Covered In Folk: Talking Heads
(featuring 6 covers of Naive Melody and 10 more!)
My brother was the Talking Heads fan in our household. As such, my strongest memories of the group are primarily visual: David Byrne in his trademark oversized suits; album cover images, most especially the stark black-and-tan cover of Stop Making Sense; the New Wave theatricality of the concert video espied in passing as I wandered through the living room looking for books.
By the time we were old enough to venture out to concerts on our own, the band, while technically still together, was primarily involved in solo projects, due in no small part to David Byrne’s tight hold on the musical output released under the Talking Heads moniker, and the resulting on-again off-again bad blood which lingered throughout much of their career as a foursome. Though we did spend a memorable evening in a basement dive bouncing around to Tom Tom Club, a spin-off from married musicians Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth which first formed in ‘80, neither of us ever made it to a Talking Heads show, and now it’s two decades too late.
That’s not to say that I don’t recognize their songbook when I hear it, of course. Like so many of our Covered in Folk focal points, Talking Heads play a significant role in the radioplay of our culture. Though their entire reign produced but one American Top 10 hit (1983’s Burning Down the House), their songs are peripherally familiar, choruses heard in record shops while browsing, melodies locked in our heads from almost three decades of movie soundtrack placement and cultural cache.
Though their canon is oft-covered in the jamband world - Phish took on Remain in Light in its entirety for one of their infamous Halloween shows; Dave Matthews and Widespread Panic have recorded covers as well - there’s less Talking Heads coverage in the rest of the musical spectrum, leaving us pushing the definition of “folk” even more than usual in today’s top-heavy set. Yet there’s something about This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) that lends itself to folksong, as our broad set of covers of the song aptly demonstrate. And - as with any band so steeped in the popular consciousness - the songbook lingers, its neurosis-laden, experimental lyrics and easy-to-manage chord progressions available to all, leaving us with a few more gems from the folkworld.
- Shawn Colvin: This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
- Mysteries of Life: This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
- Gunnar Madsen: Naive Melody
- The Old Believers: Naive Melody
- Arcade Fire: Naive Melody
- Trevor Green: Naive Melody
- From the sparse and chilly drone-and-chant of The Old Believers to the fluid, pensive contemplation of Shawn Colvin’s cover, this paean to the feeling of home is the Talking Heads song that seems to offer the most flexible opportunities for coverage. Gunnar Madsen goes for the most delicate version, just guitar and faint jungle drums to match his strained voice; on the other end of the musical spectrum, Bloomington, Indiana rockers Mysteries of Life come in with an alt-country surf rock piece that, while not folk, has plenty of rootsy charm. Acoustic surf-rocker Trevor Green goes worldbeat with a laid-back jam. Even popular indierockers Arcade Fire come in for a turn on the tune, offering a folkrock take with a Jamaican touch, thanks to some well-placed steel drum.
- Yet another lo-fi bedroom cover from The Morning Benders. Though their new album reveals a band much more rock-oriented than their early covers release might have suggested, the raspy, unrehearsed band-around-the-campfire feeling serves the obscure selection quite well, I think.
- Originally recorded for an in-studio Paste session back in 2008, the rising stars of Irish folk rock strip it down to a singer-songwritery guitar-led indie folk ballad with just the right touch of banjo. Perhaps the most delicate cover in our short set, and - as such - a delicious treat from Bell X1.
- This Jim Bianco track comes from Robin Danar’s mixed-bag all-covers Altered States collaborative collection - just one of many TV, film, and compilation appearances from one of indie music’s hardest-working singer-songwriters. A touch of Tom Waits’ vocal booziness and more than a hint of electro-americana blues make for an appropriately alien landscape of sound.
- Indie darlings The Editors go weary No Depression country rock in this live acoustic take, apocryphally from a 2008 BBC session.
- Okay, it verges on a track from one of those mass-produced “Pickin’ On” cover albums. But the Blind Corn Liquor Pickers are a true-blue bona fide newgrass jamband whose cover comes off like a bluegrass Led Zeppelin, and they get bonus points for demonstrating that there was a picker’s lazy delight hiding in here all along.
