Talking Heads "Talking Heads: 77" - near-mint, FIRST EDITION Japanese import LP

$

40

Baron Elmo proudly presents a nifty vinyl prize for fans of new wave art-pop ensemble TALKING HEADS: a beautiful first-edition Japanese import of their 1977 album Talking Heads: 77, issued by Philips Japan that same year. This was the band's debut full-length, and it is a listening joy from start to finish. Though they were perhaps the most highly touted new wave band to emerge from the CBGB's scene in New York, it was far from certain that the Heads' seriously quirky art-rock had any kind of shot at the pop mainstream. The opening track of Talking Heads: 77, "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town," was the band's most likely contender – a cheerful pop song that emphasized the group's unlikely roots in late-'60s bubblegum, Motown, and Caribbean music. But even with that delightful track, the nervous, disconnected lyrics and David Byrne's eccentric vocals made any chance of radio play slim indeed. All pretenses of normality were abandoned by the second track, as Talking Heads finally started to sound on record the way they did downtown: the staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, the odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, the non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that came across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch, and that voice, singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound lucid. Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that was by turns threatening, goofy and insanely catchy. Despite the band's defiant oddness, this first album is a masterpiece of tilted pop genius, the work of a group years ahead of their time. Nearly forty years after its release, Talking Heads: 77 holds up and then some as a pinnacle of New Wave... not to mention rock music in general! And here we have a beautiful Japanese import that is in superb shape. The vinyl is near mint, while the cover shows very slight signs of handling, plus tiny dents on the upper and lower right-hand corners. The lyric insert is included, as is the obi.

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Track listing
Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town
New Feeling
Tentative Decisions
Happy Day
Who Is It?
No Compassion
The Book I Read
Don't Worry About The Government
First Week / Last Week...Carefree
Psycho Killer
Pulled Up

*****

A debut LP will often seem overrefined to habitues of a band's scene, so it's not surprising that many CBGBites felt betrayed when bits of this came out sounding like Sparks or Yes. Personally, I was even more put off by lyrics that fleshed out the Heads' post-Jonathan Richman, so-hip-we're-straight image; when David Byrne says "don't worry about the government," the irony is that he's not being ironic. But the more I listen the more I believe the Heads set themselves the task of hurdling such limitations, and succeed. Like Sparks, these are spoiled kids, but without the callowness or adolescent misogyny; like Yes, they are wimps, but without vagueness or cheap romanticism. Every tinkling harmony is righted with a screech, every self-help homily contextualized dramatically, so that in the end the record proves not only that the detachment of craft can coexist with a frightening intensity of feeling--something most artists know--but that the most inarticulate rage can be rationalized. Which means they're punks after all. GRADE: A minus.
~ Robert Christgau