(1.5 stars) So this is how it ends...
But then again, I guess Byrne's ego really got the better of him. It's really sad to see Talking Heads, one of the best bands of the '70s and '80s, in the sate they were on this album. Anyway, there are three very good songs here, to its credit. The problem is there are seven very bad ones. And one that just sort of exists.
First, let me get the minimal good out of the way. The funky opening single "Blind" has a great horn chart - that's a highlight for sure. The best song on the album, in fact. "Mr. Jones" is also a fun World Music dance track; and "(Nothin' But) Flowers", another single, is a catchy tribute to the Byrds, or maybe early R. E. M. And while "Cool Water" would've been laughed off Fear of Music or even Speaking in Tongues, at least it doesn't irritate me.
And that's it. As far as I'm concerned, the rest of the album is pathetic. My main problem with it is how awful the lyrics are - either pretentious but cliched ("Ruby Dear" - if you're trying to make a Big Statement, do NOT use a canned line like "If it's to hell we're going, I'll see you there), condescending ("Mommy Daddy You and I"; "Big Daddy") pretentious AND condescending ("Bill"), or failed attempts at humor (the ironic "Democratic Circus"; "Totally Nude"). See, if any of them had decent arrangements, I'd excuse the bad lyrics, call 'em mediocre songs, and move on. But they don't - the arrangements too often rely on annoying gimmicks (pedal steel on "Totally Nude"; accordion on "Big Daddy"; Indian instrumentation on "Bill"; an unnecessarily huge horn section honkin' away on pretty much every song). But to be fair, none of them are as bad as the group's ultimate nadir, "The Facts of Life", a slow industrial grind that attempts to philosophize about sex. Problem is it makes all the same points as "Creatures of Love" from Little Creatures - compare the refrains. . . "We are creature, creatures of love" to "Machines of love. . . machines of love. . . " and so on and so forth. But again, it's not just the lyrics that sink that ship, it's the music. Those synthesized "BOINK!"'s and the mechanical drums. Plus it goes on for six and a half minutes. Songs as atrocious as that should not be allowed to go that long.
I love Talking Heads, let me say that. But this is pathetic. I would point you to several previous albums - Talking Heads 77; Fear of Music; Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues for studio work; The Name of This Band is Talking Heads and Stop Making Sense if you want to hear them live. Please, for their legacy's sake, stay far away from both this and the preceding True Stories. Every Talking Heads comp I know has all three key songs. The album is just superfluous, notable only for the endearingly stupid monkey on the cover and a few great songs that are readily available elsewhere. .
SCRATCHED AND 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.
Ten o' clock, nighttime in New York.
It took a while to grow on me, but there are several reasons I like this album. I bought "Naked" when it was released in April 1988. One reason is the band returned to the polyrhythms of their best work and added a Latin quality to most of the tracks. There are quite a few good songs here like "Blind", "Totally Nude", "Ruby Dear", "(Nothing But) Flowers", "Mommy Daddy You And I", "Big Daddy", "Cool Water" and the bonus track "Sax And Violins". The digital remastering sounds great.
This album does lend itself to the 5. 1 surround mix on the dvd side, and it blows away the cd stereo mix. The videos for "Blind" and "Sax And Violins" are good. The booklet doesn't have any lyrics and as with the other remasters, you get a small discussion by Jerry Harrison about the remastering process of "Naked".
The Talking Heads went out on a pretty solid note with "Naked" and it's one of their better albums overall.
Uneven, but worthwhile.
But with what proved to be their final album, the band recaptured a sense of uniqueness, albeit via a seemingly endless blend of styles and sounds. After a set of stunningly different albums, prior to "Naked" it seemed the Talking Heads had settled into a groove-- their past couple albums lacked the uniqueness their earlier material had. The resulting album is at times fantastic and at times somewhat uninspired.
Perhaps the most unexepected is the James Brownesque funk opening-- "Blind" and "Mr. Jones" both hit with funky horns, slithery bass and great rhythms, but neither song quite feels right. After this, the material picks up a startling diversity, hinting at the sounds of the Pacific Islands ("Totally Nude"), Middle East ("Dear Ruby") and a touch of Eastern Europe ("Mommy Daddy You and I"). Along the way, they manage to put forth a couple pieces that are distinctly Talking Heads and recapture a bit of the old paranoid energy (the absolutely superb "The Democratic Circus" and to a lesser extent "The Facts of Life") and some of that brilliant Enoesque sound ("(Nothing But) Flowers"). But this level of diversity comes at a price, and the album feels inconsistent, or perhaps like a compilation.
This reissue features remastered sound on both the stereo (CD) side and the 5. 1 (DVD) side of the dualdisc. The sonic upgrade is superb and really fills out some of the details in the album nicely. Additionally, "Sax and Violins", originally from a soundtrack, is included as a bonus track on either side with the DVD side including two videos from the album.
This isn't as fantastic as the band's peak, but after a couple lackluster efforts, it's nice to hear them go out with a bit more of a bang then you'd expect. Those who have explored their earlier work should definitely check this one out.
Nothing like getting NAKED on Valentine's Day....
. . and that will be the last cute joke. I wasn't interested in getting the BRICK collection as I'm not all that thrilled with TRUE STORIES and the first two CDs, so opting for a more selective approach, the main motivation for purchasing this disc again was just how truly wonderful "Mr Jones" and "Nothing But Flowers" sounds - marvellous! If you're going to fizzle out as a band, then leave a calling card like this - it isn't their best, but they were still taking chances that none of their contemporaries had even considered, still haven't.
The disc is still a landmark integration of African pop and the quirky brand of TH tunes that seem to call for the angular rhythms and percolating beats of the African musicians on board for these sessions. And they sound so sublime in these remastered and 5. 1 renditions. After this, of course, Byrne would launch his Luaka Bop label and begin his full fledged advancement of south american and afro-carribbean music. Here at the beginning, though, it is a wonderfully rich and flavourful experiment that leaped over what the European contemporaries of TH were just beginning to expand. The weakest tracks are the most american-influenced. Anyway, this is absolutely worth the asking price.
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