Talking Heads: Little Creatures

That week before the Darwin Ball in 1985, when I went to Lyme Regis, alone, for the first time, spent a couple of nights in B&Bs and explored the Undercliff. My journal for 11th June records my wariness around my fellow guests:

One of the couples, called Mr and Mrs Jennings — a dodgy sign — joined me in the lounge during the second half of Whistle Test. Mr Jennings has a colonel-like [sic!] moustache. We tried to be civil to each other, and succeeded on the whole, but when I offered Mr Jennings my copy of the Guardian he told me it was "not his paper". Mrs Jennings is Mr Jennings' wife. I hope the Whistle Test disturbed them.

One of the videos in that show was the latest song by the Jesus & Mary Chain, so it probably did. Another of them was this, the first time I heard any of the songs from Little Creatures.

I didn't buy the album until nearly 17 years later (the fiver in Fopp got me again). At first I passed it over because I was interested in the Heads at their most musically adventurous (i.e. Remain in Light), and Little Creatures felt conservative by that yardstick. From this vantage point, it's clear that that conservativeness has meant that the album has never gone out of fashion, never sounded dated. In fact, the playing and production sound amazingly good now — and make that other 1985 album from a couple of days ago seem all the more risible.

Jeremy loved this album straight away, and gradually I realised he was right. It's the words that really make it sing. Not the same kind of writing as Remain in Light at all (I love them too, in a different way), but possibly the best lyrics David Byrne has ever done — I'm pretty sure hasn't done anything better in the last 25 years, anyway. Similar to John Wesley Harding in the way that each song is a perfect miniature essay or short story. But whereas JWH deals mostly in moral fables, Creatures is more like reading Richard Rorty, Wittgenstein or Christopher Lasch. Bear with me. I'm thinking of the cultural politics and media critique of Television Man: "I'm inside and outside at the same time" is a neat expression of some of the things Lasch wrote in The Minimal Self. Name is one of those enquries into the meaning of 'meaning', trying to understand what it is to 'understand' something. And DB joins Laurie Anderson in beginning the line of a song with "Let X…" Ah, the eighties! When the charts featured acts who sounded like they might be setting the Principia Mathematica to music.

Then there was that other video.

I remember David Hepworth introducing it, possibly on the Whistle Test again as a work of unparalleled genius, and this time his hyperbole was warranted. A few years later, pomo commentator Dick Hebdige completed the virtuous circle of theory and practice by writing a twelve page analysis of the video. I've got it somewhere, in the attic.

Now that Twin Peaks Series Two is finally available on DVD, the only think lacking in my world is a DVD version of True Stories. I loved that film.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm Listen to this album in full at We7 Listen to this album in full at Spotify

Comments

[simon robinson]

David - I'm researching a possible book on the history of Sheffield record shops; if you have any recollections which might be interesting to add, do drop me a line. Anonymity guaranteed if you'd prefer! Th stores, memories of what you bought and where, just stuff which puts the focus back on us as punters rather than the stars really!

cheers

Simin

[simon robinson]

or even simon...

[David]

This sounds interesting -- will be in touch privately. Simon, are you Nick Robinson's brother by any chance?