TALKING HEADS – STOP MAKING SENSE LP – Nr MINT A1/B1 UK 1984 ORIG DAVID BYRNE

Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense
(EMI Records  1984  TAH1)
Matrix No’s: A1/B1 – UK Pressing

Sleeve & Inner Sleeve in Nr MINT condition

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some light surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)

Talking Heads were an American new wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne (lead vocals and guitar), Chris Frantz (drums and backing vocals), Tina Weymouth (bass and backing vocals) and Jerry Harrison (keyboards, guitar, and backing vocals). Auxiliary musicians also regularly made appearances in concert and on the group’s albums. The new wave style of Talking Heads combined elements of punk rock, art rock, avant-garde, pop, funk, world music, and Americana. Frontman and songwriter David Byrne contributed whimsical, esoteric lyrics to the band’s songs, and emphasized their showmanship through various multimedia projects and performances.

Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes Talking Heads as being “one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the ’80s, while managing to earn several pop hits.” In 2002, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Four of the band’s albums appeared on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the Channel 4 100 Greatest Albums poll listed one album (Fear of Music) at number 76. On a 2011 update of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”, the band was ranked at No. 100.

Stop Making Sense is a live 1984 album by Talking Heads, the soundtrack to the film of the same name. The original release of the album features only nine of the songs from the movie, many of them heavily edited. The album spent more than two years (118 weeks) on the Billboard 200 chart. In 1999, a 16-track re-release coincided with the concert’s 15th anniversary.

Byrne’s intention was not to make a traditional soundtrack album, but to have it be a separate experience. Limited pressings of the original LP version featured a full color picture book wrapped around the album jacket. Regular versions had many of the pictures and captions on the album’s inner sleeve. In 1999 – to correspond with the theatrical re-release of the movie – the album was extended and remastered, restoring all of the songs from the movie with only very minor edits. The newly included tracks and one track from the original album, “What a Day That Was”, feature Frantz’s original drumming from the concert recordings.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 345 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2012 Slant Magazine listed the album at #61 on its list of “Best Albums of the 1980s”.

Track listing

All songs written by David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth except as noted.

Side one

1. “Psycho Killer” (Byrne, Frantz, Weymouth) – 4:28
2. “Swamp” – 3:50
3. “Slippery People” – 3:35
4. “Burning Down the House” – 4:14
5. “Girlfriend Is Better” (Byrne) – 3:32

Side two

1. “Once in a Lifetime” (Byrne, Brian Eno, Frantz, Harrison, Weymouth) – 4:34
2. “What a Day That Was” (Byrne) – 5:08
3. “Life During Wartime” – 4:52
4. “Take Me to the River” (Al Green, Teenie Hodges) – 6:00

Personnel

• David Byrne – guitar, vocals
• Chris Frantz – drums, vocals
• Jerry Harrison – guitar, keyboards, vocals
• Tina Weymouth – bass guitar, synth bass, guitar, vocals

Additional personnel

• Bernie Worrell – keyboards
• Alex Weir – guitar, vocals
• Steve Scales – percussion
• Ednah Holt – backing vocals
• Lynn Mabry – backing vocals

Production

• Talking Heads, Gary Goetzman – producers
• Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound, NYC – mastering