The world was groovin'
June 9, 2020 7:29 PM   Subscribe

1985 was a ridiculously strong year for music releases. June 10, 1985 saw the release of Talking Heads' Little Creatures. Their best selling album [YouTube playlist], it was on many end of year best lists, and it spawned two hit singles. Side A: And She Was [video], Give Me Back My Name, Creatures Of Love, The Lady Don't Mind [video], Perfect World posted by hippybear (47 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
I listened to that album endlessly. Also Speaking in Tongues.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:40 PM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Finally, one of these I am on board with. At the coffeeshop I worked at this was on a 90 minute cassette backed with Paul Simon’s Graceland. Unstoppable.
posted by mwhybark at 8:43 PM on June 9, 2020 [4 favorites]


Did I miss the Hounds of Love post?
posted by waytoomuchcoffee at 8:56 PM on June 9, 2020 [4 favorites]


Did I miss the Hounds of Love post?

September is a few months off yet.
posted by hippybear at 9:03 PM on June 9, 2020 [10 favorites]


I’d heard Talking Heads on the radio since “Psycho Killer,” but for some reason it wasn’t until ‘85 that I finally bought all their albums and was blown away. After that I was never caught walking around NYC or riding the subway without my Walkman in my coat pocket and the entire T Heads discography on cassette tape filling my other pockets. Every album was excellent in its own way, but Little Creatures felt like the biggest departure from what had come before. And when I visited my grandmother who had MTV I would watch it continually to catch the amazing “Road to Nowhere” video. Thanks grandma!
posted by ejs at 9:08 PM on June 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


“She had a pleasant elevation” is one of my all time favorite descriptions of drug use. I love that song so much.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:26 PM on June 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


Remain in Light and More Songs About Buildings and Food are the Talking Heads albums I return to over and over, but Little Creatures was the gateway for me. Or more specifically, the radio singles from the album were the gateway, I didn't get the record or have anything to play it on until I went away to college. But in '85 I was in high school in western Michigan and would hear "And She Was" or "The Lady Don't Mind" on one of the powerful stations out of Chicago. My musical tastes were neither very strongly developed nor very informed in those days but I knew there was something special about those songs that set them apart for me from much of the rest of what I heard on the radio.

A year or two later I was attending university in Ann Arbor and going without fail to see Stop Making Sense whenever it was booked for a run at the Michigan Theater, dancing un-self-consciously in the darkened aisles of the theater with the rest of the crowd for 88 minutes at a time .

By the time I got a chance to really familiarize myself with their work their best recordings were behind them and I never got the chance to see them perform live but boy do I remember the pleasurable thrill of working my way backwards through their catalog, coming home from Schoolkids Records with a new disc and sitting down to hear "I Zimbra" or "The Great Curve" for the first time. I was in just the right time and place for Talking Heads to be, for me, one of the first bands to really expand my understanding of what popular music was capable of.

I've always been a bit sorry that they dissolved into acrimony. It's not that I ever wanted them to get the band back together it's just that I have so many happy memories associated with their work in those years that it kind of pains me to think of the band members looking back on those days with a wholly different set of feelings. Or maybe I'm just imagining things, I don't know.

Anyway, they were a big part of launching me on a lifelong journey of discovering all kinds of fantastic music and I'll always be grateful to them for that.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:30 PM on June 9, 2020 [14 favorites]


I've always particularly treasured that sort of squeal-crack Byrne does on "she was glad about it..."
posted by praemunire at 9:39 PM on June 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


I love every Talking Heads album, but the post-Stop Making Sense albums seem to be moving in a poppier direction, and it's not my favorite period.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:17 PM on June 9, 2020 [4 favorites]


I am a big Deadhead and classic rock guy. I have seen probably 700 live musical performances in my life. The only Talking Heads show I saw is in the top 20 shows. Top 5 non Grateful Dead shows. Great show. I liked the Ramones too, but never got a chance to see them. TH in concert was a up beat show. I remember being all sweaty and exhausted on the train ride home. My friends and I were properly elevated and sat for most of the ride in silence with a huge fucking smile on our faces.
posted by AugustWest at 11:03 PM on June 9, 2020


Side B: Stay Up Late yt [video yt ]

In the Dawn Times of the mid-eighties, MuchMusic briefly began a thing of playing three videos in a bloc connected by some obscure aspect; one bloc was this, along with Duran Duran's Wild Boys, and Van Halen's Panama: this was, of course, three videos featuring people hanging by wires. Ah. I suspect it was programmers having a private joke.

