Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

"ONCE IN A LIFETIME"
THE DOCUMENTARY
TALKING HEADS
&
HEY HEY HERE COME
the TOM TOM CLUB

When I went to see The Vaccines last month, those purveyors of all things American played "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" by Talking Heads prior to coming on stage. This took my diseased old mind back to days of yore when Talking Heads were a reality. After playing "Drugs" and "Cities" and "Houses in Motion" and "Blind" and "Psycho Killer" off The Old Grey Whistle Test I decided to trawl through my fly invested loft. I finally laid hands on this video, it's probably on every part of the internet, but to me in my own little dream world I will present it here as if you've never seen it before.

What you're watching is "Life During Wartime" from a documentary entitled "Once in a Lifetime" broadcast on Channel 4 in the early eighties. The live footage of the Talking Heads comes from Wembley Arena in 1982.

Now I think you'll agree this is most definitely not STOP MAKING SENSE, and for me STOP MAKING SENSE is a much inferior product in comparison. But what do I know? On ONCE IN A LIFETIME we get a weird, channel hopping, juxtaposed, drug induced state enhancing mash up; of news, dumb trash culture and spiritualism, interspersed with TALKING HEADS playing live and small bursts of dislocated speech by Mr Byrne. The whole thing is deeply disturbing and every time you watch it you see some new clipvert you hadn't seen before. I watched the whole video again today for the first time in a long time, and probably for the first time without any kind of substance in my blood stream, it still worried me. And what I'd forgotten was how many David Byrne tracks feature (not Talking Head tracks) "Fall Through the Cracks" "Eyes Wide Open" and "Big Business". All very nice, but I can't see that going down well with most bands, but then again Tom Tom Club were the support band for Talking Heads at Wembley so it seems (in 1982 at least) all was fair in love and wartime.

PS. Yes the video should be in colour, even though the whole of 1982 in reality was actually all in black and white, believe me I know I was there. One day I'll work out how to upload stuff in colour but until then.............monochrome rules!

Finally this brings me to the advert. Whilst David Byrne was doing his solo LP "Catherine Wheel" in 1981 Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz started up the TOM TOM CLUB. Now the chances of me seeing TALKING HEADS play live again (anywhere) are about as slim as David Byrne was in 1982. But the TOM TOM CLUB are coming to the UK in JULY to play SIX gigs: Cardiff University on the 14th, London Jazz Club on the 15th, 16th & 17th, Birmingham Institute on the 19th and Glasgow ABC on the 20th.I'd like to be there and I guess you would too, it'll be hot and funky (hopefully). So why not get out there and enjoy! DETAILS