There aren’t a whole lot of husband & wife teams to be found in rock-n-roll, which isn’t terribly surprising because it’s difficult enough to build a successful marriage without also attempting to be professionally involved together. That said, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz (longtime rhythm section for the Talking Heads) make it look easy; calling themselves Tom Tom Club, the couple signed to Island records and crash landed at Blackwell’s heady commune in the Bahamas (Compass Point), bringing in players from all over the Caribbean to help craft this entertaining slice of post-modern mayhem. In fact, none other than Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was supposed to produce, but in typical fashion he never showed up---not that it seemed to matter much. This dropped at a time when all the lines between varying musical genres were blurred, allowing for the intermingling of all styles present, constructing new soundscapes which totally defied categorization. The lyrics are all in French, but I found a translation which essentially breaks it down like this: an elephant & hippopotamus, disguised as people, walked to a town where they came across children fleeing and crying, and when they asked what the deal was they were told that it was a war, and all the men were killing each other; wisely, some owls told the pair to shed their human costumes.
