Talking Heads - Remixes

Happy 4th of July to everyone! Today's post is an example of what a lot of my posts this month will feature, specifically weird or rare releases that are DEAD out of print. There will be a few features on unreleased things, but I've got such a backlog of things that were released but disappeared without a trace that I figured I should get around to sharing the best of those with all of you this month.

I'm sure everyone here knows about the Talking Heads, but if you don't you should run out and buy Remain In Light, Fear Of Music, More Songs... and Speaking In Tongues immediately and IN THAT ORDER DAMNIT! But seriously, their discography is pretty damn solid over all but I'm sure anyone will agree that those releases are their high points, with Remain In Light probably being tops. Their film, Stop Making Sense, is also amazing and should be hunted down on DVD or that other format I don't support. That said, this post is for those who already know about the joys of the Heads or are fascinated with their more obscure releases.

The first of the two singles by the Heads I'm featuring here today is a promotional 7" for Houses In Motion from Remain In Light. The single was for radio play and contains mono and stereo versions of a special remix which I assume was Warner Brothers Records attempt to break the song commercially. The single doesn't contain any info on who did the remix so we can only assume it was Eno or someone from the band. It's not terribly different from the released version but it does contain extra lyrics at the end which have never been released elsewhere and the mix allows you to hear the background vocals much better than on the album. The stereo version was released commercially on the original single and has never been reissued whereas the mono version doesn't seem to have ever been commercially available. Again, not a revelation of any sort but still very cool.

The second single is for remixes of Slippery People and Making Flippy Floppy, both from Speaking In Tongues. Both remixes are credited to David Byrne and John "Jellybean" Benitez. Who knows how involved Byrne was with the remixes, he may simply have been present and gave his opinions to Jellybean, but Byrne takes his art seriously so I'm sure he was involved to some extent. As for the mixes, they are basically extended versions of the songs, although it's clear these are remixes as opposed to re-edited versions of the masters. I can imagine it being likely you could hear these at a New York dance club in the early eighties, with the call and response soul of Slippery People working great somewhere in the mix and Making Flippy Floppy, with it's truly funky bass and percussion, getting folks on the floor with ease. Making Flippy Floppy, in particular, would probably have sounded incredible on a huge disco system, as the aforementioned percussion, with it's multiple rhythms beyond the simple drum machine beat, can wake a dead man. Byrne's opening line, Everybody, get in line!, is a call to arms to get on the floor that can't be ignored!

It's peculiar to me what didn't get reissued when the Talking Heads catalog was released in the short-lived DualDisc format in 2005. For those unfamiliar, DualDisc releases were a standard CD on one side and a DVD on the other, making it impossible for you to play the disc in your car without messing up the DVD side. The DVD side almost always contained a hi-def version of the album if not a 5.1 remix, and the Talking Heads reissues delivered in that area with all of those features and music videos for each album. Regarding these singles though, I would have imagined their inclusion would have been quite worthwhile, especially the version of Houses In Motion. You could argue that the label was simply ignoring single versions or remixes which isn't abnormal, but then why include a remix of Television Man on the Little Creatures reissue? The Speaking In Tongues reissue had a rough mix of Burning Down The House as a bonus track which is great since it shows some of the foundations of the track, but if you're going to include that why not additional mixes? There was a great collection rarities and outtakes named, wait for it..., Bonus Rarities & Outtakes but it was only released digitally and still didn't feature any of the tracks in this post. I guess the people handling the band's catalog did want to see more of the stuff they'd unearthed get released, but it's a shame they couldn't have gotten releases like these mixes reissued.


Talking Heads - Houses In Motion 7" Promo

01 Houses In Motion (Remix) (Stereo Version)
02 Houses In Motion (Remix) (Mono Version)

Talking Heads - Remixes 12"

01 Slippery People (Remix)
02 Making Flippy Floppy (Remix)