At several decades' remove, the only other set I can recall was Level 42's Hot Water, I Got You from Split Enz, and Cyndi Lauper's True Colors.

First one to spot the throughline there gets ten favourites.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:11 PM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


I am almost exactly opposite of mwhybark, I was following and loving them for years and when this came out I was a little WTF, this is not my beloved band... What initially struck me was that they were no longer trying to be cool, instead they were trying to make pretty music.

But it has grown on me. This is not my favourite album but it has a couple of my favourite TH songs (Lady Don't Mind, Stay Up Late).
posted by Meatbomb at 11:55 PM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Wow hippybear, you're really rolling them out! Thanks!

Gosh I just climbed out of a Heads rabbit hole there - finding this brief history along the way. Talking Heads were one of the things that really started opening my late-developing mind.

I first heard the Heads from a boom box under an upturned boat hull we were polishing, can still remember the fumes and this new sound distorted off that hard hull.

Their Speaking in Tongues of the year before challenged and changed me too , the title alone helping tear me away from sects that were into that weird stuff.
posted by unearthed at 12:34 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


This album was omnipresent in circles I frequented my freshman year in college. Though I had been a Talking Heads fan in high school, I had already concluded that they had sold out with Speaking in Tongues. That seems to me overly harsh today, and indicative of a lamentable snobbish narrowness on my part. But other albums by other bands that were inescapable in my milieu during that year do stand up much better these days than Little Creatures, imo. Like Shriekback's contemporaneous Oil and Gold, or David Bowie's Scary Monsters and Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. (The latter two, though already several years old at the time, still commanded our young attention.)
posted by bertran at 1:41 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


The Talking Heads make the darkness light.

Road To Nowhere, Burning Down the House, Life During Wartime, Psycho Killer ... these are songs of the Apocalypse, honed into eminently danceable pop.
posted by chavenet at 2:48 AM on June 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


I tend to think that the Heads really peaked with Speaking in Tongues, just because that album has a lot of heft to it, but that's not to disparage this one; it's more playful, and "Stay Up Late" is just hilarious.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:51 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


Maira Kalman made a kids’ book from the lyrics of Stay Up Late.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:32 AM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


"...the band members looking back on those days with a wholly different set of feelings."

Chris' memoir "Remain In Love" is coming out very soon.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:02 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


This album is very special to me as well. I played the hell out of the Stop Making Sense soundtrack and then I played the hell out of Little Creatures all summer long in 1985. Even the die-hard Rush fan that shared the McDonald's kitchen with me would let me put this tape in from time to time.

I get that this was a new, poppier direction for them but if you listen to all the other crap that was on top-40 radio back then, jesus h christ this was a breath of fresh air.

And "Road to Nowhere", my favorite song from the album, still holds up 35 years later. If you don't agree then watch David Byrne and his amazing American Utopia cast perform the song today. (Sorry for the Facebook link, NBC and/or Byrne seem to have pulled it down everywhere else)

Also: did anyone else own this album on cassette? One thing I distinctly remember is that the cassette and case smelled really really good, but a smell that I could never identify. Was that just me? Something in the space-age plastics that Warner used at the time?
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:32 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


I was just listening to Little Creatures on vinyl last week. Better than I remember it; probably because I listened closer to the songs that weren't played on radio.
posted by terrapin at 8:42 AM on June 10, 2020


I never got the chance to see them perform live

I got into them when all my high school friends saw what turned out to be the last tour and were raving about it. So I never got the chance either.

