Tuesday, June 17, 2003

1, 2, 3, WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? Everyone loves lists, like Pitchfork's new list of the top twenty post-breakup debacles in alternarock history. Number three?
03: The Heads (Talking Heads)
Their late-80s resurrection of the Tom Tom Club was bad enough, but this 1996 disaster is an atrocity. David Byrne has consistently refused to reform the Talking Heads in the members' collective golden years, but rather than accepting the situation or relying on their already established side project one more time, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz obstinately took their barely-developed ideas to MCA, who leapt at the chance to fund this open mic hate crime. Every singer that appears on No Talking Just Head was clinging to their careers in 1996, and rushed to contribute vocals to a once unassailable band's potential return to form, sans their stubborn, egotistical former leader. You'd have to believe that load of bullshit to participate in this travesty; it's always been to Byrne's credit that he's refused to sully the band's good name. Concrete Blonde's Johnette Napolitano, Michael Hutchence, Shaun Ryder (Happy Mondays) and Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes) all weighed in with their overbearing personalities, alongside original Talking Heads marquee mates Richard Hell and Debbie Harry. None of the songs on this album sound remotely like the Talking Heads; in fact most feel like the Tom Tom Club, warped by feeble attempts to play catch-up with chic electronic sounds. Debbie Harry's title track nicely sums it up: "No heart/ No imagination."

The truly shocking presence here is Ed Kowalczyk, better known as the Christ-posing asshole singer from Live (saved from eternal damnation by the even bigger dickhead fronting the equally worthless Creed). Ed spent his pre-Live years in an atrocious R.E.M./U2/Bunnymen cover band called Public Affection, writing fawning postcards to Michael Stipe begging for advice on how to "make it." How did a megalomaniacal famewhore like this wind up working with three of the four Talking Heads? Live were on MCA, for whom Jerry Harrison produced their first three records. Take me to the river, I feel dirty.

But why does we (and by we, I mean me, and maybe you, because you're here, aren't you?) love them so? The WaPo's Peter Carlson tries to explain today, in an article that contains its own list: "The 11 Best, Worst and Most Inane Magazine Lists We Could Scrounge Up on Short Notice." Enjoy.

(Both links via TMFTML).

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