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Talking Heads — 65

ALBUMS: Stop Making Sense (1984)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$$

This is the soundtrack to the movie some critics have called the greatest rock concert movie of all time. They aren’t far off base, although I think the Martin Scorsese film featuring the Band and many others, ‘The Last Waltz,” is a worthy adversary for that ‘best’ title. Some might say Woodstock.

The movies are similar only in that rock music was being played.

Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, is a concept performance that totally works. It makes the Talking Heads seem better than you thought they were. And they were good.

Filmed live over four nights in Los Angeles, the movie starts with David Byrne, the Heads’ lead singer and chief songwriter, walking on stage with a ‘boombox,” setting it down and seeming to turn it on. It’s the song Psycho Killer and Byrne sings solo with the beats. For each song another musician joins Byrne on stage so by the time they get to ‘Burning Down the House,’ the entire group is playing.

Byrne is wearing a ridiculous oversized business suit as they go through their songs. This whole thing wouldn’t work if it were not for the song quality. Songs like ‘Once in a Life Time,’ ‘Life During Wartime,’ ‘Slippery People,’ and the Al Green cover ‘Take Me to the River.’

A song about living in violent times, Life During Wartime, is just as relevant today:

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain’t got time for that now

There are many more great lyrical lines: ‘This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife … Hey how did I get here ‘ from Once in a Lifetime.

Every song is a winner and played live so perfectly that it sounds studio produced sometimes on the record where you can’t see the performance.

If you are to buy only one format, I’d probably buy the DVD. I didn’t do that because I rarely buy DVD’s, especially movies I have seen.

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Bread — 622

ALBUM: The Best of Bread (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

‘Oh I like bread and butter, I like toast and …’

‘Wait, wait this is not my beautiful song,’ I say, waking up rubbing my eyes.  ‘This is not my talented soft rock  band.’

It’s the falsetto guy singing ‘Bread and Butter,’ the second best worst song of all time.

Sorry I was dreaming. Or should I say nightmaring.

I went to bed last night with the intention of writing a review for the album ‘The Best of Bread,’ you know that group that when their music is played consecutively with the group America will likely leave you unable to wake up – ever.

Luckily I hadn’t indulged in any America earlier.

(So, probably no need to call the somnambulance.}

There I was, laying there with my ear pods in, listening to the string-laden song “If’.”

If a picture paints a thousand words
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show
The you I’ve come to know

Aaaaaah. I think I fell asleep on the second line but woke up in a sweat with Bread and Butter going through my mind. Dang, an earworm alert at 3 a.m., obviously caused by the ‘Bread’ keyword.

All funnin’ aside, Bread, like America, has written and performed some beautiful songs, including:

Bread: ‘Everything I Own,’ ‘Make it With You,’ ‘It Don’t Matter to Me.’

America: Horse with No Name, Sister Golden Hair, Ventura Highway. (However America gets docked, totally docked, a point for being responsible for ‘Muskrat Love.’)

And on that note, for comparison purposes, I’m going to throw in the Carpenters here. Again, great craft, melodic tuneful songs, wonderful voice. It’s just that all these soft rock songs can be OD’d on really quickly as seen in my opening.

Carpenters. ‘Close to You,’ ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ ‘Rainy Days and Mondays.’

These are just a small sampling of these groups’ hits. Any group or artist that can sell as many millions of records as these did cannot be called ‘bad.’ But excessive radio play in my youth and a developing taste for something a little more powerful, this music isn’t my usual thing.

It is the usual thing for Catherine, my beloved, who has built up some unusual resistance for the deadly and sleepy  SRMS (Soft Rock Melancholia Syndrome.) In fact, she can take the three aforementioned groups and add Carly Simon, Carole King and James Taylor and she’s set, right dear? Cat? Cat?

Whoa this is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.*

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*sorry to crash the landing here. But I hope people understand this closing is a Talking Heads reference foreshadowed in the opening dream sequence in which our hero (me) has a bad dream of a squawking falsetto guy from the song Bread and Butter, which I have elsewhere on this website named the 2nd best worst song of all time. So upon waking up from the nightmare, our hero/writer finished the Bread album review, slyly and with great subtlety (ruined only by this end note) brings the story full circle, beause full circles are good.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.