20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Some interesting things, but you can't trust 'em, July 30, 2003
There's some insight here into the origins of David Byrne's lyrics, but it's tough to trust anything beyond that. The author can't spell "The Shaggs" or the German group "Can" or legendary Country singer "Cowboy Copas". He regularly misattributes songs to artists who didn't perform them. He apparently considers the B-52's an all-girl group - whether that's just stupid or some sort of slam against homosexuals is unclear. He makes statements about bands like Fun Boy Three (he doesn't get the name right either) being "obscure", despite the fact that they'd had more hits than the Talking Heads in the UK at that point.
In short, he seems to know very little about music in general. The book concentrates disproportionately on artistic influences on the band rather than musical ones. It's interesting as one rarely gets that point of view.
On the other hand, I suspect his fact-checking relative to artists is as bad as his fact-checking relative to musicians.
Early in the book, he quotes the band members quite heavily, though with a few dozen pages, this disappears entirely. There are hints that the band doesn't like him, with the implication being that all contact with band members is halted relatively early in the process. Much of the book is about the "battle" between Weymouth and Byrne, but it's tough to say whether this was the fundamental crux of the band's problems or not. Despite mentioning it frequently, there's not much substance behind any of it.
In short, this is worth a quick glance, but borrow it from your library like I did. Spend the money on a record instead.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Selective information, bias reporting and mis-information galore - Heads deserve better, May 29, 2006
This review is from: This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)
I was very excited to pick up this book. Sadly, I was very let down. Most rock biographies tell the explicit story of a band, their history, etc. However I've yet to encounter one that has such a blatantly bias viewpoint, selectively-informs and discredits any band/musician not directly-related to Talking Heads as this dire item.
The RI band The Fabulous Motels were (pages 32-34) ill-mentioned as The Motels (who did not change their name as much as stated in the book). They later became The Young Adults and Byrne auditioned for both bands not making either. This informantion is pretty well known stuff in RI rock-lore and is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Which strikes me as odd if not questioning how much else of Byrne-related facts were omitted from the book.
Page 244 reads "...an obscure group called Fun Boy 3 (Three). Their music is not important..." Wha? The Fun Boy Three was Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staples of the uber-influential ska band The Specials and as stated below had much bigger and more hits in Europe with two albums than the Heads had with five up until then. They were also a racially-integrated outfit.
And of course Bowman makes no attempt to explain exactly why their music is not important. Big surprise - Bowman's wrong.
And it was in fact Andy Partridge of XTC (mentioned briefly on page 118) - not Tina - who had jokingly came up with the Heads sophomore LP title. Asking them when "More Songs About Buildings And Food" was coming out - to which the heads would routinely laugh at. XTC also opened for them at the December 28, 1978 show at The Beacon (as per the Heads request) and Byrne even introduced them on stage.
For some reason Prince (whose name has been printed next to the word "genius" more times than one can count) gets reamed. "David was smarter than Prince" Bowman states matter-of-factly on page 277. Which, anyway you slice it, is just a dumb (if not vaguely ignorant) statement. Bowman feels constantly compelled to put (far more successful to boot) contemporaries like Prince and Sting down in support of Byrne's "genius". I never thought I'd have to say this but Sting is less pretentious than Byrne (and far less insecure) and Prince - who IS a musical genius regardless if you happen to like him or not - had been integrating white musicians with black musicians at least three years before the Heads did such a "revolutionary" thing.
And while mentioning the birth of Jerry and David's children (given full names and birthdays) Tina and Chris's children are listed as "In August Tina gave birth to a second son" (page 306).
Therin lies an example of obvious bias from Bowman. Regardless of what happened in the band amongst band members Bowman feels constantly compelled to discredit Tina at every given chance. This (along with the above complaints) leaves a bad taste in the readers mouth. Whatever happened in the band - it's a book about all four heads not just David Byrne.
I also don't care about what the author thinks about George Bush Sr. and other un-related parties that take up loads of wasted print. While other Head-related items are virtually ignored. For example the Tom Tom Club album Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom. Mentioned not once in the book while Close To The Bone and the s/t debut were documented. It was made while the heads where still a band so this makes no sense. Neither was Byrne's mid-life crisis video for "Make Believe Mambo" and Harrison's equally silly "Flying Under Radar" video (the latter wasn't even listed in the videography section).
No mention of Talking Heads on the cover of Rolling Stone. Title of story: Is America's best band Byrned out? Relevant? Yes!!
There's also no mention of how the singles did in terms of radio play. A fact of some importance I'd imagine - them being a band that released many singles and all.
There's also no mention of the pop musical landscape around the Heads at the time of their popularity and demise. i.e. The U.S. underground (which produced still-relevant bands like The Replacements and Husker Du), the grunge-movement and the popularity of REAL funk and hip-hop.
Having said all of this I can only hope that an authorized account of ALL things Talking Heads will be written someday.
Bowman's book is an over-long failed attempt that was clearly in the wrong hands. The Talking Heads deserve much better!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading, in spite of Bowman's amatuerisms, September 4, 2001
This review is from: This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)
Facts don't do what you want them to, but that's about all that makes this book worth picking up. If you want to get the general story of the rise and fall of this band, it's valuable as a collection of details, but from the first chapter I found Bowman's attempts to provide insight and explanation incredibly banal and horribly executed. Bowman *learned* a lot about the band, but Tina is right, he *knows* pretty much nothing about the inside story and his attempts to spin off in literary examinations are pitiful. Just skip it till he gives up and gets back to the basic facts he's managed to collate from photocopying every article he could find at the library.
The interviews and direct sources are equally inadequate. It's very, very clear that no one wanted to cooperate with him, and even those insiders who did speak to him have little of substance to offer.
As a fan of Talking Heads, I enjoyed learning more about their story. But as a critical reader, I'm disappointed that such a poor job was done on this project. I guess the best thing you could say about this Talking Heads biography is that it makes you desperately want to read a much better one.
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