I've always been a bit sorry that they dissolved into acrimony

What I recently learned is that, during Tom Tom Club sessions, Weymouth and Frantz actually approached Adrian Belew about becoming the new frontman for Talking Heads. So I guess they were planning a coup against Byrne. But Belew said no.
posted by thelonius at 9:23 AM on June 10, 2020


This isn't my favorite, but bands have to change and explore. "Talking Heads 77" is simply breathtaking- it still sounds revolutionary- but there's no way to do that for all your albums.
posted by acrasis at 9:39 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


What I recently learned is that, during Tom Tom Club sessions, Weymouth and Frantz actually approached Adrian Belew about becoming the new frontman for Talking Heads. So I guess they were planning a coup against Byrne. But Belew said no.
I'd say that was the right call on Belew's part.

And now I wonder if that history (of which I was unaware) contributed at all to the puzzled look I got from Belew many years ago after asking him to sign the CD insert from my copy of Remain in Light at a record store appearance. My presumption has always been that his puzzlement was because I was holding a freshly-purchased copy of his new solo album in my hand and yet was asking him to sign this CD by a band of which he wasn't even an official member (just because he played all over the album, contributing greatly to its sound, and the album happened to be a strong contender for my favorite of all time.)
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:42 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


I was surprised this week to be digging around in the sub-basements of the “classic movies” category on Prime. Once you get past a thin surface coating of prestige dramas from ten years ago, there is a whole lot of Tamil comedies, straight-to-video erotic thrillers from the eighties, and cheesy science fiction starring Jan-Michael Vincent or John Saxon. Occasionally you spot an unexpected delight (Aguirre, Wrath of God!) and just today I noticed Stop Making Sense; Prime lists it as starring “David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison” with Tina Weymouth listed as being a supporting actor. Dunno if that is sexist or bassistist, but either way I didn’t care for it.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:49 AM on June 10, 2020 [11 favorites]


I was late to the Talking Heads party and never saw them live either but I did catch David Byrne on tour sometime early-2000's and that was, bar none, the best live show I’ve been to. The audience was raucous and noisy and absolutely showered their love upon the performers on stage.
posted by Eikonaut at 1:36 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


Also: did anyone else own this album on cassette? One thing I distinctly remember is that the cassette and case smelled really really good, but a smell that I could never identify. Was that just me? Something in the space-age plastics that Warner used at the time?

I know exactly what you mean. Kind of, spicy? I had the Violent Femmes' The Blind Leading the Naked (WB, 1986) and Depeche Mode's Black Celebration (WB, 1986) and they had the same smell.
posted by candyland at 4:04 PM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


Prime lists it as starring “David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison” with Tina Weymouth listed as being a supporting actor. Dunno if that is sexist or bassistist, but either way I didn’t care for it.
If it doesn't list Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry as featured performers I don't want to hear it. They are so freaking delightful in that movie..
posted by Nerd of the North at 7:44 PM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


IMDb I believe more truly reflects the actual movie credits as given to Hollywood (credits have actual meaning in the industry) and this is what they look like. I wonder where Prime is drawing their information from.
posted by hippybear at 7:54 PM on June 10, 2020


That's unfortunate about the credits; Byrne is obviously the one who stands out the most (the big suit and all), but I got such a crush on Tina Weymouth after seeing that movie.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:41 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


Byrne is credited so late in the credit list because of how late he comes on screen, by design, in the film. Everyone else is seen first, he finally appears.
posted by hippybear at 8:45 PM on June 10, 2020


Or, my memory is entirely faulty and I remember him being last on stage instead of first, so there's my aging brain for you!
posted by hippybear at 8:50 PM on June 10, 2020


Jeebus. Yeah, I just started rewatching and I got all that backward. Go me!
posted by hippybear at 9:00 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


I saw this tour live in 2010 and it was really great. Not Talking Heads, but definitely David Byrne (touring an album he did with Brian Eno). Ride, Rise Roar. [~1h30m]
posted by hippybear at 9:13 PM on June 10, 2020


