Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues poll

i bought the dual disc reissue of this a few years back but it's still unopened. time to change that.

I love the first side and of course the SMS version are better (do dislike the awful thwacking drum tracks though).

this must be the landslide

though i love "this must be the place" i've decide to offer a bold challop and give my vote to the underappreciated "burning down the house"

http://bit.ly/13STLmr

i remember when makers had something to say but that was a long time ago...

who took the markers
who took the markers away

if we're ignoring The Place, then for me it's Girlfriend Is Better

Voting Place, cause I had it playing during my wedding, big soft twat that I am.

The love for "Place" in the last ten years surprises me. I love it too but it's not even my favorite Heads love song.

"Girlfriend is Better" is such a jam. "This Must Be the Place" is cool and should probably win, but hey.

live versions of Making Flippy Floppy, Slippery People and Burning Down The House are just about the best thing ever but gone for Pull Up the Roots.
baffling they never did that on the SMS tour.

anyone ever own a copy of the Rauschenberg vinyl?

Girlfriend Is Better I prefer in SMS form, possibly thanks to be it being the one on Sand In The Vasoline

"Girlfriend is Better" is such a jam. "This Must Be the Place" is cool and should probably win, but hey.

Yus.

anyone ever own a copy of the Rauschenberg vinyl?

Yes - the plastic they used was NOT made to age. It reminds me of that kind of plastic they use to seal electronics (is that called a "blister packs"?), and I've never seen a copy that wasn't totally yellowed.

But man, it looks so cool.

I went with Girlfriend Is Better, although yes, the SMS version is better.

<rant>I'm pretty sick of This Must Be the Place at this point, especially after seeing the film of the same name. I'm getting increasingly irked by movies that try to build a plot around a flimsy connection to a random song that the director or screenwriter likes. It's the equivalent of novelists dropping song lyrics in their writing that are meant to stand in for actual insight or description. Take This Waltz is another recent example of a film that does this, plus there was some movie recently (forgetting the name) where the entire soundtrack was versions of Van Morrison song for no apparent reason.</rant>

I'd watch a movie called I Get Wild/Wild Gravity

Sequel is That's Us/Wild Combination

yeah the Rauschenberg sleeve always looks like someone's been smoking near it for 2 decades whenever i've seen it.

oh and by the way, if you fancy a This Must Be The Place T shirt, it's a bargain at £125

http://www.oki-ni.com/accessories/undercover-men-s-this-must-be-the-place-print-t-shirt-und1629blu.html

I have the Raucshenberg edition as well and can confirm the plastic is yellowed and not that user friendly. Still cool to have. Pull Up The Roots almost got my vote.

Lots of copies on Discogs. Even the sealed copies say the case has yellowed. http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?release_id=1443184&ev=rb

nothing is better than this- wait a minute

Generational issue! Can't get my head around the retcon that "This Must Be The Place" is THE SONG off this record -- in fact THE SONG is "Burning Down The House." They didn't even put "Place" on the Stop Making Sense soundtrack, is how highly they esteemed it! (SiT tracks there = Swamp, Slippery People, Girlfriend Is Better, House.)

There is much to be said for "This Must Be The Place," of course, but "Burning Down The House," played in a dark room, sounds like the reason Talking Heads were put on Earth.

well, at the time bdth was like a generational pop megasingle. in my world, tmbtp was that supercool song that later showed up in wall street.

Voted for "Making Flippy Floppy." Love the synth riffs going flippy floppy over the chorus and that eerie-beautiful outro.

mmm, i'm stuck between girlfriend and making flippy floppy.

in my world, tmbtp was that supercool song that later showed up in wall street.

saw that movie when it came out and had no memory of "this must be the place" being in it -- on the other hand, I think "Down And Out In Beverly Hills" might have been where I first heard "Once In a Lifetime."

there were 50,000 made i recall Byrne saying in that '84 Letterman interview, so like a mass market 'limited edition'.

it was also replicated on CD for the Japanese issue of the '06 remasters apparently.

we had the whole debate about how on earth TMBTP has become so ubiquitous on this thread
Talking Heads

at some length.

Burning Down THe House and TMBTP are like the two worst tracks on here. I'm torn between the others though - love it when TH go a bit reggae on Pull Up The Roots and I Get Wild Wild Gravity.

