Hey You Might Need a Raincoat

Because part of our soul contract is to take a degree of pain in this lifetime, we typically end up with parents who annoy the hell out of us. This is what the universe calls "character building." For example, my mom sometimes does things that annoy me, like sneezing so loudly and unnaturally as to scare the shit out of me and everything in a one hundred mile radius. Heck, the last time she sneezed, they had Air Force fighter jets scrambling from Mt. Home Air Force Base. (And excuse the digression, but doesn't Mt. Home sound like the setting for a climatic, apocolyptic, Stephen Kingish battle between good and evil?) Anyways. The sneezing I can deal with. What I can't deal with is the steady stream of talk radio she listens to, like that Sean Hannity guy. Now there's a guy that's never had a good day in his life.

I try to block it out, but one day I happened to be passing through the room thinking to myself: "la la la la, can't hear you, you ass-monkey" and a very familiar tune crept through, accessing my brain waves. It was the first few bars of one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, "Life During Wartime." WTF? This guy was using it as some seque-intro thingy. I didn't know whether to be flattered that someone else was a fan of the song or to just throw up all over the stereo. I had to wonder if he was using it because it sounded cool or if he was somehow trying to co-opt the vaguely paranoid lyrics for his own nefarious purposes. Either way, it got me thinking about a band I love dearly, the Talking Heads. (Yes, this is an essay about the Talking Heads. It's okay, ya'll can leave if you wanna.)

Today, most people are aware of about 2-3 Talking Heads songs that still get some airplay. The biggest one being "Burning Down the House," followed up by "Once in a Lifetime," that not only still gets radio play, it often makes its way into movies and trailers. Every now and then I'll hear "And She Was," but one of the more famous Heads songs, "Psycho Killer," doesn't get much airplay anymore, which I think is due to the fact that it's too weird even to fall into "retro" playlists.

Over the years, I've sold off discs when strapped for cash, always silently letting Dave, Chris, Tina, and Jerry know that I'd be back for them someday. (Hey, you think that's weird, at least I didn't bid my adieus out loud in the music store... More than once, anyways.)

The other day I went into Best Buy (thanks again for the gift card, Tina & Shan!) with the express intent of reacquainting myself with the Heads after the terrifiying Sean Hannity experience. (Digression: Is it just me or is naming your store "Best Buy" the height of manipulation? It's like renaming myself "Davidisgreat.") There were only two Talking Heads cds in stock, "Stop Making Sense" and the new best of collection. I took one look at the tracks on the Best Of and snatched it up.

I do realize that writing about how much I love music is a pretty useless endeavor. It's like dancing about archeticture, as Angelina Jolie said in Playing by Heart. It's like trying to describe the transcendent. And to me, the music of the Talking Heads is pure transcendence, a high-speed wireless connection to spirit and joy. But you can't tell somebody... they either feel it or they don't. And gabbing on about it isn't going to help. So really, this is just a love letter to the group that means so much to me. They'll never see it, but I've got to write it for my own benefit.

I had my mind blown out in 1986, I believe, when True Stories was released. I remember listening to Wild, Wild Life and thinking, hmm, that's catchy, but not really feelin' it. Then the second single started getting some airplay, the sly, peppy, "Love for Sale." That was like a bitch-slap to the face. NOTHING else like this was getting played on the radio. It was 80's music, but it took it about 3-4 notches further than other songs were willing to go. I fell in love then and was especially enthralled by David Byrne with his screechy, yelpy, totally committed vocals. And how could you resist a stage prescence that made you sweat just looking at him jumping around as if he was possessed by the gods of pop and funk? AND he had something to say, pointing an unwavering finger towards commercialism and the way the things we buy get packaged as love. I got the message all right and it awakened a sense of critical thinking in me that still serves me well to this day.

What was really cool, what I totally couldn't have forseen, was that "Love for Sale" wasn't even the best the Heads had to offer. Both of the mid-80's Talking Heads' albums "Little Creatures" and "True Stories" were fun, like pop rocks in your mouth. But they were experiments; David Byrne's conscious attempt at fashioning deliberate pop songs. He proved he could craft just as well as any in that format, but for me it was just a gateway drug to the other, harder, more creative Heads albums.

I started at the beginning with their groundbreaking '77 album. I can only imagine what it would have been like to have heard "Psycho Killer," a relentless slab of nerd punk, stalking the airwaves and discos, for the first time in the late 70's. It had to have freaked people out, it must have felt like they were on the edge of something new and exciting, so avant guarde, so New York. It was the beginning of an extraordinary musical journey where David Byrne would totally inhabit these characters, some joyous, some terrifying, all human. When he sings "Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire," you don't know whether to be sympathetic or afraid.

And that was, in my eyes, the key to David Byrne's charisma as a lead singer. He could embody anything that you were feeling at any given time: sorrow, love, euphoria, fear. He was an unlikely vessel to appeal to so many because he did look like an art nerd digging through the trash of middle America, looking for Found Art. But while he celebrated the mundane, he did it a completely believable way, without condescencion. He made you feel good for being yourself, no matter who that might have been, because he saw the beauty in all of us, the rich tapestry of light and dark. And he was the type of guy who could write a song about playing with a baby (Stay Up Late) one album and a dark, freaky, bad drug trip on another (Memories Can't Wait.) And even when the words themselves were often ambigious, like in "Once in a Lifetime," --(Water dissolving...and water removing There is water at the bottom of the ocean Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!)-- He sang them with such intensity, you felt like they not only had secret meaning, but that you were on the edge of unlocking the most profound of mantras.

There's one song in particular that truly gets my soul vibrating on a higher level and that's "This Must be the Place (Naive Melody.) It was used to great effect in the film "Wall Street," when Charlie Sheen moves into his fancy apartment. Since then, I've always tried to make sure it's the first song I play when I move into a new place. It's a good way to start. The song is very tender, very sweet and has one of David Byrne's most sympathetic, loving vocals. Again, this is one of those things where you would have to hear it to get it, but the best way I can describe it is by saying that this is a song about coming home, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally as well. Kind of being defeated by love, giving yourself to love. Even now, all I have to hear is the first few bars and it de-stresses me. It's every good memory, every promise and hint of good to come, and every wonderful thing that's in your life right now that you may or may not be aware of.

Before I finish this blog entry, let me say that I haven't given proper love to the rest of the band, which is a bit unfair. Although I initially always thought that David Byrne was the sun the other Heads revolved around, I've since appreciated the special, unique sound that they brought to the band. You can hear the difference between David Byrne's solo works and his stuff with the heads, and while it's still excellent, it's not the same vibe. And if you listen to the Heads' solo stuff, you can't help but hear the familiar, friendly, experimentation that elevated the Heads to the next level. So Jerry, Tina, and Chris, I raise my cup to ye.

In the end, I can't help but feeling intensely grateful to the Talking Heads for so many things, not the least of which was to expand my world. Listening to cassette tapes, growing up in the fading rusted-sunset of Emmett, a town complete with a closed mill and closed minds, the Heads introduced me to a limitless world of thoughts and ideas. They introduced me to myself.