Sunday, July 16, 2023

The Talking Heads - Berklee Performance Center, Boston MA, 8-24-1979

I've been meaning to post a Talking Heads concert from their 1979 tour in order to further render the official live album "The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads" further obsolete. I'm not a fan of that album because it tried to do too much, collecting live tracks from 1977 to 1980 instead of just focusing on one time period like most live albums. This is probably the best sounding concert recording of the band from 1979.

The reason this sounds so good is because it was professionally recorded for a Boston radio station and broadcast on the air at the time. The was also the case for the opening act, the B-52's, and I just posted their set. Only one song from this performance has ever been officially released as far as I know. "Mind" has appeared on the expanded edition of "The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads."

The one flaw with this otherwise great sounding recording, in my opinion, is that the lead vocals were a bit low in the mix. But I used the audio editing program UVR5 to fix that, so this should sound better than it ever has been.

In 1979, the band was touring to support their latest album "Fear of Music." It was a very critically acclaimed album, for instance being named the best album of the year by NME, Melody Maker, and the Los Angeles Times. The band played most of the songs from that album, except for "I Zimbra," "Animals," and "Drugs." One interesting thing about this tour is that, even though the band's music was getting increasingly complicated, only the four band members played the concerts. For the next tour, that would drastically change, with more backing musicians than band members.

This album is an hour and ten minutes long.

01 talk (Talking Heads)
02 Artists Only (Talking Heads)
03 talk (Talking Heads)
04 Stay Hungry (Talking Heads)
05 Cities (Talking Heads)
06 Paper (Talking Heads)
07 Mind (Talking Heads)
08 talk (Talking Heads)
09 Heaven (Talking Heads)
10 The Book I Read (Talking Heads)
11 Electric Guitar (Talking Heads)
12 Air (Talking Heads)
13 Warning Sign (Talking Heads)
14 Love Goes to a Building on Fire (Talking Heads)
15 talk (Talking Heads)
16 Memories Can't Wait (Talking Heads)
17 Psycho Killer (Talking Heads)
18 talk (Talking Heads)
19 Life during Wartime (Talking Heads)
20 Take Me to the River (Talking Heads)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15454912/TTalkngHs_1979b_BrkleePerformnceCentrBostnMA__8-24-1979_atse.zip.html

Since I also posted the opening set by the B-52's, I thought it would be fun to have the two album covers look similar. I chose a similar photo that had a dark black background, even though it's probably from a different concert. (I don't know the sourcing from this one, except it looks like it's from the 1979 tour, judging by the fact that there are no extra musicians.) I also used the same font style and colors for both covers.

3 comments:

  1. Fear Of Music wasn't released until August. I saw the Heads play in Sydney in June '79 and they played six or seven numbers that we'd never heard. That got people's attention.

    A very good recording of that tour does the rounds as does a shortened 2JJ broadcast.

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  2. it's talking heads. there is no the. live album? the name of this band is talking heads.

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    1. I'm aware. Note that I didn't put "the" in the cover art. But everyone says "the Talking Heads," just like everyone says "the Eagles."

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