1001 Albums: Talking Heads: 77

#382

Album: Talking Heads: 77

Artist: Talking Heads

Year: 1977

Length: 38:37

Genre: New Wave / Art Rock / Art Punk

“I hear music and it sounds like bells
I feel like my head is high
I wish I could meet every one

Meet them all over again
Bring them up to my room
Meet them all over again
Everyone’s up in my room”

New Feeling

I remember the first time I heard the Talking Heads…

That’s a lie, I don’t actually remember, but I do remember how I felt when I did hear them for the first time…

That’s also a lie because I don’t remember that either… but I wish I did. I wish this was a situation where I can go into detail about how I discovered the Talking Heads at 18 through the wonder of Weird Al and his style parody of them called Dog Eat Dog. A song I enjoyed so much I just had to listen to the original band. I wish I could tell you about how I immediately got my hands on their discography and went through it madly, falling in love with the band on the spot. I wish I could describe how it was to have my musical horizons expanded through this eccentric band and how much of an impact that left on 18 year old me just starting his musical journey. I wish I could write a whole article and essay about those feelings and experience… but I can’t… problem is… I just, simply, can’t remember what it was like to hear the Talking Heads for the first time.

18 was a very long time ago and everything I said up there all happened, it’s all true, sadly the whole experience remains as facts rather than any sort of emotional memories. I really do wish I could remember what it was like experiencing the Talking Heads for the first time because I know that I ended up becoming obsessed with them and when I started buying records, I had to get my hands on every Talking Heads album. They were one of the first bands I ever got into and maybe it’s because at 18 I couldn’t quite wrap my head around why that was, so it always remained a “I just do” kind of thing, with no explanation. After awhile I found myself coming in and out with Talking Heads, go some time forgetting about them and then come back and revisit them and realise how much I loved them. My go-tos were mostly Fear of Music and Speaking In Tongues, which remain as my favourites of the band, but their debut was one I didn’t see myself revisiting that much over the years.

All the better for hearing it again now, which does feel like the first time even though I’ve heard it at least twenty times in my life. For whatever reason, I always seem to forget how their debut goes and every time I listen to it it always feels like I’m listening to it for the first time. In a way, I don’t mind because it makes me fall in love with them all over again. The album is in no way forgettable, just for whatever reason my own memory seems to have a hard time sticking with it… and not that I don’t love it either, Don’t Worry About The Government is one of my favourite Talking Head songs that I always sing-a-long to, I can play Psycho Killer on the bass and Pulled Up is such a wonderfully neurotic song that makes me want to dance… so I can’t quite explain the phenomenon that occurs with me and this album, despite my absolute love for it and the Talking Heads.

It’s easy to see why they resonated with 18 year old me. David Byrne is a neurotic and awkward dude who embodies anxiety and neurosis incredibly well through his music. He wrote music for dorky white guys like me and it felt like what I was feeling inside. He didn’t sing well but his style of singing fit the music superbly well and there’s no other way than his singing that could possibly fit it all. He yelped and barked and his voice cracked. He saw the world very differently than everyone around him and didn’t seem to feel like he fit in with society, a lot of those feelings I was feeling at 18, even if I didn’t quite understand them. David Byrne felt like he was tuning in to my own neurosis and awkwardness as I tried to navigate the world and subconsciously it all resonated with me in a deep way, even if I had no idea why. This especially made sense when I saw him perform, his lanky body awkwardly moving around attempting to dance. I may not be him and he is not me but he understood me and I understood him and together we were we as one could be through music.

Talking Heads had left an impact on me at an early stage in my musical journey and whether I like it or not, they had become a part of me. Maybe that’s why my brain keeps “forgetting” this album, because it wants me to experience it for the first time every time I hear it. It wants me to remember what it was like to be that 18 year old boy discovering a band that felt so real to him, that spoke to him and sang with him, even if he didn’t know how to sing… but that was OK because David Byrne didn’t sing either… but he did sing and it worked. I could sing like that. I could be neurotic like that. I could be that too. I’m not David Byrne but yet I am and now as a goofy 32 year old, I understand him more than ever and more than ever Talking Heads resonate more with me.

HI-YA-YA-YA-YAH!

Favourite Song: Don’t Worry About The Government

-Bosco