The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple months before the SPAC concert, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House.
Frantz, Weymouth, Harrison, Byrne
One of the two greatest concerts I ever saw was the August 1983 performance of Talking Heads at the Saratoga Performance Arts Center, which someone put online; actually, here’s another recording. It starts with David Byrne by himself on guitar and percussion. He’s joined by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who were married in 1977, on drums and bass, respectively, for a song or two, before Jerry Harrison joins on guitar. That was the core band, but then the additional players are added in; the process was so organic.
This is the same tour from which the classic Jonathan Demme film Stop Making Sense was taken, but this is the complete concert, not just a truncated show.
The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple of months earlier, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House. LISTEN to the whole album. I always associated that album, along with a few others of that period, as forerunners of the compact disc, for the versions of several songs on the CD, which I got a number of years later, were longer than the versions on the LP, which I had purchased soon after it came out.
The new wave band Tom Tom Club was founded in 1981 by Frantz and Weymouth as a side project. Their big hit Genius of Love [LISTEN], which is in the Talking Heads concert, has been sampled by several artists , including Mariah Carey on her hit single Fantasy.
This century, Mavis Staples, who was the primary voice on so many of the Staple Singers’ songs, has been putting out several well-received albums.
A major competitor of Motown serving up black music in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s was STAX Records, which I wrote about extensively HERE.
One of the great groups on the label was The Staple Singers, “an American gospel, soul, and R&B singing group. Roebuck “Pops” Staples (1914–2000), the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha (1934–2013), Pervis (b. 1935), Yvonne (b. 1936), and Mavis (b. 1939)… While the family surname is ‘Staples’, the group used the singular form for its name, ‘The Staple Singers’.”
They had appeared on other labels before joining STAX, releasing songs such as For What It’s Worth [LISTEN], a cover of the Buffalo Springfield hit, that went to #66 in 1967 on Epic Records.
This century, Mavis Staples, who was the primary voice on so many of the group’s songs, has been putting out several well-received albums. The first one I picked up was 2007’s We’ll Never Turn Back. “Produced by roots rock and blues musician Ry Cooder, it is a concept album with lyrical themes relating to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Upon its release, We’ll Never Turn Back received positive reviews from most music critics. It was also named one of the best albums of 2007 by several music writers and publications.”
“During a December 20, 2008 appearance on National Public Radio’s news show ‘Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me,’ when Staples was asked about her past personal relationship with [Bob] Dylan, she admitted they ‘were good friends, yes indeed’ and that he had asked her father for her hand in marriage.” She ultimately said no, because the interracial relationship would have been too difficult back in that period.
Finally, LISTEN to a live version of Wrote a song for everyone, a tune from her 2010 album You Are Not Alone. That album was produced by Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco.
“Lucy Wainwright Roche is the daughter of singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III… and Suzzy Roche, who, along with her sisters (Lucy’s aunts) Maggie and Terre Roche, make up the female vocal group The Roches.”
The Roches are Maggie and Terre and Suzzy, sisters self-introduced cheekily in We [LISTEN to a live version], the first song of their eponymous first album (1979). “We don’t give out our ages and we don’t give out our phone numbers… sometimes our voices give out, but not our ages and our phone numbers.”
As the song progresses: “Guess which two of us made a record” – that would be Maggie and Terre, Seductive Reasoning (1975), after they sang backup on the Paul Simon song Was A Sunny Day [LISTEN]. “Guess what the other one did instead” – Suzzy went to college in upstate New York. “And now a trio we are, born on the fourth of December.” LISTEN to Hammond Song and Mister Sellack.
The sisters have done several more albums, four of which I own, including some solo work, and some as duets. Wanted to note this interlocking family connection:
Lucy Wainwright Roche is the daughter of singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III… and Suzzy Roche, who, along with her sisters (Lucy’s aunts) Maggie and Terre Roche, make up the female vocal group The Roches… Lucy is also the half-sister of singer-songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright (whose late mother Kate was half of the Canadian folk duo Kate and Anna McGarrigle). She has toured with Rufus throughout the years. Through her father, she is a niece of Sloan Wainwright.
