If Fear Of Music is Talking Heads best album (and I think it is) then the song Animals is the oddest song on it. Wonderful staccato guitars and a jerky yet funky rhythm with David Byrne's freaky lyrics about animals. He lists the things he's noticed about animals- they don't help, they think, they're pretty smart, they're always bumping into things, they shit in the park, they see in the dark, they say they don't need money, they're living on nuts and berries, they're laughing at us and they don't even know what the joke is...
There's a school of thought that says David Byrne was satirising moral panics and people's late 70s paranoia but I like to think he was just a bit freaked out by our furry friends.
Animals
On tour in Dortmund in 1980 the expanded Talking Heads (Adrian Belew on guitar, Bernie Worrell on keys) give it the full treatment.
2 comments:
Yes, Fear of Music>>>Remain In Light>>>Speaking In Tongues
Though they're all great obvs
Fear of Music, definitely greatest TH album. Fear of Music tour in 1979, unbeatable. It was my first 'proper' concert, Talking Heads at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, London. Support was by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, and U2 (incredibly). U2, no better than a jobbing pub band at the time, were roundly booed by most of the audience who couldn't wait to see and hear the Talking Heads. Bono was forced to say, 'we're really not that bad, actually', which was naturally greeted with further, louder booing.
Great times.
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