I've been on a real Talking Heads kick lately, listening to their albums and side-projects with a passion. I've also been reading This Must Be The Place by David Bowman which is an excellent history of the band through the 1999 reissue of Stop Making Sense on DVD. I'd love to read an updated version and catch up on details I've missed since, although the basic vibe the book left with me is that David Byrne IS the heart and soul of Talking Heads, Jerry Harrison is a great musician whose presence opened up new possibilities for the band, Chris Frantz is a great drummer who really enjoyed the ride, and Tina Weymouth is jealous and spiteful because she's not the leader. Maybe that sounds a little hard on Tina but in most of the interviews with her featured in the book she bashes David, complains about the labels, says their audience wasn't sharp enough for her other projects, tries to take credit for things she really had nothing to do with and attempts to re-write history. I don't know Tina, haven't spoken to her and don't know much about her outside of her works with Talking Heads and the Tom Tom Club, and while one could argue the book could be biased, I would assume that the writer, if he has any credibility, wouldn't alter things for his own gain, so I will take the text as is and my assumption is Tina is bitter. She seems to be the main reason that the group has not reunited, and while David may be the center of the group, he is not Talking Heads. And while I'm on it, Tom Tom Club wasn't that great and most of their best moments on the first album go uncredited to Adrian Belew, SO THERE!
It hurts to see something that was so inspiring get left behind because someone holds a grudge that no one else may understand. Talking Heads really impressed me as a child since they seemed to do whatever they wanted without worrying what others thought. Hire wonderful musicians for an African funk fest? CHECK! Make videos that people are still trying to emulate today? CHECK! Make incredible records that still hold up? CHECK! The Big Suit? CHECK! Etcetera, etcetera, and on and on, the point is they earned a permanent place in my consciousness and I know I'm not the only one that can attest to that.
In digging through my stuff and scouring the internet for interesting goodies, I found an interesting set of demos labeled True Creatures. True Stories and Little Creatures, while great albums, aren't my favorite periods of the Heads' works, but I was interested and grabbed them, and I'm really glad I did because these are great tracks! These appear to be David Byrne on his own with a drum machine, his guitar and more than half of the songs for the True Stories and Little Creatures albums, multi-tracking his vocals and guitar over basic beats that could have all been recorded at home.
Most of the songs on the True Creatures Demos are pretty much fully written, although there are differences in some of the lyrics from the finished versions. Road To Nowhere sounds rather rough lyrically, with Byrne's vocals garbled by his multi-tracking, making one assume the lyrics were waiting to be finished. Wild Wild Life is mostly the same but has a few slight changes in it's lyrics. It is also missing it's speed and attitude from the finished version, as is Love For Sale, making them mid-tempo songs rather than full-blown rockers. Things get really interesting though with the instrumental Hey, not to be confused with Hey Now. This appears to be Byrne experimenting with his synthesizers and samplers as several pitch adjusted samples of his voice make multiple appearances saying only Hey throughout. Overall a great experimental instrumental which is otherwise unreleased, but the shining point of this collection, for myself at least, is Byrne's stripped-down take on People Like Us, making it more ballad-like and reaffirming it's stance of personal strength.
At the moment, I don't have this in better quality than 128kbps MP3, so if anyone has a better copy and wants to share, drop me a line, I'd love to talk to you. As for where I got this from, credit goes to nic1233 at the guitars101 forums. Thanks for sharing man!
Talking Heads - True Creatures Demos
01 Wild Wild Life
02 Puzzlin' Evidence
03 Love For Sale
04 The Lady Don't Mind
05 Hey Now
06 Road To Nowhere
07 Hey (Instrumental)
08 Papa Legba
09 People Like Us
10 City Of Dreams
11 Radio Head
12 Give Me Back My Name
PS - No offense to Tina, I simply call 'em as I see 'em. I'd love to hear you prove the sources wrong.
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