- A deliberately mellow, bossa-beat cover from Prozak for Lovers II, Bruce Lash’s oft-maudlin yet oddly endearing attempt to transform popular songs of disenfranchisement and alienation into something soothing and warm. Lash’s virtual acoustic gigs in Second Life under the name Winston Ackland are well worth finding, if you’re into that sort of thing.
- Roadhouse bluesrock from the reigning queen of white-girl electric guitar blues, recorded live and released on mid-nineties double disc Road Tested.
Bonus points today for a pair of delicate covers from David Byrne’s prolific solo career, plus a surprisingly sensitive take on Richard Thompson from the man himself.
- DM Stith: A Soft Seduction
(from Thanksgiving Moon, 2009) - Fulton Lights: Glass, Concrete and Stone
(from a beautiful 2008 Hinah session; more Fulton Lights here)
- David Byrne: Just The Motion (orig. Richard Thompson)
(from Beat The Retreat, a mostly-folk Richard Thompson tribute album, 1994)
As always, Cover Lay Down exists first and foremost to promote the continuation of folk music; if you like what you hear, we encourage you to follow the links above to purchase and support the next generation of folk.
That said: our month-long “pay it forward” promotion ends tomorrow at the stroke of midnight, and our bandwidth bills are running sky-high these days. DONATE to Cover Lay Down today without delay, and we’ll regift 20% of your generous donation to Doctors without Borders, and another 20% to our local food bank.
As a very special thank you, all donors to Cover Lay Down will receive our Summer 09 Festival Coverfolk Bootleg, an exclusive 17 song compilation of coverfolk featuring Old Crow Medicine Show, Sarah Jarosz, Tim O’Brien, Crooked Still, Tracy Grammer, and more, recorded live by yours truly, and available nowhere else. Click here for more details, and to tender your gift. Thanks, as always, for supporting our collaborative mission.
Category: Covered in Folk, Talking Heads
February 16th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Not at all folky, but Miles Fisher’s cover of This Must Be The Place (the video for which “covers” the film American Psycho) is my favorite.
February 16th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
holy.
crap.
i think i love you.
thank you for this.
February 16th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
hey hipstercrite: you’ve seen this?
February 16th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
It’s an honor to be included in your post today in such good company! Really glad you like my version of “Life During Wartime” and your description shows that you totally got what I was going for, which feels great.
Yes “Altered States” is actually MY album, and when I began to put tracks together that I wanted to “re-create” on it I was hoping that Jim Bianco would sing this one for me. We hadn’t met, but I was already a huge fan and that was the voice I wanted.
Turns out that his keyboard chops came in handy as well. We started messing around with a Wurly sound and a vocal mic just to get a direction and he walked out with a reference mp3 of where I wanted to go. Turns out that he had already gotten there. When he called me back to schedule an actual vocal session I basically told him that we were done. The mood and performance on both keyboards and vocals were exactly what I had been hoping for—those of an angry war vet. I called my friends Sterling Campbell and Goffrey Moore (drums and guitars) to get into this zone and all of their tracks were based around Jim’s keyboard and vocal reference tracks.
Thanks for liking it and thanks for turning me on to a lot of other great stuff!
robin danar
February 16th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
So wonderful to have you stop by, Robin - the backstory is keenly interesting, and I’m glad I could finally find a place to help support the Altered States project, which is overall a daring collage well worth hanging on to.
I note that running the CD through the usual web-based database system causes tracks to be listed as “by” the artists you collaborated with…but if you’d prefer to have me list this track as “by Robin Danar ft. Jim Bianco,” just say the word!
February 17th, 2010 at 9:47 am
BH, I think the right thing to do would be to rename the track as you suggested: “by Robin Danar ft. Jim Bianco”. It’s Robin’s name at the top of the CD cover. Everyone else on the disc is a guest.
