all these years later, this is really the only one of the band's discs that stands up as housing something more than bland disco and recycled bowie experiments (my life in the bush of ghosts is actually by far the best eno/byrne collaboration), but even this is a disc that you have to listen to from a certain ironic distance. the increased dissonance and rhythmic complexity embedded in the repetition sort of rescues it from the dance floor, but it still doesn't really manage to transcend it. it's more that you want to really like it because you can hear that they're trying, and that emotional response is blinding you to a more objective analysis. it's still ultimately emotionless, crappy disco - but it's reaching towards getting out of that funk and making an artistic statement....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHVBaF0HopQ
you just don't 'get' TH
it's cool:-)
deathtokoalas
standard response.
it would help if i wasn't younger than 60 and had memories of it, sure. but i think i get it a whole lot better than most of their fans do...
rss313
^ yeah that is actually a typical response, and i like your thought out response (and its good to get new opinions from the younger generations) but my one question to you would be - what disco DO you like? because while byrne is kinda samey throughout his career he does have a certain talent that others of his day and age didn't have.
deathtokoalas
see, this is where the talking heads have this bizarre place in music history. "this ain't no party, this ain't no disco.". i may be missing some subtleties as a result of not having been born yet, but it sure sounds like disco to me...
from what i gather, talking heads as anti-disco act may have had something to do with race relations in the upper middle classes of new york city, but i hardly think it's fair to assign those attitudes to the talking heads so i'm going to avoid this discussion.
i will point out, though, that the talking heads are generally not regarded as disco, which is more what i was getting at in dumping them there.
i do get that it's supposed to be some kind of art-disco, but it's kind of a contradiction in terms. i've read enough interviews from byrne to conclude that he doesn't get it. the whole idea of art transcending the commodity is beyond him; instead, he'd rather try and convert the commodity into an art form, which is simply impossible (by definition). the "art" just becomes a feature of the commodity. new talking heads record - with 43% more adrian belew! kind of thing. i guess he's a product of his era, in that respective. but, the thing is that very little of the so-called art from the period comes off well at this point - because it's not actually art, it's obsolete commodity. all i can hear is people dancing in clubs in the late 70s and absolutely nothing that translates out of that context.
to answer the question more directly, there simply isn't any disco i can get into. there was an industrial movement about the same time in england and germany that sort of paralleled what the talking heads were doing, but actually managed to succeed. that's about as close as i'm going to get to listening to disco...
rss313
thanks for taking the time to respond thoughtfully. i asked that because
deathtokoalas
the talking heads were never as explicitly commercial as, say, blondie, though. when i think of new wave, i think of something else. i often suggest the b-52s did it best, as they were able to throw some curves into it. but new wave is generally explicitly dance/pop oriented. byrne was always reaching for something a bit more than that...
i'm not quite suggesting byrne didn't understand what he was doing. i have no doubt in my mind that his first priority was always something that would be received well as dance music, and his second priority was to try and extrapolate the dance music into something more by adding psychedelic flourishes (ala bowie) and political themes. it's the question of priority that is what i'm getting at.
it's my fault i have to do this yet again. a commodity is explicitly defined as something meant to meet market demand. it's in any economics textbook. people want to argue with this, but don't bother - a commodity is a term with long usage and an explicit meaning. if you want to talk about something else, use different language; in this context a commodity is a commodity, which is a product produced solely to meet market demand (and thereby make a profit from it). art is defined in very different terms.
now, if we agree byrne was first and foremost producing a commodity (that is, attempting to meet market demand in producing a danceable product) and only thinking about the artistic value of it as a secondary concern, then we arrive at the reason the music doesn't stand up well. when stripped of it's commercial value as dance music due to shifting technology and fashion and trends, there's just not much left that stands up - a neat melody, or an unusual effect here and there.
this is what i mean when i say he doesn't get it - but a lot of people at the time didn't get it, due to the whole warholian philosophy of product and art. i've got some hindsight. i can look back and say "no. trying to convert a commodity into art by adding 43% more adrian belew didn't work out so well.". maybe he would have taken a different approach if he had that hindsight, or maybe he wouldn't have bothered with the flourishes at all.
