talking heads

[10] Bassheads, ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’

Bassheads

Sued to within an inch of their livelihoods by an intriguing combination of Afrika Bambaataa, Talking Heads and the Osmonds, Bassheads didn’t do anything remotely diverting after this track. In fact, the last three minutes are a steep drop from the wild euphoria of the previous six; the music grinds to a plinky-plonky crawl, sounding oddly like Sting dreaming of blue turtles.

The first six minutes are just right. Bassline building to guitars to sci-fi lasers to Italo house piano to that Bambaataa rap to distorted guitars to piano laser meltdown. We had our hands in the air at The Tube. Junior’s hands were just in front of her, doing the clapping that looks like she’s making her hands spit-spot, Mary Poppins style.

She tired of the coda even more quickly than I do, demanding breakfast at the first sniff of ambient noodling.

[All my vinyl rips seem to have corrupted; Top 11 mp3s to follow… later]

Talking Heads, ‘Once In A Lifetime’

At some stage, scrabbling around for a theme, we were going to do Jukebox Junior’s Top 10 Greatest Singles Of All Time but, what with ‘Young Americans’ already gone and now this, I’m throwing them away cheaply. This would be Number Four. Probably.

Also, I should’ve done this on a day that Junior was wearing oversized clothes with huge shoulders – not an uncommon occurrence – and not when she’s in her just-right denim dress. All in all, I’ve made a right pig’s ear of it. Junior’s not quasi-autistic like her dad, fortunately, so she couldn’t give two hoots about the circumstances. She’s right there with David Byrne’s nervy, scratchy paranoid funk twitches, even clapping at “there is water at the bottom of the ocean”. She finds the sublime in the ridiculous.

This is so far ahead of its time, I’m surprised it wasn’t drowned as a witch. Music caught up 10 years later when rock bands found dance elements to their music and Paul Oakenfold got rich. Talking Heads never needed help.