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For your consideration: The Talking Heads.
I was listening to the live album The Name of This Band and was struck at how intricate and innovative their guitar work was. Jerry Harrison was an experienced musician, but David Byrne was hardly a player at all. And yet their playing just gelled in a couple of years.
Their first records actually came out around the same time as Television's, and of course they were part of the same CBGB scene. I have to think they influenced a lot of guitarists looking for something beyond chunka-chunka rhythm and showoff guitar solos...The Cure, The Smiths, U2, etc.
Byrne and his collaborator Eno also were highly motivated amateurs who defied common convention on the role of instrumentalists and even singers, like David Bowie, as well.
Anyway, check out the guitars. Great sound, pretty unique for rock music in the late 70's. And their artistic vision was boundless.
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01-07-2018 06:42 PM
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Alex Weir apparently came up with several riffs for the talking heads and had an instructional video below.
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When I was living in NY, I had a place on Bleeker, at the seedy end. I'll admit that David Byrne and Tina were never that appealing to me. Tom Verlaine was doing things that really spoke to me. He embraced a real love for a spirit in things Coltrane. Like jazz, there are things that only people who saw it live will ever get, or believe.
Over the years, a lot of people have tried to turn me on to Talking Heads. Maybe I'll have another go. I just remember the real seedy old space and the sound there always belonged to Television. What an exciting time that was.
I was working in Soho. The galleries on West Broadway threw their doors open at night and you could hear people like Julius Hemphill and Leo Smith playing on the sidewalks. Klaus Nomi would be on the bill at Max's.
David
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Originally Posted by TruthHertz
Seriously, that period of NYC was great for art of all kinds. I knew a doc who went to Rhode Island College of Design with Byrne. Byrne was an artist, first and foremost, and a musician second. That's the key to getting his work.
Tom Verlaine started out earlier in the 70's but came to attention about the same time as Talking Heads.
I remember watching their TV debut on the Dick Clark show in the late 70's, and what a weird performance it was. 180 degrees away from the Eagles and LA rock that dominated at the time.
I like them both--appreciate the guitar proficiency of Verlaine and Lloyd of course, but don't discount the influence of Talking Heads just because they were technically crappy guitarists. Their sound was mesmerizing and influenced a lot of folks. And when they went "polyrhythmic" with Fear of Music--well every up and coming band went polyrhythmic and world beat.
I saw them in 1981 when they toured for the Remain in Light album--their last full tour if I am correct. I met my future girlfriend at the show, so it has some special relevance for me.
It is one of the 3 times I have seen Adrian Belew as a supporting guitarist--with the Heads, Zappa and King Crimson.
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The film "Stop Making Sense" captures a lot of the post Remain in Light vibe, but without Belew. Alex Weir is funkier and fun in his own right... And Bernie Worrell is quite special too.
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Pete Ham from Badfinger. So unappreciated (for songwriting as well) that he checked out early.
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Maybe it'd be worth another post for musicians who were extremely successful and influential despite being rank amateurs at their instruments.
Luther Perkins could barely play guitar when he started with Johnny Cash--had to be coached to play "the right note" during recordings sessions. Yet he got an entire generation of country fans to start playing guitar.
One could make the case that Dylan couldn't sing or play and yet still became an idol. As I recall Dave van Ronk mentions that Dylan was a terrible guitarist when he first met him, then a few months later he was competent and could imitate everyone else's folk playing convincingly.
Brian Eno couldn't sing or play when he was hired by Roxy Music as what amounted to a sound engineer. Yet he went on to a very successful (understatement!) career, singing and playing many instruments on his own and others' records.
And Phil Collins--his first singing contributions to Genesis were not promising. Great drummer, but Grammy-winning vocalist?? Who would've guessed.
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Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
Here's my under-appreciated guitarist heroes list:
Richie Valens
Glenn Tillbrook
David Hidalgo
Cesar Rojas
Steve Winwood
Oscar Moore
Slim Gaillard
Leo Nocentelli
Vince Gill
George Benson
John
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Chuck Mangione recorded "Feels So Good" with Grant Geismann on guitar. To this day that record remains one of the all time perfect I-VI-ii-V guitar solos. Grant has also done some terrific solo recordings.
Louie Shelton, Jay Gradon, Denny Dias, Jeff Baxter......
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Originally Posted by TruthHertz
That said, both my brothers were big Talking Heads fans. (They liked Television too.) I enjoyed the early Talking Heads albums (yeah, albums) well enough. "Speaking in Tongues" had some nice funky grooves on it and I like that sorta thing, so I was good with it. But I still have Television records....
