portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Any excuse . . . . . . . simply the best band, the best music film and the best song writer . . . The Heads at their very peak



On this day in music history: September 12, 1984 - “Stop Making Sense”, the seventh album by Talking Heads is released. Produced by Gary Goetzman, it is recorded at The Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, CA in December 1983. Recorded during the tour in support of the bands then current album “Speaking In Tongues”, the album is issued as the companion piece to the live concert film directed by Jonathan Demme (“The Silence Of The Lambs”, “Philadelphia”). Talking Heads main line up is augmented with additional musicians including Bernie Worrell (keyboards), Alex Weir (guitar), Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt (backing vocals). The original LP release contains only nine songs and is heavily edited in order to fit it on one album, and also comes wrapped in a full color picture book. A second variant of the LP package is released along with the standard release. The limited edition version is printed without the torso photo of David Byrne on front and instead is stark white, with the graphics in black print. It also comes with a twenty page booklet with photos and storyboard sketches by Byrne created for the staging of the concert. In 1999, a remastered and expanded edition of the album is released featuring the complete performance, matching the contents of the fifteenth anniversary theatrical re-release of the film. “Stop Making Sense” peaks at number forty one on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified 2x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.

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