Amazon has become my second favorite source for legal non-DRM MP3’s (Emusic is my first.) Everyday they have a special in their MP3 store and sell albums for as little as $1.99 (usually these specials carry over into the next day.) Today they are selling The Best Of Talking Heads for $3.99. I’ve been a fan of Talking Heads since the 6th grade and though I have to protest the “Best Of” title (my best of list would be a lot different) this is still a psychotically killer deal.
…is Talking Heads. Finally this is out on CD. When I was in sixth grade, a recently made friend came over to my house to hang out. The year was 1985, and I lived in Bellevue, Nebraska, at this point and hadn’t lived there for very long. He brought over a couple tapes, he put one in my tape deck and said, “this is cool, you’ll like this.” The tape was “The Name of this Band is Talking Heads” which was a live album compiled from several different concerts Talking Heads played from 1977 to 1981. He was right, I did like it. The guy who brought the tapes became my best friend for all of junior high, and Talking Heads became my favorite band for years to come.
For whatever reason this album was never released on CD, until a few months ago. If you like Talking Heads, especially their early stuff, you should check this out.
Interesting (possibly boring) side note, Adrian Belew played with Talking Heads on one of the tours some of the songs on this album are from. If you look carefully enough at some at the photos in the CD booklet, you can see him. This was the tour for the Remain in Light album, which Belew is prominently featured on. Shortly after getting off tour with Talking Heads, Adrian Belew, along with Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford and Tony Levin, formed the 80’s incarnation of King Crimson. While recording in London, Belew was accosted on the street while reading some lyrics he had written about violence on the street into a tape recorder. His account of the event was later used in the song Thela Hun Ginjeet. He mentions that in order to convince the thugs who were hassling him that he was not some sort of under cover cop and to let him go, he told them he was in a rock band and showed them his shirt, from the band. The shirt was actually a Talking Heads shirt, from the tour.
Aren’t I a wealth of useless knowledge.
