Cultural Fascism

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Cultural Fascism

The advent of the MP3 player, Spotify and the like means that many kids growing up in the 21^st century will never know the joy of listening to an album from start to finish. It’s not just kids either. My mother works from home and listens to her iPod on shuffle the way that many people do. It’s part of the growing trend of slowly wearing away attention spans. Society is bound to collapse not out of any ecological or natural disaster but by no one being able to pay attention to anything long enough to learn anything, an idea which I believe was explored in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (When the Bough Breaks).

Maybe it’s because I’m a reader, but I still think there’s something intrinsically beautiful about the internal narrative of a well-crafted album. I do use an MP3 player to listen to music these days, which makes life a lot easier. The first time I went backing around Europe, I had to have a separate backpack just to carry all my tapes for a three month trip. These days I can carry enough music and audio plays to last a year on my phone. However, I miss the days of vinyl. I miss the way that an album not only had an internal narrative, but were structured in acts over two, four or more sides. I miss stacking albums and singles on to the central spindle and watching each disc slide down on to the turntable like a stripper sliding down a pole. That was as near to shuffle as we got in those days. Listening to one half of half a dozen albums, then flipping the lot over. These days vinyl seems almost steampunk. Yet there was something undoubtedly romantic it about it. You never hear anyone speak with the same sense of quixotic nostalgia about compact discs.

 

I don’t use Spotify and I don’t listen to music on shuffle, ever. If I listen to music then I’m in for the long haul, the whole album, start to finish. Especially if I’m reading then I like a consistent soundtrack. On more than one occasion I have listened to the entire five odd hours of Bitches Brew in a single mammoth reading session. Or twelve Dylan albums or the complete Clash or Radiohead discography in a row while writing. Perhaps it also has to do with my continually shifting mood. Music soothes the savage beast, but it also preserves him in a state of suspended animation when he’s in a productive mood.

Then again, I am a cultural fascist and so I also think that what separates me from the Spotify generation is that I listen to good music. If you’re listening to Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga then I can understand why you wouldn’t be able to stomach a whole album’s worth. It’s like eating a large bag of Haribo. Full of sugar and of no nutritional value.

The strength of western society has always been predicated on population control and whereas technology should be enhancing our lives, it is instead being used as a weapon to keep people fractured by decimating their attention spans, much in the same way that incessant, structured ad breaks have been used in the USA for years. TV in the US seems to be less a form of entertainment and more a device for psychological conditioning. Online subscription services are slowly eroding the advertising industry’s half century strangle hold on TV, but who knows how long that will last. One would imagine that as the balance shifts from broadcast to internet media the advertisers will arrive like Killer Whales beaching on the shore.

And now a word from our sponsors: Download ad blocking software to your internet browser of choice today.

Under these circumstances, one would hope that the ones who mentally fight these assaults upon the senses will have a distinct advantage over the rest. There is no doubt that people are getting more stupid, spend five minutes on an any comments section if you don’t believe me. I’m not someone who watches shit films for the sake of it or sits on Twitter complaining about The Apprentice or Question Time or whatever. Not only are we becoming more stupid, but we are forgoing intellectual advancement and artistic creation in favour of pissing over anything anyone one else creates.

You will rarely read here any article in which I slag off or pick on an artist, musician or film. There is plenty that I don’t like, but I tend to try and just ignore it. There are seven billion people on the world, you, me, everyone is bound to be unattracted to most of what goes on in the world. Yet the need for instant gratification and the celebrity culture that has infected society like a disease that causes severe brain damage means that it’s easier to attack the efforts of others. Instead of commenting on the latest bunch of unpleasant wankers on The Apprentice, you could be learning a new language or going to art classes. Instead of arguing on Twitter about Toby Young’s thoughts on the NHS on Question Time, you could be out helping your community or joining a local Amnesty International group. And here’s a question for you: Why do supposedly intelligent people watch Question Time? A program featuring a panel of politicians. It’s like you want to lied to.

I have all but stopped watching television. I don’t have a TV of my own and what little I watch is usually a BBC Four program of iPlayer or something created by Dan Harmon watched using a proxy server to make the internet think I’m in the US. And even then I have my ad blocker enabled to skip through the commercials. That’s anarchy in my book (humour).

