Crosseyed & Painless

from the LP Remain In Light, Sire Records, 1980



Synergy is a very real thing, not just in the ramblings of psychedelic casualties or the adventures of Jem & the Holograms (they’re truly outrageous… truly, truly, truly outrageous), it exists both around us and inside of us---yes, even when you’re not using drugs. Synergy basically mirrors the axiom about there being some things which, as a group, exist much more successfully or wholly than the separate parts do alone, that something happens when the right ingredients are mixed together which could not be achieved without that combining of variables; I would argue that synergy is very much at work across this seminal album by art rockers the Talking Heads. Sure, it would be easy to just go along with the mostly accurate consensus of this record ultimately being the result of the band’s then-new obsession with African music, specifically afrobeat and highlife from Nigeria; the problem with that is, had David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison & Chris Frantz merely locked themselves inside a studio somewhere in NYC listening to Fela records and recording an album, we most assuredly would not have wound up being blessed with the majesty which is Remain in Light--- quite frankly, Tina would have probably wound up smashing her bass over Byrne’s head and we might not have had an album at all! Instead, there were a lot of moving parts which congealed to deliver this LP, among them being: recording the music in the Bahamas after Tina & Chris had enjoyed a vacation away from everybody, using Brian Eno as a producer again, as well as leftover influences from the excellent My Life in the Bush of Ghosts which Eno & Byrne had recently completed together, and the genre-based influences were widespread beyond just afrobeat (although, admittedly, its influence is perhaps most apparent), including hip-hop, early Funkadelic, gospel music, & all sorts of Caribbean stuff like calypso, biguine & reggae. The band disclosed in an interview with Mother Jones magazine that, due to tensions previously getting so high, they had crafted this whole album as a musical jam session without any lyrics being written first as an attempt at, “…sacrificing our egos for mutual cooperation…” This fact really explains and underscores the clear division you can hear between the earthy, organic music and the heady lyrics; even though they roll out in a stream of consciousness, Byrne’s words seem to reflect upon the band’s evolution, “…lost my shape, tryin’ to act casual; can't stop, I might end up in the hospital… changin' my shape, I feel like an accident; they're back, to explain their experience… isn't it weird, looks too obscure to me; wasting away, that was their policy… there was a line, there was a formula; sharp as a knife, facts cut a hole in us…” Although they never were best pals again, or anything resembling that (probably not even to begin with anyways), this purposeful re-evaluation of the way they recorded music together bought us all a couple more great Talking Heads albums after this, things which might very likely have never materialized had they not burned down the house, as it were. For fans, you must check out the youtube clip of them playing this song live in Rome in 1980: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8lFmsCXhg&feature=related
Set your face to ‘OMFG’ and enjoy!