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

1001 Albums: Pink Flag

#380

Album: Pink Flag

Artist: Wire

Year: 1977

Length: 35:37

Genre: Punk Rock / Art Punk / Post-Punk

“Think of a number
Divide it by two
Something is nothing
Nothing is nothing

Open a box
And tear off the lid
Then think of a number
Don’t think of an answer”

Three Girl Rhumba

1! 2! 1 2 X U!!!

Another heavy hitter when it comes to my own personal listening habits. Pink Flag stands as one of my top 50 favourite albums of all time and, according to my Last.Fm statistics, sits as my second most listened to album (although those numbers are easy to rack up when you have 21 songs in your album). There was always something about Wire’s approach to music that just resonated with me. It was a lot of things I was looking for in music, short songs that stayed interesting the whole way through, and seemed to follow the same philosophy I had for when I was writing sketches, the song (or in my case sketch) only needs to be as long as it needs to be. When the song was losing steam or just didn’t feel like it needed more to it, that was it and that’s all it needed. This seems to be Wire’s minimalist approach to songwriting. Cut the fat and just use what feels absolutely needed. As Three Girl Rhumba says “Think of a number. Divide it by two.” A philosophy they used to write this album.

Dubbed a 21 song punk suite, every song here works as part of a whole and the album subverts our expectations and plays around with song structure in fun and interesting ways. Just when you think you know what they’ll do next, they throw you a curve ball with another song doing something different. A lot of people aren’t fans of how short the songs can be, but the beauty of it is that if there is a song you’re not enjoying, it’s done before you really start to dislike and a new one comes around. This is all done tongue in cheek of course, and Wire was both poking fun at the punk scene that they were surrounded by but also at the same time reinventing it into something artful and new. Post-Punk was starting to spread its wings and fly and Pink Flag is one of the first to set that foundation. A bunch of art school students taking punk into their own hands and turning it into something new and pushing ts boundaries and limits until it breaks at the seams. You’d think 21 songs would be excessive, but in the case of Pink Flag its necessary to make its statement.

When I first listened to Pink Flag years and years ago, it was jarring in the best possible way. It made me see art in a new way and how I could approach it myself. Being economical and efficient while still being effective. Say what you need to say with no excess attached to it, while also playing around with the rules and bending them to breaking point without ever actually breaking them. The band would often play their music live by standing on the stage and moving as little as possible. In a time where solos were the craze and musicians were jumping and dancing and moving all about on stage to create theatrics, Wire completely subverted that by practically being mannequins playing their instruments to sometimes confused crowds.

Is this what music could be? Is this what performance could be? The possibilities opened up and there was nothing I felt I couldn’t do on my own terms. Art didn’t have to fit into boxes and rules and regulations anymore. I could do what I felt was right and keep the integrity of my work. I could have a vision and see it through in my way and not any way others wanted me to. I could do something different and that was still a right answer.

Wire really had an impact on me and Pink Flag will always hold a special place in my heart because of it.

Favourite Song: 1 2 X U

-Bosco

P.S. I especially love the humour behind putting 1 2 X U as the last song. A song named after a count-in used to start their songs placed at the end rather than the start is quite funny to me.

1001 Albums: Rattus Norvegicus

#376

Album: Rattus Norvegicus

Artist: The Stranglers

Year: 1977

Length: 40:05

Genre: Punk Rock / New Wave / Pub Rock / Art Punk

“Suffering convictions on a two-way stretch inside
The air in here is pretty thin, I think I’ll go outside
Committed for insanity and crimes against the soul
The worst crime that I ever did, was play some rock ‘n roll

But the money’s no good
Just get a grip on yourself”

(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)

There was a period of time, back when I was about 19-23, when I was really into The Stranglers. I remember listening to their first three albums on repeat and a lot of the songs on those albums got heavy rotation in my car. For me, those three albums (Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes and Black and White) were like the perfect package of this band, representing their style and “mission statement” they had musically. Not to say any of their later albums weren’t good at all, it’s just this felt like a perfect three album run for the band and it all peaked at Black and White for me. I would watch the video for “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)” quite extensively (the song is also the very first song I ever “liked” on Spotify) and this was one of the few bands at the time that I made a mixtape CD of for someone. So, one could say I definitely was a fan, at least in that period of time.