Love all the Talking Heads covers you’ve posted, esp. the ones by Arcade Fire and Robin Danar ft. Jim Bianco.
However, my personal favorite is Jason Spooner’s version of “Slippery People” from The Flame You Follow. Check it out if you don’t already have it.
- FiL
February 17th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
When I saw the title of this post, I assumed it would include the newly release cover by Computer Perfection. Anyway, here you go…
http://www.romanticair.com/cp_vday.zip
from romanticair.com
February 17th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
@k-sky that’s pretty good
@robin danar- your cover rocks
February 17th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
The Computer Perfection cover is lovely, chilly electropop, and I’m glad you shared it, Tim - but it is a bit father over the line from folk than I’m usually willing to go. We really stick to folk and acoustic here at Cover Lay Down, though - to be fair - this post does range a bit into folk rock, indie, and americana.
February 18th, 2010 at 8:28 am
[...] So many amazing “This Must Be The Place” covers [...]
February 18th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Hipstercrite: thanks 2 @comandantequito 4 finding 16 talking heads covers! i peed myself. http://coverlaydown.com/2010/02/covered-in-folk-talking-heads/...
February 18th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
The Shawn Colvin cover came up on my iPod of shuffled songs, not too long after I’d read this post - I had to stop what I was doing (making a sh*tpot of chili) and just enjoy… again…
Speaking of Moxy Fruvous (as you did over at Star Maker Machine)… I was surprised not to see their frenetic take on Psycho Killer here - oh oh oh ya ya ya ya!
February 18th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I seriously considered the Moxy Fruvous cover, Susan…but decided in the end it’s frenetic enough to count as “not-folk”.
That whole Shawn Colvin album is sadly underappreciated.
February 18th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
In addition to the Moxy Fruvous and Computer Perfection covers, bonus points to the new Local Natives cover of Warning Sign, which is true jangly jungle Rock ‘n Roll, not folk, but awesome nonetheless, and not just for their great Vampire Weekend-esque beat and harmonies. YouTube it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sYKr5GoraA
February 20th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
you guys are great. thanks for the “respect”!
being a producer-as-artist can sometimes be a pain, but it’s worth it. it took awhile to get places like iTunes to understand the concept and list me as the artist, including (vocals by) or (featuring) within the song titles, but that’s how it was always meant to be. it was a blast doing things with other artists that they wouldn’t normally do on their own records and watching them get into character for me.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
awesome post. thanks so much.
February 24th, 2010 at 1:06 am
[...] Covered In Folk: Talking Heads (featuring 6 covers of Naive Melody and 10 more!) — Cover Lay Down (tags: Music Cover(Music) talking_heads) [...]
February 24th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Very pleased to see the Mysteries of Life listed here. Can’t say I’ve ever seen them mentioned outside of Bloomington. Thanks so much for posting these!
March 4th, 2010 at 1:06 am
That was quite nice, thanks a ton! I’ll have to check out some of the other posts too…
March 4th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
guster - nothing but flowers
March 4th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Editors one is not from there bbc Session. and they are called “Editors” not “the Editors”
March 4th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
[...] Covered In Folk: Talking Heads (featuring 6 covers of Naive Melody and 10 more!) — Cover Lay D… – [...]
March 4th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
I feel incredibly stupid, but how do I download music here? Can I save it in my iTunes library?
March 4th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
@Barbara: as with most music blogs, saving music is a simple two-step process:
1. right click on the song and select “save as” to save that song to a folder.
2. Open up that folder AND iTunes next to each other, and DRAG the songs in that folder to iTunes.
Let me know if you need further assistance - and welcome!
March 6th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
[...] Loggins and Messina plus Disney, Dr. Seuss, Vampire Weekend, and A-Ha covers here & elseblogCovered In Folk: Talking Heads (featuring 6 covers of Naive Melody and 10 more!)Sweets for the Sweet: Songs of Sugar & Candy for ValentinesPopfolk Thursday: The Living Sisters [...]