<img src ="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2d/TalkingHeadsRemaininLight.jpg/200px-TalkingHeadsRemaininLight.jpg">
Record is <a href ="http://www.sendspace.com/file/bj7fug"> here. </a>
Released October 8, 1980 on Sire Records.
#19 Billboard album/#21 UK album charts, 1980
1981 "Once in a Lifetime" UK Singles Chart 14
1981 "Houses in Motion" UK Singles Chart 50
1986 "Once in a Lifetime" Billboard Hot 100 91
Horn, voice,and percussion heavy arrangements leaning towards Non Western musical ideas (aka world I guess)?I know T Heads did this 'World' type of thing, but that was much later, like post 'Wild Life' stuff in the mid 80's.
<i>RIL</i> has some interesting electronic and spatial arrangements, but what puts RIL specifically in with Ladysmith Black Mambazo 'Graceland' vocals or the tribal 'Rhythm of The Saints' stuff Paul Simon did?
The production on 'Light' is just right. Comparing this album to Paul Simon is a tough sell for me.
From the video, it looks like they've hired musicians to actually play the songs live while the four of them kinda hold their instruments in front of them.
The greatest album review ever written appeared in the Lowell Connector (UML school newspaper) circa February 1993. Here it is, in its entirety (to the best of my memory):
Peter Gabriel - Us
Remember about 4 months ago I reviewed this album, and grudgingly gave Peter Gabriel credit for being "slightly cooler than Paul Simon"? I take that back.
"Houses in Motion"
"Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)"
The rest is nearly forgettable. "Seen and Not Seen" is good too, Eno-ambient-esque.
The African influence is much more interesting here than when Paul Simon does it. It's not all LBM... I hear Tunisian/North African elements too (notably on "Houses in Motion"). Most importantly, the continental African influence is just that, an _influence_. Not a wholesale "write a song with LBM" exercise. LBM could have put out <i>Graceland</i>, they didn't need Simon to help them.
My first recollection of playing a record immediately after we (technically my older sister) bought the album from the store ("Strawberries") was 'Little Creatures'. My sister played it two or three times and then put 'RiL' on. ('84/'85?)
"'Remain in Light' is better", she said.
It's 23/24 years later, and I still don't know how to talk about this album:
-Sometimes it sounds like 90s Fishbone; sometimes it sounds like 60s Stones.
-"We don't try to sell records".
-It has true Album Art; it's almost the 'Repo Man' sound track
-It sounds like the Grateful Dead jamming for 7 minutes; it sounds like a Bob Dylan folk tune without bridges or choruses.
-It sounds like Paul Simon, 5 years before Paul Simon had a sound
-It sounds like art; it has a sound, and it sounds like fun.
That's why we do these immersions: to finally listen to music that we'd been meaning to for years, but hadn't. And to share the music we love to the rest of rideside who had never heard it.
Just gonna throw it out there "Fear of Music" is <i>way<i> better than this one.
------------
<a href="http://www.JohnMcCain.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.johnmccain.com/images/downloads/banners/site_300x250.jpg" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt="JohnMcCain.com"></a>