Aside from that, I read, I listen to albums, I struggle to learn new languages, I memorise the Shipping Forecast areas and Rimbaud poems in the original French in order to keep my memory keen. I listen to what I want, watch what I want, read what I want and if there is no prospect of me enjoying something then I don’t do it. Everyone should be so lucky.

Get it done.

The Concept of Albums

Today we hone in on the concept of a concept album. Now pay attention...

The Concept of Albums

I was listening to Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime today, wondering what makes a great concept album.

Apparently many people don’t know what a concept album is, judging from Wikipedia’s list of purported concept albums. I’m unfamiliar with many of the names, but a random sampling include Metallica’s ...And Justice For All and Load (wrong on both counts and if Load, why not Reload?), the first four Blur albums (I mean honestly) and Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage (this one I find the most baffling of all).

What’s just as surprising here is what’s missing, given these albums represent the criteria on which we are supposed to judge what makes a concept album. Metallica but no Megadeth, several of who’s album get nearer to approaching a unifying concept or theme. I’m not sure that a jazz album can be a concept album, but if Maiden Voyage is a concept album then I can think of several that have a better claim, including Hancock’s own 1973 album, Head Hunters and certainly Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain. As for Blur, well to paraphrase a line from something the source of which escapes me for the moment, stop it, now you’re just naming albums.

Most egregious in the Wikipedia list is the inclusion of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the most famous concept album that isn’t a concept album, the clue being in the fact that The Beatles themselves said it isn’t a concept album. Abbey Road might have a better claim, or at least the second side of Abbey Road, which is broadly conceptual, like the second half of Queen II, an album which also appears in the Wikipedia list.

For me, an album must have something of the musical about it to be considered conceptual. It must be almost operatic. Which is odd, given that I can’t stand musicals and I can only listen to opera. Watching opera is like having teeth pulled. I do enjoy a good concept album. However, a group or musician attempting a concept album is like a footballer attempting a bicycle kick. Get it right and it’s spectacular. Get it wrong and you look like an absolute dick.

Operation: Mindcrime is a fine example of getting the concept album right. It contains all of the elements for a good concept album. It has the structure of an hour long musical, including talky acting bits in between songs. There are leitmotifs borrowed from Wagnerian opera, which return to haunt the album at various points. It also has a clear plot of revolutionaries, terrorism, murder and corrupt priests, which is quite easy to follow. The narrative is circular, ending at the same point at which it begins. 

Operation: Mindcrime also contains echoes of maybe the most famous actual concept album yet recorded, Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Especially near the end of Mindcrime will you hear very deliberate musical strains referencing The Wall. It’s a nice touch. You hear the same thing in Mastodon’s Leviathan, a concept album built around Moby Dick, which tips its hat to Iron Maiden’s 1988 concept album, Seventh Son of the Seventh Son, which is about... well, guess.

It’s perhaps a little kitsch to admit this, but I love The Wall. A friend of mine used to say that rather than watching horror films, he preferred sitting down to listen to a Slayer album with the lyrics sheet in front of him. I used to do almost the same with Pink Floyd. I would have a smoke or four, get into bed with all but my face wrapped in sheets and listen to the whole of The Wall in the dark through a pair of headphones. It beats the hell out of a emersion tank. The Wall’s musical narrative tell the story of the rock star, Pink, and his slow decent into madness. I love The Wall because it’s an album of eighty minutes of unrelenting bleakness, punctuated by two minutes of light at the end of the tunnel. I also love it because by accident or by design songs like The Trial contain many of the same tropes as Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The Wall and Operation: Mindcrime can perhaps be better described as rock operas than concept albums, the same as The Who’s Tommy or The Kink’s Arthur. Yet this, in one sense, is exactly what makes a concept album. There are many that describe Floyd’s previous three albums, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals as also being conceptual. I would submit only the last album of the three for consideration. A concept album isn’t just one in which similar themes are explored, there has to be an overarching, unifying theme, if not an actual fictional narrative. If Dark Side of the Moon was a concept album, then so would most other albums ever recorded. I’m sure every One Direction and Justin Bieber album could be considered conceptual using this standard. Is that what you want? Is it?

