Dear Friends,
Well, yesterday got derailed by my stomach deciding to build some sort of pressure engine inside my body. I feel like I have done way too many sit ups. I think I must have eaten something that disagreed with me on Thursday or Friday or picked up some sort of stomach bug. I hope it was the former and not the latter.
Alas, I did not join Brian and Jeff to see Stop Making Sense. I was so looking forward to spending quality time with the boys and taking in what was a very special movie to me in my youth. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I love Stop Making Sense so much.
I don’t regularly listen to Talking Heads. I have some of their stuff on various Spotify playlists and I spin songs from the live record during DJ gigs (usually “Take Me to the River” or “Life During Wartime”) but I wouldn’t consider them among my favorite bands. I appreciate their musicianship a great deal and can’t say that I dislike any of their material, but they’ve never been a daily driver for me.
One thing about Talking Heads that I also admire is their place in making left of center music more accessible. Like some of the other bands that helped usher “alternative” music, for lack of a better term, into the collective consciousness, Talking Heads forced people to listen because they were so damned good and so damned interesting.
Bands like The Stooges, Velvet Underground, Big Star, and even New York Dolls were trailblazers in similar ways and probably paved the way for Talking Heads, too. The difference between all the bands I just mentioned and Talking Heads is significant, though. While those others have been aped time and again by other bands, Talking Heads are not so easy to rip off. If you are going to be inspired by Talking Heads, that great, but you can’t try and be them.
I’m sure many have tried, but unless you are going to put the work in to be a top-notch Talking Heads cover band, there is no point. Of course, now I want to cover a Talking Heads song. Maybe “Making Flippy Floppy” would be a good one.
*****
The rest of today is devoted to getting better and prepping for the week. I have a couple of New Times pieces to knock out and some stuff for school this week. I had a banana earlier and despite some initial, “What the fuck” feelings from my stomach, so far, so good.
I’m way too busy for the next month to have time for feeling shitty.
See you tomorrow.
Letting the days go by...
Comments