ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #100

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 100: Talking Heads – ‘Love → Building On Fire’ (Sire Records ’77)

Dear friends,

whenever you read something about New York’s famous CBGB club around 1975/’76, you can rest assured that four bands are always being cited: Television, Ramones, Blondie …. and Talking Heads. Now, the first three of those don’t come in as too much of a surprise, I’d reckon, but in the back of my mind I always wondered about the latter – I mean, Talking Heads don’t seem to have fitted in there, did they, bearing in mind that everyone was trying to re-invent the New York Dolls without sounding and/or looking like the New York Dolls (I know this is vast generalization, but it’s not too far away from the truth).

Probably this doubt derives from the fact that when you think about Talking Heads, your brain automatically pictures David Byrne in this overblown suit, being all arty and stuff, which was of course much later in their career. But perhaps this is just one of those psychological things your brain cannot fully cope with, like when I look you straight into the eye and ask you a) to concentrate on me and b) to quickly say for 20 times or so „white – white – white – white – white – white – white – white – white – white – white – white“ until I suddenly interrupt you with the question „what do cows drink?!”. Knowing you, most of you will have answered “milk”, you see, which cows don’t drink, at least not over here in Germany. Byrne’s suit is the same thing, of course – and I know because I was an Air Force medic when I was in the army, decades before I got employed to work for some obscure Scottish blogger on all too low wages!

But I digress, again: in their beginnings though, it was all much less grandiose, in CBGB and elsewhere Talking Heads entered the stage in the clothes they had worn all day, they did not try to look any special at all, the same is true for their performance: they just left the stage lights on and started. Also they were just a three-piece then, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth – something which you will of course already have noticed when looking at the sleeve below – and quite often they opened the night for the Ramones. On one of those occasions, in 1975, Seymour Stein from Sire Records was in the audience, and apparently he was so fond of what he heard that he offered the band a contract – which they declined for a while, because they thought they weren’t yet good enough, that they still had to work on themselves. This apparently was achieved when Jerry Harrison from Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers was recruited for lead guitar, but before this happened, they changed their minds, signed with Sire and the first single was recorded – without Jerry Harrison.

Now, all of this boring stuff is important here, because this record presents Talking Heads in quite a different form. Just compare this version of ‘Love → Building On Fire’ (which is supposed to mean ‘Love Goes To Building On Fire’, don’t ask me why) to the one on the most fabulous ‘The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads’ live album: you’ll clearly see (or hear rather) the difference, exploding guitars live whereas here Byrne has a more minimalistic/robotic approach. This, to make that clear, does not mean that I dislike what the band did after this record, not at all. Nor do I prefer this one, or this version rather, in fact the live album was on constant play when I first got my hands upon it in the mid-80s: outstanding, as I said!

 

 

mp3: Talking Heads – ‘Love → Building On Fire’

The debut album was released half a year later, and ‘Love → Building On Fire’ was not on it. What was on it though was ‘Psycho Killer’, a song well known to everyone and also a good example to show what would make Talking Heads so very special throughout their career.

But either way, I always liked the very first single very much – in my book, it is well deserved to be included in the singles box.

Enjoy and take good care.

 

Dirk