Biography of Talking Heads

With the exception of The Ramones, the Heads are the only band from the CBGB days that has been able to sustain an interesting and commercially successful career into the '90s. David Byrne's clipped vocal style, art-school lyrics, and dorky cool gave punks a new kind of hero, one who was concerned with work, television, love, emotional crisis, and mental imbalance. The crisp guitar funk of their early days has given way to everything from African trance rhythms and art-funk to bouncy guitar pop and slinky Caribbean jive. Byrne's lyrics are occasionally (okay, quite often) pretentious, and the band's experimentations sometimes fail, but their best albums remain contemporary benchmarks. ~ John Floyd