i think it's now clear where the industrial music of the period (and his bush of ghosts thing, too) transcend the commodity if you're familiar with it, as you seem to be. throbbing gristle and neubauten and etc were working from the complete opposite perspective - it was art, man, and fuck you if you don't like it. in fact, fuck you if you do like it! the result was a lot of music that transcends stylistic boundaries, and still sounds remarkable when stripped of it's context.
see what i'm saying, now?
or, you could compare it the band belew is most usually associated with - king crimson. there's a lot of similarities, but the crimson continues to stand out as utterly bizarre while the talking heads stuff kind of blurs with the period. now, there's better musicianship, and it helps. but the key difference is the approach - crimson was trying to make their art current, while the talking heads were trying to convert fashion into art.
rss313
hah! sorry you had to spell it out for me, but i do get what you're at now. and on some artists i would dead 100% agree w/ you, but we just disagree about d. bryne i guess. i do think he is more of a pop artist than say people who really tried to push limits (stockhausen, cage, gottsching and their ilk) but i do not think that disqualifys any of his music (but i do agree w/ your OP when you said only this album [and i personally would bet a few more] is the only one that really stands out, or stands out best. i listen to him once every couple of years and just enjoy it for what it is - there is nothing to 'dig' per se just some pop music to enjoy. theres low brow or high brow or ride the fence brow but its still art to me. at least you're humble about it, but as a fartist myself i can't say he doesn't get it, while you or i do or don't. s'all good.
re: your second comment here which i didn't see until now.
i'm pretty big on belew and fripp and th boys but other than In The Court and a few of its followers (and maybe discipline in the 80s) their stuff kind of aged in a similar way in my mind. however, saying that TH were converting fashion into art is something i agree with. i've never seen fashion as up there with music and film but most think its art as well. i'm sure byrne would like to think he had a hand in that. i'm guessing you wear a lot of black tshirts like me hahaha.
deathtokoalas
the crimson stuff actually really stands out for a younger pair of ears sorting through the 70s. i'm not "young" anymore (early 30s), but i have no direct experience of the 70s. i have memories of 80s pop that was playing on my cassette deck when i was a child - tears for fears, gowan, rem, u2, michael jackson. to me, the 70s are simply history...
my dad had a big prog collection that i had the privilege to sort through. i've tended to generally prefer the fusion of the period (di meola, mahavishnu) to the prog. and the punk critics were right about the bulk of it. yes, elp, rush, zeppelin - this stuff mostly doesn't stand up. it's pompous. it's pretentious. the production sounds dated. they were wrong about some of it, though. the stuff that really sounds timeless is floyd and genesis (with the usual cutoff point of when steve hackett left the band). crimson is more like queen - the output is a bit more scattered, but the excellent discs - in the court of the crimson king, larks tongue in aspic, the second side of starless and bible black, red as well as discipline and three of a perfect pair - still sound fresh and innovative and i have little reason to think they ever won't.
with that early belew period, even the pop songs still come off as abstract masterpieces. but there's so much more to explore on them.
another way to measure byrne v fripp/belew is to look at influence. there was a flurry of new genres in the 90s and 00s (post rock, math rock and to a lesser extent what could be called alternative metal, like mr. bungle and tool) that took immense influence from crimson. they might be the most influential rock band of the modern era, excluding the beatles and sonic youth. it's a lot harder to hear byrne's influence much of anywhere, partly because most people are going to hear bowie or eno over byrne when the sound comes up.
it's a different history than was written in real-time, but foresight is painting a different picture.
rss313
i'd have to split hairs on the past w/ you i'm afriad. you're right - zep doesn't stack up anymore but 50% of floyd's output is pure, ahem, commodity that sounds just as dated as page and plant. you're right about kc though, and i think they stand up well precisely because they influenced so much, which makes them a bit timeless. i actually see it as a plus that we weren't around for the 70s because nostalgia in all forms is complete nonsense and being removed helps us look at the music more skeptically.