  

Sloppy categorising is exactly the same thing that allows ...And Justice for All and Maiden Voyage to be accepted into what should be a highly exclusive club. For instance, what about the Alice in Chain album, Dirt? Is this a concept album? All but one of its tracks can be argued to be about heroin addiction. I would say that no, it isn’t, for exactly the reason that one track (Rooster) is about the experiences of guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s father’s experiences in Vietnam. Yet Dirt probably has a better claim than half of the albums in Wikipedia’s list.

As egregious as Sgt. Pepper’s inclusion in this list is the exclusion of PJ Harvey’s Mercury Music Prize winning album, Let England Shake, an album that is as conceptual as you can get without actually crossing over into rock opera. I honestly don’t think that a better album has been produced this side of the millennium, a record all about Britain and its involvement in wars now and centuries past. I have waxed lyrical about Let England Shake at length in my essay, The Sombrer Opacities of the Gloom.

Curiously, you also won’t find any Bob Dylan albums in the Wikipedia list. A convincing case can certainly be made for John Wesley Harding, given that it was recorded when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper and The Rolling Stones were copying them with Their Satanic Majesties. Dylan meanwhile recorded an album that is about as far from psychedelia as it’s possible to go. An collection of songs that don’t contain any choruses is certainly a concept. A argument could also be made for Blood on the Tracks and Time Out of Mind, great divorce porn albums them both. Yet like Alice in Chains Dirt, the concept doesn’t  entirely track across either album. A better case can be made for Jack White’s Blunderbuss, which is both divorce porn and consistently conceptual.

Tom Waits has recorded a handful of concept albums, but many of these were recorded for actual plays (The Black Rider, Alice and Blood Money). Nighthawks at the Diner from 1975 though is that rarest of breeds, a concept album recorded live, in which Wait’s channels the spirit of Jack Kerouac’s beat poet performances. There is also the curious case of the Easy Star All-Stars. The Easy Star All-Stars rerecord classic albums, Dark Side of the Moon, Ok Computer, Sgt. Pepper, Thriller, etc. in reggae and dub styles. That’s conceptual art for you. Meta Conceptual even. Easy Star All-Stars’s version of Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky is one of my favourite things ever.

 

Perhaps the most exciting artist to be producing conceptual albums in recent years is Janelle Monae. Her debut EP, Metropolis, and two albums, The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady continue the same narrative, where Monae’s alter-ego, the android Cindi Mayweather, falls in love with a human being in the future and travels back in time to the present day to escape arrest. It’s high concept indeed, heavily influenced by Fritz Lang’s science fiction silent film, Metropolis, as well as the robotic stories of Isaac Asimov.

I’m not exactly a fan of modern R&B, but genius comes in many forms and Monae is there or thereabouts, taking her influence from artists as diverse as Michael Jackson and Prince, Outcast, the B52s, David Bowie, Scissor Sisters, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin. Like Dylan, she had the foresight to write a polemic entitled Mr. President, without mentioning the incumbent at the time (Dubya). My one criticism is that she should spend more time singing the song during Obama’s administration and less time hanging out at the White House. After all, Dylan continues to perform It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) whether the President who ‘must sometime have to stand naked’ be Johnson, Nixon or one either of the Bushes.

So there you go. I hope we have managed to establish the concept of a concept album. Or at least tightened our definition. OK Computer, yes (just), Kid A and Amnesiac, no. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, yes, The Kink’s Muswell Hillbillies, no. Any Frank Zappa album, yes, any Captain Beefheart album, no. Got it? Good, ‘cause I don’t want have to run through this shit again (*winks*).

Get it done.

Confessions of a Chronically Depressed Mind

Allow me to inject a depressing note into your weekend. I apologise in advance. 

Confessions of a Chronically Depressed Mind

“I want to. I want to be someone else or I’ll explode.”

                                                          Radiohead, Talk Show Host

I remember, I was five. We were living in Birmingham for no adequately explored reason, given that my dad was in the Royal Navy. Birmingham is inland.

I remember it was night and I was upset because my mum was upset. In my hazy memory, she was upset because my dad was always away at sea (at this time we were waiting for his new submarine to finish sea trials) and she had no friends in the area. I remember being upset and hating the world on her behalf and wondering if life would always be this way. And in that one moment I remember very clearly for the first time wishing that I was dead.

