The ex-members of Talking Heads seem to be getting on better these days. Or at least they seem to be making a pretty good fist of promoting the 40th anniversary reissue of Stop Making Sense.
About a year ago the band appeared together in public for the first time in over 20 years, when they talked about the acclaimed concert movie at the Toronto Film Festival. Then earlier this year the group were interviewed by Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. Now they have popped up on, of all places, the US game show Jeopardy, asking questions in their own category, er, Talking Heads. Check out this footage below:
So….could you answer the questions that Zoey sails through in the clip?
In which legendary punk club did the band play their first gig, supporting the Ramones in 1975?
Stop Making Sense has been widely praised by which Oscar-winning director of The Silence Of The Lambs and Philadelphia?
What is the name of the first song the band wrote, which features an iconic pulsing bassline and the twisted thoughts of a homicidal narrator? (David Byrne can’t resist adding a cheesy clue to this one, saying: “Better run-run-run-run-runaway.”
Which Talking Heads track about ‘letting the days go by’ was crafted in collaboration with producer Brian Eno?
Which Talking Heads song is about ‘fighting fire with fire’, the title of which comes from an enthusiastic chant heard at a George Clinton/ Funkadelic concert?
Meat and drink for any self-respecting fan of the band, you’d have to say.
Stop Making Sense is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest concert films of all time. Recorded over four nights at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December 1983, it captured the band on their Speaking In Tongues tour for which they had added keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales, guitarist Alex Weir and backing vocalists Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt to their line up. But the movie ended up becoming very much a full stop on Talking Heads as a live act. The band would never tour again after 1984.
And though Byrne, Frantz, Weymouth and Harrison are obviously getting on better these days, a full live gigs n’ all reunion is still unlikely. Earlier this year, the band were reported to have turned down an offer from Live Nation of $80 million to headline “six to eight” festival gigs and headlining slots. You can’t blame them. They hardly need the money and recording a short segment for a game show is just a lot easier, isn’t it?
