Every Tuesday in January, The Barn will offer another feature about the incredible music and career of Talking Heads.
In addition to a healthy legacy of groundbreaking studio recordings, Talking Heads were a band that, at least in the early part of their career, offered audiences contrasting interpretations of their catalog on stage. Fortunately, these shows were captured by amateur tapers and occasionally broadcast to eager archivists over the radio waves and today circulated widely in various bootleg forms. Via these recordings we can follow the evolution of the band over another parallel axis to their studio work, charting yet another aspect of the band's collective personality against their influences and intra-band dynamics.
The Barn presents to you here a year-by-year listener's guide -- one representative show from each year of the bands touring history with accompanying analysis, with an eye towards how the bands live show was both emblematic and supplementary to their recorded output. On this page, you can stream each show or, if you'd rather, download an iPod ready mp3 version to listen to at your leisure.
Note: some songs have been omitted from the streams and downloads below, since versions appear on official. commercially available live recordings.
7/29/1976 CBGB, New York, NY
Setlist
Artists Only, Don't Worry About The Government, Love Is All Around, Buildings On Fire, Who Is It, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, I'm Not In Love
The stream (click to activate):
Key songs: Don't Worry About The Government, Love Is All Around
Listen for: This is Talking Heads at their rawest and most elemental. The claustrophobia and tension contained in some of these songs are amplified -- you get the feeling of a band consciously pushing buttons and experimenting, not knowing how it will be received. The band channels the environment of a small, hyper-relevant club in an edgy neighborhood of New York City at one of its most notorious phases. The oddball cover choice of "Love Is All Around" provides a little peak at the pop influence that bubbles under the surface throughout their career. Bonus points are scored for the mundane between song chatter between the taper and an obviously fascinated bystander.
11/1/1977 Rose Room Student Center Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ
Setlist
Love > Building On Fire, Uh Oh, Love Comes To Town, Don't Worry About The Government, Take Me To The River, The Book I Read, New Feeling, A Clean Break, The Big Country, The Good Thing, Stay Hungry, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, Who Is It?, Psycho Killer
E: Pulled Up, I'm Not In Love, No Compassion, 1-2-3 Red Light
The stream (click to activate):
Key Songs: The Big Country, Psycho Killer, Pulled Up
Listen for: The band is showcasing a growing songbook, drawing on influences like Motown and Caribbean music to complement the proto-punk of 1976. Trademarks of early Talking Heads on display: strange tunings delivered via herky jerky rhythmic exercises, Byrne's shout-sung lyrics. "Pulled Up" is exemplary of the nervous energy that is key to this period-- at once ominous, but also inviting and hook-driven even slightly silly. In what will become a staple at live shows going forward, though with some different arrangements, "Psycho Killer" cranks that feeling up one more notch -- a first person song from about a murderous francophone, drenched in dissonant feedback, yet rhythmically compelling enough to pack the dance floor.
9/13/78 Park West, Chicago, IL
Setlist
The Big Country (removed), Warning Sign, The Book I Read, Stay Hungry, Artist Only, The Girls Want To Be With The Girls, Dont Worry About The Government, The Good Thing, Uh-Oh Love Comes To Town, Love-Building on Fire, Pulled Up (removed), Psycho Killer, Thank-you For Sending Me An Angel, Take Me To The River
The stream (click to activate):
Key songs: Take Me To The River, The Girls Want To Be With The Girls
Listen for: A bit of a transitional period for the band. The song list from '77 is mainly back, with the band exploring a little more funk and R&B, laying down a deeper groove on the inspired cover of "Take Me To The River", about to explode as a hit single early the next year. Tina Weymouth is unraveling the mystery of how to counterpoint the angularity of her bandmates, with smoother and tonally satisfying bass. Overall, the "exposed nerve" phase of the band reaches its peak. By this point they are already working with Brian Eno in the studio, which builds on some of these developments and opens up another wave of influences by next years' performances.