in related topics, i'm not sure if you're familiar with the nurse with wound list but if you aren't there are troves of prog bands you can dig from it (years later i'm still going through it) - but hopefully you've realized prog wasn't something of its time and is alive and well today (none are more annoying that glorifying the past in this way, to me) so be sure to check out bands like astra (whose leader brian ellis is quickly becoming the belew of his day [and may have even eclipsed him (!) with quipu from a few years back]). anyways....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_with_Wound_list
let me know if you need anything from there and i'll see what i can do :)
deathtokoalas
i can't hear much commodity in floyd. obscured by clouds, maybe. but, floyd is the very, very rare act that conquered the world by doing what they wanted and doing it well, without much apparent concern for popular reception. from album to album, they did everything wrong and were consistently rewarded for it. first, they switched from a commercially successful psychedelic pop formula to what was, at the time, some of the weirdest and most experimental music out there. then they dropped it to make an experimental pop album that somehow managed to satisfy virtually everybody. then, when they could have played it safe, they released a dour, strange record of experimental drones, followed by a masterpiece of political commentary connected to a series of lengthy and commercially impossible jams, followed by an opaque concept record (the fact that the wall is somewhat lacking in conceptual unity does nothing to suggest it was the easy option) and an orchestral work....
there's no pandering to audiences in floyd's career, man.
i can't get into much modern prog because it's mostly lost it's connection to it's psychedelic roots and/or become too trapped within metal culture. without the psychedelia to keep it abstract, and more of a punk attitude to keep it grounded, somebody like christgau is right - it gets boring and bloated. i prefer to trace it's development through acts like magazine, the cure, lpd and cardiacs and into stuff like jane's addiction, bjork, later swans and the smashing pumpkins (and some newer stuff that just doesn't sell anymore), which maintained those roots and presented something i'd consider more in touch with what prog was meant to be. it's less about glorifying the past and more about realizing that art movements are always strongest at the core of their development, when the ideas are still novel and the music is more about creating than emulating.
rss313
w/r/t prog going into metal territory - i KNOW, man, and i've helped set you up.
if by conquered the world you mean occasionally coughed up greatness then yes, they did do what they wanted to do, true, but with all the inner tension w/ that band i don't see how they managed to stay as good as they were.
the wall is one of the worst experiments in history. i see it as directly pandering to a lower common denominator. to each his/her own, but it gets SO MUCH BETTER than that, man.
deathtokoalas
by conquering the world, i'm talking more about success. floyd were, of course, huge. and, it's hard to understand it, really, considering how consistently weird they were. there's really no clear analogue of such a strange band having that kind of success (maybe corgan's brief stint as alpha rock god). i mean, when you look at a "best selling records of all time" list, floyd consistently stands out as the only thing with an ounce of artistry - excluding, of course, the beatles, who could have sold virtually anything by the time they entered their substantial phase. i mean, they released a couple of real masterpieces, but they didn't sell because they were masterpieces, they sold because they were the beatles. floyd is pretty much the sole example of music in the modern era selling as a direct consequence of it's artistic merit. they were always unpopular in fashion circles. they didn't have sexy band members. you couldn't dance to it.
i'm simply not going to listen to metal. sorry. with something like astra or porcupine tree or whatever else, we have what i'm talking about as a commodity - it's designed to emulate something that already exists in order to tap into a pre-existing market. if i want to listen to crimson, i'll listen to crimson. if i want to listen to something new, i'll listen to something new.
i think the wall is overrated and probably the worst substantial floyd record (the unsubstantial ones being obscured by clouds, more and the post-waters stuff), but if the band wanted to pander then they wouldn't have released a dense concept record with complex themes - they would have redone dark side, or released a disco record. hey, zeppelin did it. bowie did it. i agree it's not cohesive, but that's a result of the artist(s) failing to accomplish what he (they) wanted, not an attempt to water it down to sell records.
twostikks1
Well, good grief ... All this "intellectual blather" (my quotes, obviously). Clearly the important thing about the music is whether or not it connects with you on an emotional level. It's a subjective matter. My favorite is "Speaking In Tongues", though ... Some of the coolest, funkiest stuff they ever did. In my humble opinion, of course.
rss313 1
tru dat. but if you can find any intellectualism on yt that competes then link me, man. tru conversation b/w humans is rare on here ya know.