Sadly, I found myself not visiting them as much as I used to, to the point that I almost forgot there was even a time I absolutely adored the band. But I feel that’s normal, we really get into some music and then move on once we discover other things, it’s normal to go through those kinds of phases. But it felt really nice to sit down and listen tot heir debut once again as it made me remember why I fell in love with the band in the first place.

The thumping beats of drummer, Jet Black; the snarling angry intonations of singer/guitarist Hugh Cornwell; and the heavy bass of Jean-Jacques Brunel were the perfect combination for music for me at the time. It just all hit me like lightning, especially the fantastic bass riffs that Brunel would play which definitely elevated the music. But the stand out band member to me, whose contributions were what really set them apart as a band in comparison to their contemporaries, was keyboardist Dave Greenfield, who to this day I still say is one of the most underrated keyboardists of all time. His keyboard parts range from simplistic support to absolute insanity. On a song like “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)” he flies across the entirety of his keyboard, back and forth, rapidly, with a wild string of notes that somehow work perfectly with the song. One might call it over indulgence, but Greenfield has proven he has restraint when it comes to certain songs. I’ve been trying to learn the keys for “Get a Grip” for the last ten years and have still been unsuccessful. It will never not impress me. (Sidenote, Greenfield was known to play a keyboard solo with one hand and chug a pint of beer with another during performances, which was a sight to behold). All the love and respect for Dave Greenfield!

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge a criticism that had been hurled their way since their debut in 1977 in regards to their lyrics. Even then, people were calling out sexism and misogyny when it came to their lyrics, and when taken at face value, I don’t blame them. Their big hit “Peaches” is literally the inner thoughts of a man ogling women at the beach. However, The Stranglers are much more clever than that. It can be deemed sexist if you don’t factor in the context of the album and the tone they were going for. These were smart guys and it feels a little insulting to them to take their music at face value like that. All their lyrics had a satirical edge to it, delivered with a tone of irony that dipped it’s toes into the absurdities of the culture around them. If the lyrics of “Peaches” made you uncomfortable, that was kind of the point. It wasn’t a commendation of the the act but meant to show how weird this line of thinking in men really was. Remember this is on an album that the band decided to name Rattus Norvegicus, the scientific name for the rat. The rat here didn’t symbolise snitches, but most probably was in reference to the rats that brought about the plague. They have a song called “Down In The Sewers” with the sewer meant to reference London. Sewers are a common place for rats, could it all be these “rats” have brought a plague to London that’s causing a toxicity to their society? I might be overthinking it all, but it definitely fits with the ethos of the band which was to portray the depravity of their surroundings by lifting a mirror to it all, and what better way to do that than song from the perspective of these characters. They also had two songs that were odes to their pub rock days, with “Hangin’ Around” based on the bar patrons they’d meet and “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)” about the deluded bands they’d see. As they said “But the money’s no good… just get a grip on yourself”.

However you may feel in regards to them, I definitely err on the side of satire. The dirty, aggressive sound of their music definitely supports this idea. I’m happy I was able to revisit The Stranglers after years of sort of forgetting about them. Listening to this album brought back memories to when I used to listen to them heavily all those years ago and it felt good to feel those feelings again. Seeing as I own their first three albums on vinyl, they might all go a nice spin on my record player sometime soon… just need to set it up first.

