the suit

I've been told that a certain reader "hears" the Talking Heads every time he looks at my blog. That's a profound compliment. The suit changed everything for me.

Let me begin by stating that I worked in a record store/head shop through most of my college years and even during high school. In fact, I used to show up every Wednesday afternoon after high school to get the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine--my fave being the one with Richard Nixon on the cover with the headline "The Quitter." By the time I was in college, I was a refugee of early 1970s folk/rock. I had nowhere to go. Disco? No thank you. Earth, Wind and Fire? Nice, but I OD'd just being in the dorms. Peter Frampton? OMFG.

So...I got into jazz. And I do mean into it. I know my Coltrane, my Kenny Burrell, my Joe Pass, my Carmen McCrae. I loved Ella, Duke, Wes, Miles, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock. I saw Weather Report at IU with that amazing bassist--Jaco Pastorius--before he expired in Miami. And I loved Pat Metheny. I even sat about 2 feet from him when he gave a concert in a super tiny coffee shop that is now the small portion of the Broad Ripple restaurant La Jolla.

Then one day this LP shows up in the record store bins. I did not know what to think. I am spending my Bloomington Saturday in the usual fashion--selling Dick Nixon bongs to townies--and I see this thing. Hey, I knew what a talking head was. It was a pundit. WTF? Who were these people and what exactly were they trying to say? And why should I care? At the time, I thought anything new and different in rock meant heavy metal--clearly not my thing. Truth is--the album cover totally scared me.

Fast forward to 1980. I move to Boston to pursue a career as an artist. Well, the art thing could have worked out better, but nevermind. I was in The Talking Heads home territory, and I loved it. So smart. So many sounds. Not so sure they knew what they were doing, but it did not matter. I could not get enough. And then....they broke it off, but not until they released a movie of one of their concerts. Thank goodness they did--I'm told thery didn't do many live performances. I saw that David Byrne was one of the aesthetic leaders of my generation--right up there with Jenny Holzer and Robert Longo.