deathtokoalas
my argument is that byrne was over-intellectualizing disco and failed to get a good result out of it. in order to explain that, i need to dip into the mindset. don't confuse my arguments that the music is over-intellectualized for over-intellectualizing itself. there's not really an attempt to be primal, so i'm not sure what you're getting out of this on a primal level that you can't get much better from sly or countless other much rawer funk acts.
ch1nmuzak
Perhaps your thinking too hard while listening to music. For me, the TH's material from the Belew collaboration period is pretty much pure funk. Which ain't disco by any stretch of the imagination. For me the TH's were as funky as Parliament, if not funkier. Sure, its HIGHLY dance-able, but not in the same way disco is dance-able. Its jungle beats that make your pelvis just want to move on its own volition. Don't know if Byrne had the chicken in mind first (creating unique music \ art) or the egg (commitment to funky rhythms that would be dance-able) -> regardless, for meanyway, in the end it worked in huge way.
The notion that their material doesn't "stand up" and hasn't proven influential doesn't ring true for me either. Obviously, I grew up listening to them, so I'm biased. But my musical taste is widely varied and spans all eras and forms. At the end of the day, I've never tired listening to most their work, which is not something I can only say about a handful of bands. So these guys have a place near the top of my list.
Just for their contributions of "Stop Making Sense" and "Naive Melody" (one of my favorite pop songs of all time) alone, they deserve credit.
deathtokoalas
part of what i'm trying to get across is that the reaction you had to the talking heads in 1977 is going to be alien to virtually anybody born after 1977. i can't tell you what you experienced at the time. but i can tell you that stripping the music from it's context seems to remove a lot of it's value, leaving something that sounds dated and flat.
i can hear the appeal to certain strains of funk, when it's dirty enough. but this just doesn't have that. nor does it manage to get anywhere near the abstraction of something like early prince, or even the bowie period that the talking heads really modeled themselves around. a lot of the time, it seems like eno is kind of asleep at the controls - you get the gimmicks, without much effort put into developing them.
and, to explain that, i feel i need to go back to what it is, which is music that is primarily designed for the purposes of dancing. it's rare for the dance music of any era to transcend the moment it existed in.
twostikks1
Now, really -- how can you make the determination that "the reaction <anyone> had to the talking heads in 1977 is going to be alien to virtually anybody born after 1977"?? How can you possibly say that with definitive certainty, when the reaction ANYONE has to ANY music (or ANY artistic stimulus, for that matter) is subjective?? I mean, with all due respect -- that makes no sense -- none, what-so-ever. Sorry, I don't buy it at all. But Happy New Year, anyway. :)
deathtokoalas
well, it would be remarkable for somebody to experience things that happened before they were born. you'd need some kind of time bending contraption, to get you from place to place. which is probably totally impossible.
so, it's not one of those objective/subjective things. i'm probably going to largely reject what you have to say on the topic. but i don't need to go through the bore of doing so, because it's just not applicable.
really, i think the statement is rather difficult to refute, once you sit down and take a moment to understand what the fuck it actually means.
twostikks1
Ahh, OK, I get it -- I get your point now. Maybe the context of what someone felt when they first heard Talking Heads in 1977 is unique to that time, sure. Of course, someone born after that time, being removed from the context of what was going on in the world musically at that time -- it would make it a completely different experience for that person. But saying that removing Talking Heads music from that TIME "seems to remove a lot of its value" .... I don't agree at all. Doesn't matter. I don't think it's a matter of context at all. But what the fuck to I know? And, by this point, who the fuck cares?
deathtokoalas
well, you've correctly identified the point being discussed. rather than get lost in the details, i think the more valuable point here is that acknowledging a level of subjectivity in a concern doesn't abolish all debate on the topic; rather, it's precisely the reason that discussion is valuable, as subjectivity is what discussion is all about - there's no discussion in an objective concern. it is or is not. but, subjectivity should come with an argument. and that argument should be shaped by discussion.
i've outlined reasons for my analysis. it's up to you to agree with those or not. but, you really ought to have ideas underlying your opinions.
twostikks1
I agree with you here completely and sincerely, actually. And that wraps it up for me! Peace!
supernoob17
i would hang out and talk about music with everyone in this thread <3 and they say the youtube comments are all shit.