Favourite Song: “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)”

-Bosco

1001 Albums: Horses

#343

Album: Horses

Artist: Patti Smith

Year: 1975

Length: 43:10

Genre: Punk Rock / Art Punk / Free Jazz / Rock and Roll / Garage Rock

“There must be something I can dream tonight
The air is filled with the moves of you
All the fire is frozen yet still
I have the will
Ooh, ah”

Elegie

I think it is safe to say that starting at this album, I’m about to go on a long stretch of albums where I not only know the vast majority of them already, but they are also albums I absolutely love and even own in my collection. One of the hardest things I sometimes find to do is answering the question “What is your favourite kind of music?”. My tastes vary so wildly across a multitude of genres and eras that it’s hard to properly express what I love. I often say exactly that but I have also been able to make it more specific by saying a lot of the music I seem to navigate towards is in the decade of 1975-1985. All the post-punk, new wave, synth pop music of that time era seems to be the music I listen to and enjoy the most out of all music and seeing as we are in 1975 with this list, it makes sense to assume that I am about to go on a wonderful journey of listening to a ton of albums I already know and love, seeing as this is now my decade.

Patti Smith is no exception to this and it’s rather fitting that it starts with her as Horses is often described as being the official first Punk record (a genre I adore overall). Now, in our modern days, what it means to be “Punk” is often heavily debated and there seems to be a lot of clash (hehe) when it comes to people’s opinions on it. To lots, Punk is a music genre that has certain attributes to it, while to others Punk is an attitude, a way of thinking that a band or artist embodies. Depending on what punk means to you an dhow you define it, a variety of bands may or may not fall under the term for you. I mean, some people seriously consider My Chemical Romance to be punk… what a joke.

To me, personally, punk was never an aesthetic or sound but always an attitude. Cultural context is always important to understand what punk is because what might have ben considered punk back in the late 70s might not be today. It’s not necessarily counter-culture, but more culture that aims to do the right thing for all, speaking out against norms and rules that feel wrong and bringing unity to everyone, while also calling out society and government with occasional satire. Punks have something to say and are not afraid to stand up for what they believe to be right, and no, Nazi Punks are NOT punks but racist assholes.

With that in mind, however you might feel about it, Patti Smith was a punk through and through. We cannot undercut the absolute influence she had on the punk and underground scene at the time, especially with her tenure at CBGB’s alongside Television. She is one of the most important figures when it came to the development of the scene and without her it probably wouldn’t have risen as it did, especially for female punk icons who saw her and said ‘we can do it too!”. Her mix of beat poetry and rudimentary rock aesthetics of the music gave way to a sound and vibe that was new and fresh. She didn’t sing in a way to hit the notes properly but sang from real emotion and she had things to say and wasn’t afraid to say them. She was taking the old and creating new, especially seen with her songs “Gloria” and “Land of a Thousand Dances” that repurposed the two rock staples of the same name to her liking for social satire. Her last song, Elegie even acts as a requiem for Jimi Hendrix and in many ways was a tribute to a lot of rock musicians of the past. Break it Up is even written about Jim Morrison. She knew where her influences came from and knew the steps she wanted to take moving forward. I mean, when you start an album with the words “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”, you’re making it clear to the listener you’re here to make bold statements.

There’s no denying the impact she made on the underground scene and for bands and artists to come. A lot of people I know might listen to this album and not consider it punk, but knowing the cultural context of what was going on, how can you seriously not? The album cover made a big splash itself by showing off an androgynous looking Patti Smith, which was enough to come across as a bold statement. Even all the way down to the title, Horses, a name that was created as a response for the need of the rejuvenation of rock music after the death of so many prominent musicians. Patti Smith was even quoted as saying such:

“Psychologically, somewhere in our hearts, we were all screwed up because those people died … We all had to pull ourselves together. To me, that’s why our record’s called Horses. We had to pull the reins on ourselves to recharge ourselves … We’ve gotten ourselves back together. It’s time to let the horses loose again. We’re ready to start moving again.”

Patti Smith

Letting loose was a big part of what created the punk scene. All these people who had all these emotions bubbling and burning beneath the surface finally needed to let it all out and Patti Smith helped be a catalyst for that.

Favourite Song: Gloria

-Bosco