarre David Byrne songs seems like time well spent to me…
And speaking of The Catherine Wheel. I played some of this again the other day, and I still love every single note. I had the LP (which just had the songs) for quite some time before I was able to get hold of the cassette containing the full length work. As a consequence I perhaps love the songs slightly more than the rest of it, but the whole thing is just magnificent. And I was delighted to learn that I perfectly remembered every single word of "His Wife Refused" as I sang along in the car. Mis-spent youth? Well, at least I wasn’t smashing up phone boxes or anything. Learning the words to obscure and bizarre David Byrne songs seems like time well spent to me…
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