Remain in Light

by

Talking Heads

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Remain in Light is perhaps the Talking Heads' best album. Technically it is flawless, and as far as music goes, Remain in Light unifies electronica, African rhythms, guitar riffs and Bryan Eno's signature minimalism to hypnotic effect. The music is captivating and melodic - great dance music, but also great careful-listening music - and David Byrne's halting, discordant voice and thoughtful lyrics transcend each song to a more intellectual and compelling level. Ultimately, Remain in Light is a piece of art as well as a piece of music - Byrne and Eno have carefully layered music, vocals and thoughtful lyrics to create perhaps one of the best albums of the eighties.

The first three tracks are primarily dance tracks, but each one is subtly constructed and multi-layered. `Born Under Punches' combines repetition, African rhythm and a variety of eclectic instruments Tom Waits would be proud of. The end result is a dance track with a political slant: "Take a look at these hands... I'm a tumbler/ I'm a government man... I'm so thin... all I want is to breathe." `Crosseyed and Painless' is another dance track, however the weakest of the three. `The Great Curve' is perhaps one of the Heads' best work - it is an exemplary piece of music that showcases the great song-writing and compositional aptitude of the band's frontman, David Byrne. The Great Curve is a haunting, melodic and multi-layered work that stays with the listener for a long time - but, if you like, you can get up and dance to it because it's got one hell of a rhythm pounding through it.

The next five songs are exceptional, however the focus shifts from dance to more of an art-rock. `Houses in Motion' is brilliant, `Seen and Not Seen' is a spoken conversation piece and `Once in a Lifetime' was the big hit from the album, and has a very catchy and musical chorus. `Listening Wind' revisits the African elements of the album and is quite a haunting piece of music, and finally, the album anti-climaxes with the Eno-Byrne collaboration `The Overload', which fails to live up to it's initial horrific promise.

But altogether Remain in Light rivals Speaking in Tongues for the Talking Heads' best album. It exemplifies their artistic and musical ability that started to mature with the advent of the captivating Fear of Music, yet still retains the pulsating rhythm of More Songs About Buildings and Food and Talking Heads '77. Remain in Light is a unique listening experience - one that you can dance to and listen to all the same - and is a worthy addition to anyone's music library.

I have had an infuriating experience with Warner Music Group lasting a year, first, over the Rhino "Brick" box, and now the individual T-Heads DualDisc titles. My problem is physical damage to the discs, unnecessarily caused by obvious careless handling & packaging at the pressing plant.

In the "Brick", the unique white jewel cases come gouged and scratched, and the discs in both the Brick and individually-packaged titles, have fingerprints, smears, scratches, and pits.

This began last year when I purchased the "Brick" upon release. When I opened the set, every jewel case was damaged. These cases have a solid white rear panel, and can't be commercially replaced. They are not individually shrink-wrapped (which would eliminate the problem), and are obviously forcefully shoved into the box set's plastic outer shell at the plant, hence the damage.

It was worse inside each jewel case: All of the discs literally looked like they were used. Several were so badly artifacted they couldn't be read in any player or drive.

So, following web site direction, I e-mailed "Dr. Rhino". I received a reply, which directed me to return the set for replacement. As this is an expensive item, that entailed going to the Post Office to buy Insurance & Delivery Confirmation at my own cost. Annoyed, I decided to wait a few months, reasoning that perhaps the first production batch was bad and they would sell through. I stood in line at the USPS for 45 minutes, mailed it and waited. Six weeks later, the replacement showed up, carelessly packed into a crushed box, and the entire set was in worse shape than the first one. I e-mailed again, didn't get an answer for 2 months, and when I did, it was "send it back again"! The audacity of that response was pretty amazing: Why would I keep wasting my money and time to cycle their defective product?

So, I contacted the CD store where I purchased the original set. All the TH titles had been released individually, so the store manager & I decided we would change out the box for the separate titles, and he would return the bad ones.

I just received those yesterday: In five of the eight titles, all the same surface-damage artifacts. Several digipaks had their plastic disc retaining spindles broken with shards floating around inside. Also, inside each digipak, there is a 3.5"-square paper "DualDisc" tutorial insert. In some of the digipaks, it was tossed on top of the disc, where it rubs against the disc, an additional cause of surface damage.

So, the store manager is going to continuously order in each individual title and open them, looking for virgin discs. He is going to return all the defective discs, and repeat the process going until he finds five clean discs. Which is pathetic.

I've been thru three complete sets in one year, which means you are almost certainly going to run into this problem with your purchase. So, when you buy the Brick or any of the individual titles, please do not accept & settle for damaged product. Send it back to Amazon, e-mail Rhino, do whatever you have to do to get what you paid a lot of money for.

This would have never happened, or would have certainly been quickly corrected, when Messrs. Foos & Bronson, who founded Rhino, were in charge. Unfortunately, in 1998, Rhino was swallowed whole and "WEA-fied" by the odious Warner Music Group, where CEO Edgar Bronfman is obviously far more interested in extolling the virtues of DRM than he is in running a business that can deliver quality.