All negative reviews are of the DualDisc format
The product is amazing, but only get it if you have a 5. All negative reviews are of the DualDisc format. 1 surround sound setup. You won't be able to burn it and put it on your MP3 player, which sucks, but if you understand that and also understand that it is worth the price just to play it on your 5. 1 surround sound system then buy it, I have it and a couple of others. It's KILLER to listen too on 5. 1.
One star for the technology
I had a very difficult time playing this album, much less converting it to mp3 files. But five stars for the album and the noticeably better sound. Out of three computer cd players, the disc only played in one, a Toshiba that came with my office Dell. It didn't work on my Plextor or Sony players at home. Of three stereo cd players, it only played on one. When I was able to use the cd burner, I burned a new disc, which played just fine in all players. I don't know if this is because the disc is Dual Disc or what.
My point is that if you have problems, keep on trying. It is worth it for these remastered Talking Heads discs.
Groundbreaker!
Many great TH albums followed but none carry the raw naivety encompassed by impassioned focus that does this one, the first! Sound quality on the DualDisc is great tho I must confess I've only heard the cd side. I first heard TH 77 at art college the year it came out & the sound was so foreign to anything I'd known before that I honestly couldn't be sure whether I loved it or hated it! I know now that I was listening to one of the most creative, intelligent, different bands that ever explored a new vein in the vastness of rock formation. As as rule I don't like bonus tracks included with the original track listings, so I burned the original version then made a second disc of bonus tracks off the first six records TH put out. The bonus tracks are worth a listen on their own. A standout Disc is TH77!.
SCRATCHED & GOUGED DISCS; BAD HANDLING AT THE PRESSING PLANT!
My problem is physical damage to the discs, unnecessarily caused by obvious careless handling & packaging at the pressing plant.
I have had an infuriating experience with Warner Music Group lasting a year, first, over the Rhino "Brick" box, and now the individual T-Heads DualDisc titles.
In the "Brick", the unique white jewel cases come gouged and scratched, and the discs in both the Brick and individually-packaged titles, have fingerprints, smears, scratches, and pits.
This began last year when I purchased the "Brick" upon release. When I opened the set, every jewel case was damaged. These cases have a solid white rear panel, and can't be commercially replaced. They are not individually shrink-wrapped (which would eliminate the problem), and are obviously forcefully shoved into the box set's plastic outer shell at the plant, hence the damage.
It was worse inside each jewel case: All of the discs literally looked like they were used. Several were so badly artifacted they couldn't be read in any player or drive.
So, following web site direction, I e-mailed "Dr. Rhino". I received a reply, which directed me to return the set for replacement. As this is an expensive item, that entailed going to the Post Office to buy Insurance & Delivery Confirmation at my own cost. Annoyed, I decided to wait a few months, reasoning that perhaps the first production batch was bad and they would sell through. I stood in line at the USPS for 45 minutes, mailed it and waited. Six weeks later, the replacement showed up, carelessly packed into a crushed box, and the entire set was in worse shape than the first one. I e-mailed again, didn't get an answer for 2 months, and when I did, it was "send it back again"! The audacity of that response was pretty amazing: Why would I keep wasting my money and time to cycle their defective product?
So, I contacted the CD store where I purchased the original set. All the TH titles had been released individually, so the store manager & I decided we would change out the box for the separate titles, and he would return the bad ones.
I just received those yesterday: In five of the eight titles, all the same surface-damage artifacts. Several digipaks had their plastic disc retaining spindles broken with shards floating around inside. Also, inside each digipak, there is a 3. 5"-square paper "DualDisc" tutorial insert. In some of the digipaks, it was tossed on top of the disc, where it rubs against the disc, an additional cause of surface damage.
So, the store manager is going to continuously order in each individual title and open them, looking for virgin discs. He is going to return all the defective discs, and repeat the process going until he finds five clean discs. Which is pathetic.
I've been thru three complete sets in one year, which means you are almost certainly going to run into this problem with your purchase. So, when you buy the Brick or any of the individual titles, please do not accept & settle for damaged product. Send it back to Amazon, e-mail Rhino, do whatever you have to do to get what you paid a lot of money for.
This would have never happened, or would have certainly been quickly corrected, when Messrs. Foos & Bronson, who founded Rhino, were in charge. Unfortunately, in 1998, Rhino was swallowed whole and "WEA-fied" by the odious Warner Music Group, where CEO Edgar Bronfman is obviously far more interested in extolling the virtues of DRM than he is in running a business that can deliver quality.
A superb debut.
At its best, it is absolutely brilliant, somewhat schizophrenic new wave pop, at its worst, quite frankly, it's not much different. One of those debut albums that is clearly the beginning of a legacy, "Talking Heads '77" finds the band raw yet somehow fully formed.
Having met in art school in Rhode Island, David Byrne (guitar and vocals), Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums) relocated to New York to pursue their destiny as a band, eventually adding Jerry Harrison to the mix (keyboards and guitar) from Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers (highly recommended for anyone who enjoys this album). The band performed Byrne's songs-- a fractured, paranoid, intelligent and yet goofy sort of off-kilter pop-- the key to his music is that you can't readily identify when it was recorded, it has that magic timeless nature to it such that if you played this album for someone who had never heard it, they'd have no reason to assume it was recorded nearly thirty years ago. With Byrne's strained, frantic vocals and an unnervingly able and inventive rhythm section, the pieces all get superb readings.
Again, at its best it's brilliant schizophrenic pop-- from the deep groove of paranoid "Psycho Killer" to the mildly funky, building and paranoid "No Compassion" (the clearest pointer to what the future holds) to goofy-yet-serious chirping opener "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town" or the seemingly endless imagery of "Don't Worry About the Government". The less intriguing tracks are pleasant enough ("New Feeling"), but often fairly unmemorable ("First Week/Last Week. . . Carefree") when compared to the rest of the record. They'd probably stand out on anyone else's album, but the better material on here raises the bar.
This reissue is really something to get ahold of-- using the dualdisc format, both sides are remastered and the DVD side is mixed in 5. 1. Put simply, the series sounds superb-- crisp and clean and really fitting the timeless quality of the music. The CD side adds five bonus tracks-- the band's first single (recorded without Jerry Harrison), the absolutely superb "Love-->Building on Fire", a song that defies explanation and is among the best thing the band ever did, a handful of b-sides (largely unmemorable but nice to have) and early (again, pre-Jerry Harrison) recording "Sugar on My Tongue", originally released as part of the "Sand in the Vaseline". This final piece shows just how fully formed Byrne's songwriting and sound was, even early-- it captures all the manic energy and frantic sounds that make the band great and is a wortwhile addition. The DVD side offers one of the b-sides, another mix of "Uh-Oh. . . " and a couple live video clips.
Truthfully, the Talking Heads would go on to bigger and better things in the company of Brian Eno on their next three records, all pretty much flawless, but this one is essential. Four stars without the remastering job, five with the cleaned up sound and the bonus tracks. Recommended.
You can see a complete list of all Talking Heads discography, or go back to the Talking Heads tabs
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