What this tells us is that I’ve always been depressed. Always visited by dark moods. Always obsessed with death and taking my own life. Then, I’ve always lived in my own little world, always too spent much time in my head. I think it’s partly from having moved around the country so often as a child and always having to make new friends and settle into new schools. Sooner or later that level of disruption sends a child into a fantasy world of their own making. In any hobby or profession where one overuses a particular part of the body there is always increased risk of injury. Singers are more prone to colds and footballers more prone to tears of the Achilles tendon. Black moods, by the same measure, are inevitable when you spend so much time in your head.

I should say at this point not to worry about me. If I was going to take my own life, I would have done it a long time ago. Thinking about suicide is as much a coping mechanism as it is anything else. When things go wrong, you get yourself into a state where you imagine the scene where you’ve done the deed and your friends and family are hearing about it on the grapevine. If you’re in a really dark mood you might even picture your own funeral. As sick and pathetic as it sounds, it’s a fantasy that actually makes you feel a lot better, knowing that people would miss you and people actually would give a shit if you were dead. And yes, I am aware that I am speaking in the second person here (I’m a writer you cheeky fucker). I’m speaking generally here, as I’m certain that I’m not the only person who goes through this process.

It’s a coping method through which many artistic and intellectual types put themselves. I’m fortunate enough not to know anyone who has taken their own life, but I have friends who have sadly gone through the heartache of losing friends and family to suicide. I hear the same story time and time again: I only saw him the day before, he was such a happy chap, not the kind to get depressed. Which is the problem. If you have a history of depression and low self-esteem then you become accustomed to dealing with the spanners that life likes to throw in the works. Oh you can sink into the darkest of dark moods, be unable to get out of bed for days at a time, but there is some survival instinct inside you that knows that it will pass. If you’ve not gone through that process before and then something happens to derail your whole outlook on life, redundancy or being cheated on by a partner, then the sudden crash in serotonin coupled with a night pouring alcohol down your throat can be enough to send you over the edge. Literally.

The same applies to music. People who aren’t naturally predisposed to self-doubt tend to find depressing music depressing. Yet what unnaturally upbeat people call depressing, I call soothing. Music soothes the savage beast and you’ll often hear me listening to the entire back catalogue of Radiohead, Alice in Chains, Suicidal Tendencies, Joy Division, the first five Black Sabbath albums and the like. Pop music, now that’s depressing in its undiluted soullessness. I guess I find something suspicious about people who are happy all the time, because there’s obviously something they haven’t understood about the world.

I have had many conversations over the years with friends and girlfriends that I should get counselling or see the doctor about anti-depressants. My answer is always, what would be the point? I’m depressed because I can’t know what it’s like to be a photon of light working its way up from the centre of a star or a wave crashing on the shore. I don’t think Prozac or talking through my feelings is really going to do much to help. All they could do for me is tell me to modify my expectations. Well excuse me, but reality is the one with the attitude problem, not me.

It is my considered opinion that eventually we will all download our consciousnesses to virtual reality, because only in an artificial sphere will we all be able to live out our dreams. I think that’s why we have so far failed to make contact with sentient life in the universe. Faster than light travel probably is possible with a little cheating, but most species master cyber space long before they break the light barrier. Why bother to fly around in a spaceship if you could pretend to fly for real? In The Matrix, humans beings have to be conned into living in an artificial reality. In reality people will be queuing up for the opportunity. There’s a reasonable chance that we’re already there.

I decided not to wait. Most of my waking life is spent avoiding reality. The truth of the matter is that I’m much happier existing in my own head. It was inevitable that I would become a writer of some description, writing is the only way in which I can comfortably express my thought processes and inner turmoil. I have to engage in the creative writing processes in order to put all the years wasted in which I pointlessly re-enact scenes from my life in which I become the hero. After all, I’m short, shy and quiet. I’m never going to be a great orator, guitarist or fire fighter heroically saving a newborn from a burning building. But I can imagine what it would be like to be each of those things and to describe the scene in a pleasing form for the enjoyment of others.

Indeed, like most people who spend this much time complaining about their lot, I really have nothing to complain about. Enough friends have described me as the smartest person they know that you would think that some of that praise would start to wear off on me. And yes, I know that in certain areas of expertise I am extremely clever. I can’t bang a nail into a bit of wood, but I can rattle off the gravitational constant of the universe or give you five and half thousand words on the opening word of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The issue with me is and always has been about self-confidence. When I’m on form there is no one that can touch me, but when I’m down, there’s no reasoning with me. I can go from thinking I am the Lord God Almighty to the scum of the Earth and back again in the space of half an hour. It gets pretty exhausting.