"Burning Down The House" now playing in the coffeeshop where I sit, I stand by my judgment

2. Making Flippy Floppy
3. Girlfriend Is Better
4. Slippery People
5. I Get Wild/Wild Gravity
6. Swamp
8. Pull Up the Roots

Arrrgh - it's impossible, I love all these songs!!!

Went for Pull Up The Roots cos it prob won't get enough appreciation. It's got that slightly spooky vibe they nailed on The Great Curve

This album is incredible. Trusted my first instinct and went with "Slippery People".

Burning Down THe House Moon Rocks and TMBTP are like the two worst tracks on here.

bypassing tmbtp (which is my fave but not by as huge a margin as it might win by here or has won by elsewhere) voted for 'slippery people' purely for the stop making sense version. tbh i have no idea the last time i listened to this album, if i'm ever in the mood for this era i always go right for stop making sense.

i kinda hope we someday do a tracks poll of Talking Heads/associate acts, if only because "Genius of Love" has a fighting chance of being #1

mm no question.

I've never heard "This Must Be the Place" outside of this record. Voted "Girlfriend".

it's one of the talking heads songs i hear on oldies radio, along w/ (in rough order of frequency) 'burning down the house', 'psycho killer', 'take me to the river', 'and she was', 'once in a lifetime', 'life during wartime', and (good lord why) 'wild wild life'. i used to hear 'nothing but flowers', 'girlfriend is better', and 'stay up late' also on this aaa station but it went talk radio last fall. slot tmbtp before 'life during wartime'.

During their nineties exile I heard Take Me to the River and the eighties singles (And She Was, Wild wild Life) most.

i can't imagine ever hearing "This Must" on any radio station as much as "Life During Wartime." or, for that matter, "Stay Up Late."

yeah tbh i probably hear 'life during wartime' more esp since i hear both fom and sms versions.

in a weird way this album is worse than Remain in Light while on the whole having better songs

can you explain?

i can sorta weirdly buy that argument, thing the more 'proper songs' aspect of speaking in tongues is part of why it's a worse album (trend only even more accelerated w/ following albums, though nostalgia and howard finster probably makes me fonder of little creatures than speaking in tongues).

think rather than thing

the loss of Eno is really felt in the generally flatter/thinner production, but Byrne compensates by demonstrating a more developed mastery of conventional song structures and well-deployed vocal melodies. A majority of the songs on SiT have more memorable choruses and sing-along-able call and response bits than those on RiL, but RiL on the whole SOUNDS better.

This is about the only record in my collection where my favourite song is aligned w/ the most popular. TMBTP is just a really fucking great song in any context. My Rauschenberg vinyl is maybe the most annoying record in my collection. Admittedly it was a little beat up when I found it but I can never get it to resemble the thing of beauty I want it to.

love this album, prefer it to the SMS soundtrack (which is great, don't get me wrong). see little creatures and the true stories soundtrack as the NJ-style cracking point, though i have a lot of fondness for the former.

anyway, "burning down the house" for nostalgic reasons as much as anything else. was the first pop song i really tried to figure out, hunched over the tape deck with my finger on the rewind button, playing lines over and over again so i could transcribe them. didn't make much more sense after i was done.

voted for "moon rocks" because it's not reproduced on SMS and it's about eating moon rocks

"my tummy starts to talk"

swamp a close contender for evil cab calloway and for ALL THAT BLOOD... WILL NEVER COVER THAT MESS

yeah, swamp is great. great, funky-ass synth work, which i mostly attribute to worrell (perhaps unfairly).

great/great

"I Get Wild" needs more luv

It's amazing

See this album has everything - reggae, jump blues, funk, big pop numbers - songwriting-wise I'd say their most adventurous

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

the loss of Eno is really felt in the generally flatter/thinner production, but Byrne compensates by demonstrating a more developed mastery of conventional song structures and well-deployed vocal melodies. A majority of the songs on SiT have more memorable choruses and sing-along-able call and response bits than those on RiL, but RiL on the whole SOUNDS better.

SMS is horrible, wtf is with these defenders of those awful overdubbed drums & etc. I vastly prefer the dry, meticulous Eno-less sound of the studio versions.

love this album, prefer it to the SMS soundtrack (which is great, don't get me wrong). see little creatures and the true stories soundtrack as the NJ-style cracking point, though i have a lot of fondness for the former.