I saw the Roches many years ago in the Albany area – couldn’t tell you where or when (probably in the 1980s) – but they were great. More music if you have QuickTime HERE.
The New Yorker’s 2014 article The Anatomy of an Earworm used Waterloo by ABBA as its example.
(I told you early on there were two letters for which I could not find a family band; this was one.)
When I first started blogging, I came across a blogger named Greg Burgas, who used to say, quite often, “ABBA rules!” That, he opined, was The Name of the Game [LISTEN] (#12 in 1978).
You mean that Swedish quartet comprised of that married couple Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus, and that other married couple, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, whose first initials spelled out their name? Yeah, that one.
I used to refer to them as a “guilty pleasure,” though I admitted to liking Dancing Queen [LISTEN] (#1 in 1977). But as I think about a group that was one of the most successful of all time, all across the globe, which generated countless tribute bands – here’s one which came to my city recently – and after their 1982 breakup, and their marital breakups just before that, became MORE famous, then I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do [LISTEN] have to think that Mr. Burgas was totally right (#15 in 1976), though less successful in the US than elsewhere.
Though they faded from view somewhat for a time – SOS [LISTEN] (#15 in 1975):
In 1999, ABBA’s music was adapted into the successful musical Mamma Mia! that toured worldwide. A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year.
The group was in the news this year when it was revealed that they wore those garish clothes for tax purposes: “The band, whose spangly flares, catsuits and platform heels were considered naff even in the 1970s, exploited a Swedish law which meant clothes were tax deductible if their owners could prove they were not used for daily wear.” Ah, time for Money, Money, Money [LISTEN] (#56 in 1977).
2014 marks the 40th anniversary of their first hit “Waterloo.” Agnetha hinted last November that ABBA could re-form.
She told German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag that she, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are considering reforming in 2014… “Of course it’s something we’re thinking about,” she said. “There seem to be plans to do something to mark this anniversary in some way. I can’t say at this point what will come of them.” Agnetha is generally seen as the shy one who doesn’t want to perform anymore but in May 2013, she released a brand new album and has since been out there promoting it. But will the other three want to come out and play?
The New Yorker had an article this year, The Anatomy of an Earworm, you know, a song that gets stuck in your head. Guess what song is used as an example? The same song for which ABBA was “honored at the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005 when their hit ‘Waterloo’ was chosen as the best song in the competition’s history.”
The thing I remember most about the 1964-65 World’s Fair in NYC , as was true of many people, was the Belgian waffle.
My April was much better than my March, but between blog connectivity problems (more anon), and back pain that kept me out of work for a couple of days, followed by four days out of town for work training, which compressed other tasks, I didn’t a chance to update the April Rambling since April 17. Moreover, I discovered some links from as much as two years ago I was GOING to use but they fell through the cracks. Meaning that I’ll do another one at the end of the month. Always said that if blogging got too hard, I would not do it. And this, comparatively, is the easy post I need right now.
An article about depression I was going to include in a different blog post. Some of the earlier posts from this blog I liked too. The blogger also linked to the TEDx talk Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share. “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me at that moment.” When I imagine many people’s understanding of depression, I think of that famous scene in the movie Moonstuck where the Nicolas Cage character says “I’m in love with you,” and the Cher character slaps him and says, “Snap out of it,” as though that were the answer.
Sometimes I offer…information unsolicited, but most of the time I don’t say anything unless asked rather than appear to be a “know-it-all”. How do YOU decide when to share a fact and when to remain silent?
I say less and less, barring someone potentially coming to bodily harm. That is unless we’re having an interactive conversation about a mutually interesting topic, like the chat I recently had with our departing intern about music, which involved Woody Guthrie, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album, and Sly & the Family Stone.
Apropos of nothing, almost every time I read something about swimming, the Peter Gabriel song I Go Swimming, from the live album, pops into my head, especially that opening bass line.
