Old Enough to Forget

I was never really what you'd call a big fan of Talking Heads. I was a casual and I knew more than a few songs. They were kind of cool, but also irritating. I think part of my active ambivalence stemmed from when I was a kid watching them back in '79 when they were on Saturday Night Live. It was their performance of "Artists Only" with the child like lullaby that I found befuddling. This was '79 and art rock was pretentious and stupid - at least to me. I wanted to hear the big guitars and rock out. Why I still remember a performance I saw on TV a grand total of one time is a mystery. This was the cornerstone of my reaction to Talking Heads for a long time, and while I'd freely admit to enjoying a lot of what I heard, on balance my opinion was primarily dismissive. Then came the summer of '83 and I'm driving down the freeway in my little blue Nissan Pulsar and I've taken the sunroof out and the top of my head is poking out of the hole in the roof. I...

I remember this album, or at least the two songs I most closely associated with the album: "Looking For Clues" and "Johnny and Mary." The first was quirky and the second was very new wave. I love the second, and was perplexed by the first. Over the years Robert Palmer would come to exude cool, but to me he would forever be the geeky guy holding up a magnifying glass who was looking for clues. Of course that's not entirely accurate either.  When I found a copy of Clues I was pretty stoked to go back and hear what was going on back in 1980. The album opens with "Looking for Clues" and it's hard to imagine that it's been over four decades since the song came out. It's still so good. Chris Frantz from Talking Heads played bass drum on the track. The next song "Sulky Girl" was a straight ahead rock song in the same sort of vein as "Bad Case of Loving You" which sort of made sense, and I suspect this is what people were expect...