9/29/79 Stardust Room, Las Vegas, NV
Setlist
Intro, Artists Only, Stay Hungry, Cities, Paper, Mind, Heaven, Electric Guitar, Air, New Feeling, Building On Fire, Found A Job, Psycho Killer, Life During Wartime
Encore: Take Me To The River
The stream (click to activate):
Key Songs: Cities, Heaven, Life During Wartime
Listen for: Band is still a four piece in 1979, but the sound is becoming more dense, inspired by West African music and the continued partnership with Eno. Sparse and choppy are being gradually phased out in favor of a new murky minor-key funk that uses the coloring of the keyboards to further its agenda. Strange dichotomies are still lurking though -- "Life During Wartime" is a disco-fied up-tempo rocker bristling with lyrics about paranoia, control and armed conflict. And do I detect a hint of wistful melancholy, in the beautiful, though thematically nihilistic, "Heaven"?
8/27/80 Central Park, New York City, NY
Setlist
Stage Introduction, Psycho Killer, Warning Sign, Stay Hungry, Cities, Band Introductions, I Zimbra, Once in a Lifetime, Houses in Motion, Born Under Punches, Crosseyed and Painless, Life During Wartime, Take Me To The River, The Great Curve
The stream (click to activate):
Key songs: I Zimbra, Born Under Punches, Crosseyed and Painless
Listen for: On the heels of their most ambitious album to date, Talking Heads hit the road as a nine piece starting in the summer of 1980. The live show is prepulsed by the fully realized African polyrhythms featured on "Remain In Light". Key among the ringers are guitarist Adrian Belew and keyboardist Bernie Worrell, the Parliament-Funkadelic vet who is a catalyst for more the driving groove of tunes like "I Zimbra" and the stretched-out, ominous jamming that underpins "Born Under Punches",
2/27/81 Sun Palace, Tokyo, Japan
Setlist
Psycho Killer, Stay Hungry, Cities, Drugs, Once In A Lifetime, Houses In Motion, Born Under Punches, Crosseyed & Painless, Life During Wartime, The Great Curve, The Book I Read, Girls Want to Be With The Girls, Mind
The stream (click to activate):
Key songs: Once In a Lifetime, The Great Curve
Listen for: I hear this as a continuation of the tour began in late 1980. Still touring with expanded stage personnel, band finds similar grooves on a handful of different tunes. This set features interesting takes on some older material, filtered through the lens of a band with changed sensibilities and commitment to expansion and experimentation.
9/2/82 US Festival, Devore, CA
Setlist
Psycho Killer, Love Comes To Town / Building On Fire, Cities, Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open), Once In A Lifetime, Mind, My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks), Slink, Big Business -> I Zimbra, Swamp, Houses In Motion, What A Day That Was, Life During Wartime, Take Me To The River
The stream (click to activate):
Key songs: Big Business > I Zimbra, Swamp, What A Day That Was
Homer: There can only be one truly great festival a lifetime and it's
the "Us Festival".
Clerk: The what festival?
Homer: The "Us Festival"! Geez! It was sponsored by the guy from Apple
Computers.
Clerk: What computers? - [3F21] Homerpalooza, 1996
Listen for: Songs from Speaking In Tongues are starting to displace some of the heavy hitters from Remain In Light and Fear of Music. Maybe because this is a festival set, but the band appears to be offering somewhat of a career retrospective. Not as intense of a song list (or performance) as shows from '80 and '81, but is a nice set that provides a bridge to...
8/20/83 Cape Cod Coliseum, Yarmouth, MA
Setlist
Psycho Killer, Heaven, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, Love > Building On Fire, The Book I Read, Slippery People, Cities, Big Blue Plymouth, Burning Down The House, Life During Wartime, Making Flippy Floppy, This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody), Once In A Lifetime, Big Business > I Zimbra, Houses In Motion, Genius Of Love, Girlfriend Is Better, Take Me To The River
E: Crossyed & Painless, Burning Down The House
The stream (click to activate):
Key songs: Slippery People, Burning Down The House, Making Flippy Floppy, Genius Of Love
Listen for: What words can one use to describe a show like this? As we know since a similar show was memorialized in the film Stop Making Sense, it was more than a concert, it was a SHOW, a spectacle. THIS is Talking Heads Live. Drawing from songs throughout their history, while not neglecting their last round of creative innovation, which hinted towards more American roots music (these would arrive fully on the albums that were least after the TH-live era had ended). The show flows like greatest hits set, but isn't dragged down by typical nostalgia of such sets. Here is a band passionately creating, engaging the audience and celebrating their unique place in American music. From Big Blue Plymouth (cultivated from Byrne's The Catherine Wheel) to the Tom Tom Club side trip, this is the culmination of a live act that at times can be overshadowed by their brilliant studio work.
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