Likesay, over stimulation of a body part increases the risk of injury. Depression and a distracted aspect are commonplace amongst writers. Many writers deal with the inner-turmoil through alcohol, often to the point of addiction, but I have rarely ever drank. If I’m honest I’ve always had a shitty attitude towards people who drink. I don’t like being with large groups of people generally, but I find pubs and bars just about the most depressing places in the entire universe. One day I’m going to write a book of the excuses I have used to get out of going on night’s out or reasons for leaving after an hour. Sorry, I just find drunk people boring.

My drug of choice, the only one I ever really taken, is cannabis. A lot gets said and written about cannabis causing depression or schizophrenia, but I’m not sure how much of this I believe. Yes, cannabis can cause an increase in depression, but usually only when you stop smoking it and usually only for a couple of days, which is mild compared with my normal cycles of depression. As I indicated at the beginning, I have been depressed since at least the age of five and the most that cannabis does is to amplify a pre-existing state of mind. I can become paranoid when stoned, but when I was ten I became convinced that my parents had been replaced by imposters so that’s nothing new either. The only difference between a writer and a schizophrenic is that a writer makes a living out of their delusions. Pot for me is like sitting at the top of a hill with a panoramic vista upon the world. It opens up my mental space and relieves the pressure on my brain to the point where I can actually think. It was only whilst stoned that I was finally able last year to figure out the mechanics of writing and become a writer. This year I’m trying to keep up writing everyday and staying mostly sober. That’s a pride thing. I need to know that I can write in any state of mind. Deep down I know that smoking is only a catalyst to what’s already inside of me. So far, I seem to be doing ok.

In conclusion I should repeat that right here and now I am fine. I have some issues, mostly to do with not having a job and being in debt, but the thought and exercise of writing is keeping me on the straight and narrow, emotionally speaking. I’d like to make some money out of writing, for writing to be a profession rather than an albeit time consuming hobby. Yet I know that I’d rather be prolific poor than rancid rich. I also know that I’d like to keep writing sentences as well constructed as the one previous.

My depression is pretty mild compared to other people I know that have proper bi-polar disorders and need regular medication. I don’t tend to get manic or act out my self-loathing. I’ve never been a self harmer or made any serious attempt to kill myself, even as a cry for help. To me it has always been a point of pride that I work these issues out for myself and after more than thirty years, I’m getting there. I wouldn’t decry anyone else’s methods for coping, unless they are needlessly self destructive. Whatever works for you works and you should get all and any help that you need. For me its writing, smoking, long walks and listening to depressingly soothing music. For you it will be a whole other cluster of coping mechanisms.

Besides, there is that phrase that Stephen Fry has quoted when talking about his own battle with depression: Don’t take away my demons for you take away my angels too. Any emotional state is like a pendulum, the further it swings one way, the more it must inevitably swing back the other way. That’s just physics. It is therefore comforting to know that to be depressed or manic is ultimately to be at one with the universe.

Get it done.

Heaven, Heaven is a Place, A Place Where Nothing, Nothing Ever Happens

In the course of writing this I discovered that David Byrne was born in Dumbarton, about ten miles from where I was born.

Heaven, Heaven is a Place, A Place Where Nothing, Nothing Ever Happens

Excuse me madam, do you have a few minutes to talk about letting the music of Talking Heads into your life? Who are the Talking Heads? That’s an excellent question and I’m very glad you asked. The Talking Heads are a new wave, post punk band from New York that were active in the 1970s and 80s.

Sorry? Yes, that is a long time ago, but anything is contemporary if you’ve only just heard about it. I myself only started properly listening to their music in 2010. Their albums I mean, not just the greatest hits. You’ve heard of Radiohead, right? Well Radiohead are named after a Talking Heads song. Not a very good Talking Heads song if I’m honest, from probably their weakest album, but still pretty cool, hey? Sorry? Yes, I suppose Radiohead are quite old too.

Well I can only speak to what I feel makes Talking Heads so great. They were always innovating, probably ‘cause Brain Eno produced a lot of their albums. Even before they started working with Eno though they were trying things. What other band would be brave enough to feature a steel drum solo on the opening song of their debut album? There’s a lot of Beefheart in that first album. Beefheart. Captain Beefheart? Aw man, you haven’t heard music till you’ve heard Beefheart.

