Category Talking Heads

National Album Day UK, 40th Anniversary Releases This Month

Janet Canning Leave a comment

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It’s back. The UK’s National Album day is celebrating the 80s, and with so many 1980 40th anniversary records being reissued this year, some great ones this month are being made available for Record Album day in the UK.

Tim’s Twitter Listening Party has a day long lineup of play along and Tweet fun you can enjoy anywhere in the World. Join us here. Hint: There’s a Cure album bash at the end they didn’t get in the article.

Tim’s Twitter Album Day Info

Some of the records we can get stateside, which is good because the rise of international shipping rates has made import record collecting that more expensive. Yup, it’s the price of the record itself to ship. But many are limited editions, so you color vinyl fiends got itchy fingers, I know.

Events for National Record Album Day UK

40th Anniversary Editions In October

 

Talking Heads classics are being reissued on colored vinyl again. I did pick up a colored vinyl on Remain in Light a couple of years back. If you missed out on that, Rhino Records has reissued Talking Heads 77(Green), Fear of Music (Silver), and More Songs About Buildings And Food(Red). So we know you have played and battered your original copies for years.

And not to forget the masters of techno kraft, Kraftwerk! Parlophone records are reissuing  Kraftwerk on colored vinyl with German sleeves on October 9th, 2020. These German Language versions are available for the first time stateside. However it’s a limited release, so if you haven’t preordered stateside, do so. If you can’t catch a copy stateside, try Resident Music, UK. Contact them and see what you can do about combining orders for shipping, as you have been warned, it is rather high.

RSD Drop 2,  2 TONE Records!

Sadly didn’t make it to the day, health issues. So I got to do the “buy it later if you can find it hunt”. My mission was to pick up two 2 Tone Records Ska compilations. Dance Craze is the soundtrack to a film I saw back in the day when the whole Ska craze came about. I luckily found one last copy at Jackpot Records here in Portland, and did the “you made my week dance” for the people at the counter. So glad to be able to shop local. This record brought back such great memories of a viewing of the concert film with Quadrophenia and another film my aging brain can’t remember.

The story of 2 Tone Records’ radical cover art

The hunt for the This Are 2 Tone with Various Artists (The Selecter, Madness, Rhoda Dakar & The Special A.K.A, The Swinging Cats, The Specials) was another matter. I thought I would call up Ziongate Records since they did me a solid at RSD drop 1, however they had sold out on the day. The scary thing is, the counter person said, “Are you the one who got Tones on Tail off us?” Damn, it’s scary when you are the only person they remember like that. He said,” Okay, I’ll do you a solid. I’m checking Discogs, there are a few shops on their that we have worked with that know how to ship”. I was saved. I’m still waiting for Bucket of Blood Records in Chicago to ship. But with a name like that, it’s gotta be Serendipity?

Rhino Records

Resident Music UK

Jackpot Records

Ziongate Records, Seattle

Bucket of Blood Records

Dance Craze 2 Tone Records Film

Talking Heads Fear of Music Turns 40

Janet Canning Leave a comment

IMG_3104It’s the first solidifying album of Talking Heads, 70s and 80s New Wave Art House band. Their second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, was a step away from the debut record, in that they were starting to find their feet. The band, David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison, decided that the record should not just be a bunch of singles, or singles driven. The next one needed to have more of a theme going on, and actual direction. They also wanted to produce on their own and have more control over the project. This would prove to be an error as they bit off a bit more than they could chew.

After original demos were not going so well, they called back legendary Brian Eno to produce and help get the record on track. It appears that the teenage independence wasn’t working to their advantage. It’s a good thing they did. Fear of Music became Talking Heads transitional album, taking them from their beginnings into young adulthood and expanding audiences.

Fear of Music is still not a polished product, that’s exactly why it’s my favorite Talking Heads album. It still has that angst going on, that reality of life not being what the Great American Promise said it should be. It’s messy and strange. The first Single did not perform well on the charts, however it has been a cult classic, “Life During Wartime”. I always felt that this song was a great discussion of a dystopic future after the apocalypse. Themes of the late 70s and early eighties were surviving the years long cold war and living with Thatcherism and Reaganism on the horizon. George Orwell was being read again, and the fact that this time period should have been the best of times, it was only so for the privileged few. One of the reasons this song is still valid today. It contrasted with “Heaven”, the bands iconic slow favorite. It’s a story about a place you can go, a bar, a place where you know everyone, and can feel you can go.

There are many great songs that talk about the shock of life and reality after you grow up and the teen years fade away. I like to think of this album as an intro to adulthood record. It’s also one of the records my crazy art teacher in high school drummed into our heads while we threw paint at each other. I guess that left an impression.

RSD Black Friday Finds 2018

RSD Black Friday Finds 2018

Janet Canning 1 Comment

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Press The Eject and Give Me The Tape on Vinyl

It was 4:30 am and I could feel a sore throat coming on. Of course, I have to go stand in line. It’s raining. Its Record Store Day: Black Friday. Because one day a year going nuts on RSD wasn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, I love that the folks at RSD got together and decided what better way to save an industry, make an unofficial holiday out of it. It’s great because you have several bands releasing or rereleasing classics and improved versions of an album. And now its on Black Friday as well.

I was on the hunt for Press The Eject and Hand Me the Tape by Bauhaus. This live record had only been available as a free second LP with the Limited Edition of their 1982 release “The Sky’s Gone Out”. That was many years ago. Later it was released as a single album. It also had not been officially released in the US until now. For the 40th anniversary colored vinyl releases, a limited edition colored vinyl was available. I was lucky, I got one of the few copies that had showed up. I also picked up Bauhaus Bela Sessions. I was very tired and feeling ill, and slowly weaving back out of the store when at the end, I spied a classic from my childhood: Talking Heads “Remain In Light“ album. And it had a limited edition, 5500 run on ruby red release.

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I first listened to this record when I was in high school. My art teacher had been telling us to listen to Talking Heads, we didn’t get it. He was obsessed about it. It was the beginning of the 80s and I had been just discovering punk and other post-punk bands on late night college radio a few years before. He played the record for us and some others daily. It was edgy, experimental sounds, and lyrics that touched me. I became hooked on it. When I saw the record in the store, all the memories came flooding back, the art room, stinking paint, air hoses that leaked from the airbrushes, and talking music with other students and the art teacher. It’s one of the only real memories I have of those insane years called high school. It’s what was so great about art class. You could listen to music and make a creative mess and sing and dance. So, yes, even though it was a stretch for cash, I picked it up. It was also nice playing a copy without all the scratches and clay dust covered grooves. I guess sometimes the adult comes out and wants the clean vinyl. But the memory of playing this and hearing it again on red vinyl no less, was just priceless.