Groove Thang

In my last blog post I wrote that I didn’t listen to much new music and as I suspect a lot of older rock fans do, I spend more time listening to past faves or the root musics of rock and roll. Of these I spend more time exploring country as it is the closest to the music of the 1960s -2000s that I prefer. Guitar based, lyrics and melodies. It is, in its own way a very white music with only Negro spirituals and gospel informing the sound. Or to put it another way there is not a lot of groove to it.

As my wife would tell you I ain’t no dancing fool. I have friends that I have known over for over forty years and you know I have never seen them dance. I doubt they have seen me boogie either.

Blaze does not dance. He claims there is some sort of genetic information tied to a protein on the strand of his DNA that prevents him. He can no more dance than curl his tongue. He claims he has a certificate from the Online Genetic Institute of Kazakhstan that supported this. Apparently the certificate also asserts he is part Cossack which is quite possible as he can be a stroppy bugger and he used to have an affinity for Vodka.

His Brother Gatesy could be a superb dancer but it is hard to know. Too many months at sea means he staggers like an 18 year old at 12.10am on January 1 on dry land so it is hard to be sure. Enforced confinement to land would reveal the truth and as he is the only man I know with his own tuxedo I am sure he could cut a rug. On the negative side his favourite album remains Meatloaf’s “Bat out Of Hell” so who can say.

All of this has come up because I have just finished reading “Remain in Love”, the new book by Chris Frantz, drummer of the Talking Heads and partner in life and rhythm to the Heads bassist Tina Weymouth. It’s kind of a typical rock star autobiography and kind of not. In fact it is at different stages endearing, strangely uninformative, funny and instructional. I liked it but for me it never quite locks into the pocket like a good rhythm section can. Maybe it is because he is the drummer and his role, as he sees it is to be solid, not flashy in the background and so the tales aren’t so tall and ego filled.

One thing for sure though, Chris loves Tina now and always. You know those rock star biographies from bands like Motley Crue etc. where everyone just keeps talking about how many groupies they are nailing? Well Chris is the same but he just keeps going to bed with his wife. We are spared any details of course but he could write a course on living and working with your spouse. There is lots of good name dropping and he writes well about the joys and horrors of long tours, reaching star status and seeing your dream come true. The jibes for David Byrne are cutting and probably deserved but sometimes it seems to me that Chris is a nice guy who is coming along for the ride. He lavishes most of his praise on Tina and how well the Talking Heads worked when they came together. It would be great to have a little bit more music nerd stuff and a bit more bitterness to David who probably has appropriated more of the Talking Heads legacy that he deserves but this is the nature of both men.

 I never realised until reading the book was that all members of this band were from white middle even upper middle class America and yet more than anyone else they brought polyrhythms and world music sounds to 80s rock. As Chris Frantz opines of his band, The Talking Heads were post punk even before punk.

It is surprising because this unique sound, core to the Talking Heads appeal is a sound that I and a lot of white boy rockers were initially so resistant to because it moved away from guitars and 4/4 rock beat. We had been railing against disco, had no real knowledge of disco’s roots in soul and funk and had little interest in dancing. It has been said that the late 70s hatred of disco was somewhat racist in origin. I could see that in the United States but I am not sure that was the case in Australia. I think more likely that there was a mix of misogyny, homophobia and a fear of the different involved.

Anyway at the time I had little interest in The Talking Heads and other bands that were quick to move on from the straightjacket of traditional punk and rock and roll. I can remember hearing the B-52s first album on a car stereo as we recovered from a morning’s surfing in the Coolum council caravan park back when you could sneak in without paying and the place was mostly empty in winter because grey nomads did not exist. I can’t remember who played it. I suspect it was one of the gang whose nickname was both Nat and Tonsil. And no, I cannot recall why he had earned either nickname now. Tonsil was far more adventurous than I was with his music tastes having long ago, in our terms at least, moved from AC/DC and Led Zep to the Sex Pistols and The Clash  and was now exploring a new galaxy of post punk sounds including the B-52s and the Talking Heads. I told him I thought the B-52s were absolute shit and largely thanks to Psycho Killer the Talking Heads were only a little better and retired back to my Australian Crawl and Cold Chisel tapes. Definitely slow on the uptake.

Too be fair to me this music was different and unfamiliar though. It was limber, it flexed, suddenly there was a female side to it, and it wasn’t about guitars and macho things.  I had zero cultural history and attachment to it. Now days I would say I had no context. And back then surfing had already moved from part of the 60s counter culture to, as I think it is now, only second to golf as the ultimate middle class white male pastime. Forget counter culture we couldn’t have conformed more if we tried.

And so I lived on in my Aussie pub rock bubble with the occasional foray into English Synth pop like Tubeway Army or Ultravox to trouble me.

Eventually I moved to an area with more of everything. In the meantime things had been changing. Like Punk, hard core Disco had moved on and bands like The B-52s and New Order had hit the charts so music that was all about rhythm and a dance groove was not so foreign anymore. 

Four or five years later another great music collector served as a conduit for me to catch up with some fine new music. Kelly owned one of the important surf shops on the Sunshine Coast and the mixed tapes he played in the shop were master pieces to misquote Ben Folds.

This time I tried to be more open minded to bands and sounds I had not heard. I listened to post punk English bands like The Teardrop Explodes, Magazine, Heaven 17, The Psychedelic Furs and The The, puzzled over the transition from The Sex Pistols to P.I.L., The Jam to The Style Council,  enjoyed ska music beyond Madness, tapped into the 60s garage rock that helped power bands like The Hoodoo Gurus, The Stems and REM. I finally heard Joy Division and Television who until then had slipped by me.

And of course by this time The Talking Heads had released the Remain in Light and Speaking In Tongues albums and dumbos like me finally caught on to where they were at.

Six songs from the 80s I now play that I once had no time for.

Planet Claire – The B-52s

Woodbeez- Scritti Politti

The Girl Wants to be With the Girls – The Talking Heads

 Wordy Rappinghood- Tom Tom Club

Infected- The The

Ant Music – Adam and the Ants

Still don’t get Depeche Mode though!