It was so good that the crowd enthusiasm at one segment had Byrne stop the concert and ask if the crowd wanted to see the performance again and so they did the song again because we all loved it so much. I've never seen that any other show ever.
posted by hippybear at 9:14 PM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


And with that I will shut up.
posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM on June 10, 2020


Fans of this and other Talking Heads albums might want to check out the somewhat revelatory 5.1 Downmixes. The process described in detail.
posted by bertran at 9:21 PM on June 10, 2020


I saw Byrne's American Utopia concert show 2(?) years ago when it came through town. It's easily the best concert I've ever attended. They did the show on Broadway this past winter; a film of it by Spike Lee will be out this autumn.
posted by neuron at 9:34 PM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


Was introduced to Talking Heads in 1981, when I went away to college in Minnesota. '77 got most of the kudos. More Songs was good, a bit more of the same. Fear of Music, with I Zimbra, Paper, Cities, and Life During Wartime, made an impact. Remain In Light, really hit it for me. Then, Speaking in Tongues became a huge hit, massive radio airplay, to the point of exhaustion. Little Creatures is so polished, and has such great songwriting, but, not likely ever my favorite.

Of course, that word does not exist in any language.

Wish I had gotten to see them. And Tom Petty.
posted by Windopaene at 10:04 PM on June 10, 2020


I played the hell out of the Stop Making Sense soundtrack

As did I. In the eighties, when the movie was hard to track down on videocassette and TVs were tiny compared to today, I really wanted to see it again on a big screen. Fortunately, I was managing a rep cinema so I pestered the owner until we booked the movie, then scheduled myself for that night off so I could come see it.

Alas, my choice was not as popular with our customer base and we ended up with something like eighteen paying customers that night instead of the usual 50-100 we would get for a second run movie midweek. Great experience to see it that way, but also I think the last time I got to do any programming of our schedule.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:36 PM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


This made me look up when *I* saw them (which I'm parking here so I can find it again):
November 1, 1978: Madison Theater Albany NY;
November 4, 1979: Palace Theater Albany NY.

Good times; but now I'm feeling old.

(The timespan from "Talking Heads concert in '78 to today" (41+ years) is now greater than the time span from "Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall to 1978" (40+ years)....)
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:24 PM on June 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


Don’t forget about Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen! Came out June 22.
posted by Clustercuss at 6:46 AM on June 11, 2020


TIL that there are 5.1 surround mixes of Talking Heads albums that I had never heard of before.

I love 5.1 surround music.

I shall have to try to track some of those down.
posted by hippybear at 6:39 PM on June 11, 2020


After all these years, I have never had a 5.1 system. Why not? I could have been a contender!
posted by thelonius at 6:12 AM on June 12, 2020


If it doesn't list Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry as featured performers I don't want to hear it. They are so freaking delightful in that movie..

David Byrne is the first one out onstage, and he is the lead singer and a principal songwriter; I can see an argument for him being called the central figure or star of the movie. But for 90% of the running time there are nine people onstage, all doing heavy lifting (and for what it's worth, Worrell, Scales and Weir are the first ones listed in the credits). Three of the nine people are white men: they are listed as Starring. The single white woman is Supporting. The five Black musicians? Not important, says Prime. I dunno if that is an algorithm issue or just paternalistic racism, but it's not a great look either way.

While I recognize who the four core members of the band are, let me just say that Steve Scales has approximately eleventeen times the stage presence and charisma of Jerry Harrison.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:00 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Just rewatched Stop Making Sense. Can confirm.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:03 PM on June 12, 2020


Its like there's Stop Making Sense, and there's The Last Waltz, for entirely different reasons... and.... Well, Woodstock is pretty great but also.. um.....

I'd put Rattle And Hum in there, but many would not. Others? Suggestions?
posted by hippybear at 7:57 PM on June 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


I found Eurythmics Live to be pretty great, and I am not even particularly a fan. I have seen it only once though, 32 years ago, so I am not sure how it holds up.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:42 AM on June 16, 2020


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