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I was a big Heads fan from way back, as mentioned. But I had never heard of Television until Bowie release his Ashes to Ashes album with Kingdom Come on it. Then I had to have the original Tom Verlaine version, and worked backward to Television.
Too bad they weren't more prolific...
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I never was a big Talking Heads fan, for my taste their songs and image are too goofy. But that OP video is pretty cool, I like the groove and the sound.
From that NYC era, my indisputable favs are the Ramones, that the band that really hit the spot. I guess I can put Johnny Ramone in the category of underappreciated guitar heroes. What he did is kinda art in itself. In one word- a stamina, that is a rare find, most guitar players spend time on developing lead pyrotechnics or being clever with chords.
The other one, recently passed away Malcolm Young. Another genius of power groove, who made AC/DC instantly identifiable by just strumming a chord.
In jazz, I gotta think, but one name is always Jimmy Shirley. I only heard one song on a compilation, but it was a perfect solo.
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Love the Heads, Television, Let's active, the Mats...I was lucky, my pops was young when this shot was cool, got me into it.
I think he'd say of all those cool cbgb groups, Byrne''s shot was lasting. It had a good beat, you could dance to it.
Fear of Music is one of my favorite records ever, if just for "Cities."
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Oingo Boingo the whole band but especially Steve Bartek on guitar.
I first saw then called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and they had a woman singer doing the whole Billie Holiday thing and Stan Ayeroff was the guitarist. Stan is another excellent Gypsy and Charlie Christian style guitarist. They did a lot of 30's music with this setup and their horn section. Then a few years went by and they were in the background of the L.A. scene. Then the 80's hit they were now just the Oingo Boingo and they were playing all the New Wave clubs, but now they had Danny Elfman as their frontman and Steve Bartek on guitar. Also the horn section all doubled on strange handmade percussion and Johnny Vatos on drums. I saw them a lot back then. They were a very tight band and Danny Elfman was incredible frontman using his theatrical background with Steve Bartek arrangements. After that they had their hits and started play concerts instead of clubs and to me their show didn't transfer well to a big stage, they really needed the audience interaction they had in clubs.
Then Danny Elfman a self-taught composer and arranger became on the the top film scorers in Hollywood with Steve Bartek as his orchestrator and right hand man. The Chinese restaurant I used to go to where I used to live in L.A. I'd see Danny and Steve in there all the time with score sheets and notepads going over music from sessions. Johnny Vatos Oingo's drummer has Oingo tribute band that still gigs, but he more known for the big bands he plays in, he's a hell of a drummer.
So Oingo had a couple great guitarist in Stan and Steve, then Danny as frontman and writer, then Johnny on drums. So an underappreciated band.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Even though I lived right down the street from CB's I never saw any of that cohort, I was a year or two too young and took it in vicariously from kids I knew who were a couple of years older. By the time I was old enough to go clubbing, those bands all were signed and on the road or the radio, but they were all kind of the home town heroes. In retrospect it's amazing how brief that epoch was, really just 2 years.
John
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Johnny gives a nice outlook on all those CBGB bands around 5:45
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Originally Posted by John A.
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Big, big fan of Marc Ribot's work with Tom Waits.
Robert Quine's work with Richard Hell was, to me, pretty special.
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Yep love Mark Ribot. Richard Quine also played with Lou Reed on many albums, and they were quite a good pair. Lou is another example of a rudimentary guitarist and technically poor singer who was quite effective at what he did and very influential. I would imagine his work with John Cale and Sterling Morrison was a big influence on the Heads and Television, among others.
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Originally Posted by darkwaters
John
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Dave Stewart. Always crafting parts for the song. For example, "Would I Lie To You" has a furious energy that is nonetheless succinct. We played a lot of '80s Pop back in the day, and Eurythmics was always a high point.
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Originally Posted by citizenk74
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I appreciate all the responses. If you can gather from the first post, I was really thinking of people who were not very technically proficient, yet were very influential in shaping the course of guitar in music through their creativity.
But, there are a lot of guitarists who are underrecognized.
Link Wray just came to mind...how many people did he influence with Rumble? Just a few notes, and suddenly everyone wanted to get a distorted guitar sound.
Marc Bolan--hardly a virtuoso, but the perfect tone and the perfect looks for the time.
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Originally Posted by John A.
Henriksen Blu 6 w/ gig bag
Today, 03:29 PM in For Sale