But we’re talking about Talking Heads here. Their music, it’s punk and post-punk, gospel and country, new wave, art rock and straight up pop, with African and Caribbean rhythms and sounds thrown into the mix. They increased the size of the band from their four core members in the middle of their career to create increasingly complicated songs. David Byrne on guitar and vocals, Jerry Harrison on guitar and keyboards, Chris Franz on drums and Tina Weymouth on bass. You don’t think I wouldn’t know that do you? Well, Tina Weymouth was Chris Franz’s girlfriend, still his wife. She started playing bass ‘cause the band couldn’t find a bass player. Amazing bass player. Amazing singer too. Check the Tom Tom Club, Chris and Tina’s side project.

Gotta love David Byrne though. You should YouTube some of their videos, ‘cause David Byrne is what a pop star imagined by David Lynch would look like. Funny looking, funny dancing, but with unbounded energy. Here, I almost forgot, take this, it’s a complimentary copy of Stop Making Sense. Stop Making Sense is Talking Heads concert film from 1984. The greatest concert film ever made. Why? Well, a) because it’s got Talking Heads in it. But b) ‘cause it’s a concept concert film. David Byrne come on stage at the beginning and the stage is all bare and he sings Psycho Killer off of their first album with an acoustic guitar and a back beat. And then Tina comes on bass for Heaven, then Chris for Thank You for Sending Me An Angel and Jerry for Found a Job. Then it’s the rest of the expanded group, Lynn Mabry and Edna Holt on backing vocals, Steve Scales on percussion, Alex Weir on guitar and keyboardist Bernie Worrell. And as the concert goes on, the crew build the set around them, wheeling on bits of kit. It’s the most high concept, high energy film of a rock gig you’ll ever see. It’ll make you a convert to Talking Heads in 90 minutes flat. Does contain some strobe lighting though, so be warned.

Then there’s their lyrics. Byrne is one of the best lyric writers ever. The best as far as I’m concerned, but I guess I’m biased. Like this, check this out, “Heaven, heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens.” Get it? Well, you see, heaven is supposed to be like paradise where we get everything we want, right. Except, what’s heaven to you might be hell to me. What if you like listening to Justin Bieber or One Direction, that I think are shit? Who gets to be in heaven then? You by listening to that garbage or me by blasting it out of existence with Burning Down the House and New Feeling? So the only way there could be a true heaven is if no one was allowed to do anything, so heaven must be a place where nothing ever happens.

I guess it’s like the idea of God, yeah. God is supposed to be infinite, so he must be infinitely good and infinitely evil, ‘cause good is a type of evil by being the absence of evil and evil is a type of good for same reason. So God or any infinite force would be one that like has no net influence on the universe. Every part of it cancels out every other part. Which is probably why he never speak to us. Except headcases like that Bush guy. And that’s why Talking Heads are brilliant and why David Byrne is a genius.

Or try this one for size, “Judy’s in the bedroom, inventing situations, Bob is on the street today, scouting up locations.” That’s like riffing on Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, yeah. “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, I’m on the pavement, thinking about the government.” Dylan! Bob Dylan. What are they teaching you kids these days? You should totally listen to Life During Wartime, ‘cause it’s about terrorists like we’ve got today, or New Feeling, that’s calling out people stuck living in the past: “It’s not. Yesterday. Anymore.” Sorry? Well I have to disagree with you on that. Don’t think being evangelical about Talking Heads is the same as living in the past.

Some great loves song from Talking Heads. This Must Be the Place (Native Melody) and Uh Oh,  Love Comes to Town. That’s the one with the steel drum on it. Oh, and The Book I Read. Great song.

Seriously, give them a try. Let the joy of Talking Heads into your heart. Sure they sound completely 80s, anything is bound to that has that much keyboard on it. Still, give the concert a watch and if you have any questions, our number is on the back. I am a member of The Church of Native Melody. We are dedicated to preserving Talking Heads music for all time. A contribution would be lovely, but not necessary. That’s quite alright, thanking for allowing to take up so much of your time. You enjoy the rest of you day now. E Glassala Tuffim I Zimbra.

Get it done.