Speaking Heads: 77 (1977)
Having shaped in 1975, Speaking Heads surfaced from the ashes of New York band The Artistics, with frontman David Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz ultimately recruiting (after three auditions) fledgling bassist Tina Weymouth and former The Trendy Lovers keyboardist Jerry Harrison to a line-up that, unusually, would stay unchanged all through their 16-year existence.
Drawing upon their originators’ Rhode Island College of Design background – and for his or her identify – a time period featured in a random copy of TV Information, the band rapidly garnered a buzz on the Large Apple circuit, significantly the CBGB membership they’d made their reside debut at. And following false begins with Sire Information’ head honcho Seymour Stein and early mentor Lou Reed (whose most important recommendation was for Byrne to cover his bushy arms on stage), the quartet lastly headed into the studio to document their first album with producers Tony Bongiovi and Lance Quinn. Effectively, kinda.
The previous, a cousin of future hair steel god Jon Bon Jovi, instantly rubbed the band up the flawed manner together with his repetitive and uncaring method, with Frantz later claiming that engineer Ed Stasium deserved way more of the credit score. Whoever was chargeable for producing its twitchy, tight-knit sound, Speaking Heads: 77 instantly positioned its performers as an angular various to their riotous punk friends. Whereas Ramones thrived on simplicity, their one-time assist act have been extra involved with pushing musical boundaries and as their very own mission assertion revealed, providing “sincerity, honesty, depth, substance, integrity and enjoyable.”
The calypso funk of opener Uh-Oh, Love Comes To City proved proper off the bat that Speaking Heads weren’t eager about adhering to guitar band traditions. Likewise, the conga-friendly coda of Tentative Selections, the marimba-meets-saxophone stylings of First Week/Final Week… Carefree and new wave disco of The E-book I Learn.
The rock scene actually hadn’t heard anybody fairly like Byrne, both. Don’t Fear About The Government, a sardonic tribute to the work of civil servants, and unempathetic No Compassion (“So many individuals have their issues/ I’m not eager about their issues”), for instance, each allowed the sharp-suited frontman to exhibit his otherworldliness, his stilted supply and peculiar takes on fashionable society suggesting he’d simply been beamed to Earth from one other planet.
In fact, most followers’ first introduction to Speaking Heads was Psycho Killer, the moment traditional which amid the Summer season of Sam, dared to inhabit the thoughts of a knife-wielding assassin. Initially conceived as Alice Cooper singing a Randy Newman ballad, the macabre story may need induced a minor controversy, however its shock Billboard Sizzling 100 success recommended the punk crowd have been keen to embrace one thing outdoors the norm.