Talking Heads Changed My Life

The other day I saw this tweet from Neko Case

Neko Case @NekoCase
Sometimes I am just punched in the face by how many GREAT songs the Talking Heads recorded.

I tweeted back to her

musicbaum  @musicbaum
@NekoCase Talking Heads changed my life.

She didn't respond to my tweet and that's okay, but I have to thank her for reminding me that, indeed, Talking Heads did change my life. 

I was obsessed with music from the time I was a child in the mid 60s. My brother brought home Beatles singles, I watched the Monkees on TV.I took guitar lessons because of both.

I listened to rock in junior high and high school. Jethro Tull, Joe Cocker and Canadian bands that were beginning to blossom at the time, Lighthouse with their string and horn sections and blues-boogiers King Biscuit Boy and Crowbar. . 

I walked into campus radio (CJSW) the first day I attended University of Calgary and continued to expand my musical influences to jazz and blues and some more obscure rock bands that the 3rd and 4th year students recommended. 

I moved to the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to study Communications and, the day I walked onto that campus I also walked into the campus radio station CJAM. On the strength of my U of C radio experience they gave me a time slot right away, which was great, but they said the first hour of my show I had to play an entire record from beginning to end - one the program director was to choose for me. I was not amused. I was a cocky college radio kid and i didn't need anybody to tell me what music to play. I had already dismissed punk and new wave as just so much posturing without much substance.

As you might have suspected by now, the record they gave me to play was Talking Heads '77 

I was gobsmacked. I could NOT believe the music that was coming out of the monitors. It was frantic, and quirky and rock and roll and it was wonderful. It was unlike anything I had heard before. And, because it had been labelled "New Wave" - which, in retrospect is something of a nonsensical label - it made me rethink my opinions about many of the safety-pin and skinny tie bands that were emerging at the time.



It paved the way for my appreciation for a flood of music from bands that remain my favourites: Elvis Costello, The Clash and the Sex Pistols. The movement also lead me to the Ska revival with bands like the Specials, Selecter and the (English) Beat. And the whole roots rock and country punk movement which included bands like Rank and File (Alejandro Escovedo was in that one) as well as Los Lobos and the Blasters.

My attraction to this particular Talking Heads record also taught me one of the most important lessons of my life which is to never prejudge music and dismiss it without a fair listen. I learned to open my ears and take it all in and to like, or not like, on its merits alone.

My appreciation of Talking Heads directed me to see some great bands back then. I saw The Ramones with Joe Jackson in Detroit and Canadian punk icons Teenage Head in their prime in Windsor.

Although like Moses who never got to the holy land I never did see Talking Heads in concert but I did get to see Tom Tom Club once and I finally got to see David Byrne in Calgary a couple of years ago at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.