was there, too, and he got his hands on Marty Thau’s 2×5 compilation while I grabbed up albums by Ornette Coleman along with the Talking Heads record. “A good rhythm, if it is to enhance itself, should both fill a gap in the other rhythms and create an emptiness that may be similarly filled.” – John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility (1979)Īll of this was explained slightly when I chanced upon a test pressing of Remain In Light during a fortuitous visit to music critic Chip Stern’s apartment, where he was selling off promo copies for cheap.

Rossy, who became an in-demand player after being hired by LaBelle in 1976 ,was probably recruited by Nona Hendryx, who contributed vocals to Remain In Light alongside Byrne and Eno. Drum kit was Chris Frantz alone, but everyone contributed percussion with the addition of Robert Palmer and José Rossy. Basses? Take your pick from Harrison (again?), Tina Weymouth, Byrne uses or Brian Eno. Guitars, the credits related, could be played by Adrian Belew, Jerry Harrison, or Byrne. A quick glance at the credits told us that this record had also been made differently than their three prior albums, which seemed to follow a standard “band writes songs, band goes in studio with producer to record them” protocol than what was going on here. It also felt bigger than earlier Talking Heads, less pinched and cerebral, and more sweaty and visceral.

What was this exactly? It was hard to say, but we picked up immediately on a furious, danceable energy, and responded in kind: we danced, furiously. David Byrne enters, sounding more commanding than ever: “Take a look at these hands/Take a look at these hands/The hand speaks/The hand of a government man.” Remain in Light back cover art (Photo: Discogs) A quick downbeat, a vocal expulsion, and then a thicket composed of bass, chicken-scratch guitar, keyboards both barbed and ambient, and a relaxed beat underneath it all that betrayed its origins in Compass Point Studios in Nassau. Pepper series in New York’s Central Park, you were completely unprepared for what sounds would emit when you dropped the needle on Remain In Light, which came out 40 years ago this month. But if you hadn’t seen the newly expanded band perform in August 1980 at the Heatwave Festival in Ontario’s Mosport park, or the Dr. Talking Heads had flirted with rhythmic interlock and interdependence on “I Zimbra,” which kicked off 1979’s Fear Of Music with a burst of brittle funk. “The skills and attitudes we wanted to develop were based on our understanding of African musical concepts of interlocking and interdependent parts and rhythms that combine to make a coherent whole.” – David Byrne, Press Notes, 1980 “I love the way they seem to divorce words from their meanings,” I yelled at Mike, “you know, ‘Define, define/So say so, so say so.” Mike had a slightly different take, yelling back at me, “Yeah, maybe…I just heard it as conversational – “so say so” – just things you say every day.” This wasn’t an argument – we would have plenty of those during rehearsal – but rather just the start of an attempt to absorb the brilliance of Remain In Light by Talking Heads, which had just landed in our universe with a seismic impact. We were on our way to a Young Aborigines rehearsal, and babbling excitedly about a new album. I dashed up the stairs to John Berry’s loft, hard on the heels of Mike D. This sound will drown me!” – Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living God of Haiti (1953) The singing is at my very ear, inside my head. “My skull is a drum each great beat drives that leg, like the point of a stake, into the ground.

Talking heads road to nowhere guitar