This is spot on -- so is Xgau on both:

Speaking in Tongues [Sire, 1983]
With Eno departed, the polyrhythms no longer seem so portentous--this funk is quirkily comfortable, like the Byrne-produced B-52's or the three-piece of Byrne's earlier primitivist period. Unfortunately, the polyrhythms no longer seem so meaningful, either. Though God knows there's no rock and roll rule that says playfulness can't signify all by itself, the disjoint opacity of the lyrics fails to conceal Byrne's confusion about what it all means. Yet side two lights me up nevertheless, sandwiching the purest anticapitalist song he's ever written and the purest prolove song he's ever written around two pieces of typically ironic-optimistic futurism. A-

Stop Making Sense [Sire, 1984]
Always skeptical of live albums, I note that this is their second in a four-year period that has netted only one studio job while establishing them as a world-class live band. Number one was a useful overview; number two is a soundtrack, albeit for the finest concert film I've ever seen, that repeats three songs from the overview and four from the studio job. Buy the video. B+

Upon rapid reflection, "Slippery People" for me, tho "Making Flippy Floppy" made it a race.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good christ

Weak saice

Or sauce even.

go Pull Up The Roots! best TH 'deep cut' ever.

no that would be "Creatures of Love" or "The Good Thing."

otm

wow, that is a lot of votes. every song got a vote, yeah!

"Swamp" is in Risky Business, which is also a lyric in the song, and I've always wondered about that.

this must be the landslide

― some dude, Wednesday, April 3, 2013 10:14 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck, pull up the roots is fun. it's like byrne fronting tom tom club.

I got asked to play "This Must Be the Place" at a party the other night. I'm quite sure it wouldn't have happened if not for this thread, you know.

I've always loved 'Moon Rocks.' It's elfin' great. Can't believe it fell behind 'Swamp.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JFAA5dEup0

Early version of "The Lady Don't Mind" recorded during the SiT sessions.

Pull up the roots is my fave

^ my people

moon rocks has grown on me a bit. music-wise it sounds most like tom tom club

Goddamn this album is incredible

Also, Pull Up The Roots

"I Get Wild" needs more luv

It's amazing

― pssstttt, Hey you (dog latin), Sunday, April 7, 2013 1:18 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^this

pull up the roots deserved more love in this poll, and moon rocks especially. moon rocks fukken rules. the three song end of album sequence it kicks off is among my favorites in music

I agree. Pull Up The Roots is very high up in my favourite TH songs

If we're just going off a song-for-song basis, this is clearly the best TH album too. RIL might be a bit more daring but it has fillery moments whereas Tongues is just bangers beginning to end

This album is the soundtrack to the summer I graduated from high school. It didn't grab me immediately like the others did, but it's a grower.

Y'all are mad.

"Pull Up the Roots," "Moon Rocks," "I Get Wild" -- instant skippable.

Will still rep for I Get Wild like 5 years again during the last thread revive. Great album.

^ago

xxp Hard disagree, Alfred. Those are all solid tracks.

TMBTP the clear and deserving winner. The Stop Making Sense version is even better.

Pull Up The Roots SLAYS

controp: I've never found TMBTP very exciting.

I asked my guitar teacher, who has a really good grasp of music theory and whatnot, why This Must Be the Place pops out for everyone as the sentimental favorite, and he observed it's the only track on the album that isn't more or less blues-based.

Well, and it's Weymouth on guitar strumming the same couple notes for five minutes

Will still rep for I Get Wild like 5 years again during the last thread revive. Great album.

― that's not my post,

Cool bass line.

It's Byrne's vocals on that song that do it for me. "When you're standing here beside me/I love the passing of time/Never for money, always for love/Cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight" is pure magic.

Also "And you love me till my heart stops/Love me till I'm dead" is such a surprising couplet from David Byrne.

Pull Up The Roots is fantastic. Not sure if it’s a remix I like best or the original but what a song.

Listening to this album rn. I keep expecting the "Whoaaa!" In "Swamp."

Cool walkthrough of Bernie's synth settings for NM/TMBTP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBiFk0eAae0

One vote for "Moon Rocks" is insane.