An Infantile Talking Heads

Two years before the release of their first album, a baby version of Talking Heads played CBGB's as a three piece. Their performance would feature a nascent version of Psycho Killer with slightly different lyrics. At times bassist Tina Weymouth's muse is writing her a different arrangement and she jumps ahead to places singer Byrne doesn't follow. Still, this performance is a great archaeological record of an astonishingly fertile period of musical time and space, CBGB's of the late 70s, a period whose power still continues to radiate.



I was a big fan of the first three Talking Heads records and for those of us who followed Punk and New Wave fashion of the time, these albums were landmarks. Since then, David Byrne has become a TED talking elder statesmen of culture and the offshoot project The Tom Tom Club created the most ridiculously oversampled snippet in music history (Genius of Love). Still, these three albums have lost none of original their luster.

Go here for the complete video of the night's performance.

57 seconds of the Talking Heads Trio doing 96 Tears:

Appreciation to Haroon Akram-Lodhi for the heads up.

Here's Byrne with Richard Thompson doing a two song medley that includes 96 Tears.