THE NAME OF THIS POST IS TALKING HEADS

Besides heavy rock I've always loved the avant-garde.

It started with my beloved Bowie when I was 11, leading to a hugely important Lou Reed and the Velvets, shambling into Iggy and the New York Dolls, happening on the Talking Heads and New Wave and resurging with the Smiths, their 80's indie shoegazing mates and finally maturing with those glorious creeps that were Radiohead.

But here I want to big up the Talking Heads, which I'm currently listening to on my headphones, whilst the Missus catches up on Judge Judy on TV.

The Talking Heads were 70's geeks with guitars. Awkward twitchy rockers, who appealed to my own sense of late teenage geekiness, angst and alienation in a way Bowie and Lou Reed had done earlier. 

I was a gangly emaciated thing in the late Seventies; incredibly long fuzzy hair, a beard, glasses, colourful hippy clothes; a worried, vegetarian, patchouli-wearing Undercurrents-reading weirdo with a penchant for writing poetry, writing songs and head-banging to the heavies of Budgie, Wishbone Ash and Rush. 

Somewhere between the rocks I made a snug place for the Talking Heads and their anxious ilk.

I first heard the Heads at my sister Rene's in the late Seventies. Rene had a huge LP collection lent against the wall, which you could flick through. James Gang, Three Dog Night, Family, her beloved Van Morrison and yes, Talking Heads. I think it was their first album, with Psycho Killer on it. You know, fa fa fa fa fa fa.

As I got deeper into hard rock bands towards the end of the Seventies I forgot the Heads a bit but re-united with them in 1983 with their album Speaking in Tongues, which included the wonderful This Must the Place [Naïve Melody].

Next came Little Creatures in 1985, which I bought with my Missus when we lived in North Wales. More poppy than former Heads, it was the sound of our summer that year. Songs like And She Was and Creatures of Love kept the Heads talking.

But it would be years later when I really found the Heads sound I loved the most. In 1990 we'd had a friend's teenage daughter living with us for a year, Laura. Laura had tons of tapes and when she left they got left behind for me to listen to. 

Among the Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgardens there was a Talking Heads cassette with 2 albums on it, one on each side: Fear of Music and Remain in Light.

Fear of Music had some gems, like heaven and Life During Wartime, but it was the LP Remain in Light that completely redefined what I liked about the Talking Heads. Fusing indie rock with African rhythms, Remain in Light is the most perfect mixing bowl of funk, world and indie rock you will ever hear. I cannot name any songs as it's irrelevant. In Light is all good and if I could dance anymore I would dance to it till I dropped, awkwardly, of course, in true geeky style! Its a brilliant album from a brilliant band.

Do you like the Talking Heads?