The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads

Release type:What's this?
live album
First released:
Mar 24 1982

Overview Edit

The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads is a double live album originally released in 1982. The first album featured the original quartet in recordings from 1977 and 1979, and the second album the expanded ten-piece Talking Heads that toured in 1980 and 1981. It contains live versions of songs that appear on Talking Heads: 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light.

The title of the album is both the group's response to the general public's constant and incorrect reference to the band as "The Talking Heads", and a reference to David Byrne's minimalist introductions to songs. The album opens with one such introduction: "The name of this song is New Feeling. That's what it's about."

An expanded version of the record, on CD in the United States for the first time, was released in 2004 by Sire/Warner Bros./Rhino. It duplicated the pattern of the original with the first disc featuring the quartet alone, and the second disc a ten-member band. Additional tracks from 1978 are among the eight extra songs on the first disc, and correct running order for the set from the larger band on the second disc.

The remastered & expanded edition of the album currently sits at number eight on the Metacritic list of all time best-reviewed albums.

The Overview appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_This_Band_Is_Talking_Heads. Portions of this Overview may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

This particular version Edit

Record label:
Catalog number:
SIR K 66 112
Release dates:
  • Aug 17 2004

Genres

Art Rock, New Wave, Pop. Vote on Genres

What do Amazon.com customers think?

5 stars Absolutely Essential, an old-school Walkman classic
This is one of the greatest live rock albums ever released, which always made me wonder: why the hell wasn't it ever released on CD? Fortunately, that omission has been corrected and then some.

I, like most of the other reviewers here, bought this on cassette in the early 80s, and listened to it over and over and over on my Walkman. Once CDs became the dominant form, it seemed like this release was just going to fade away and I started cautiously eyeballing the extra-long cassette with its extr…
Written by Clare Quilty
1 stars Don't throw out your tape yet!!!
Like just about everybody else who wrote a review, I have been waiting eagerly for decades for this to be released on CD. I'm glad that they finally did release it, but I have mixed feelings about the release. The additions to the first half from 1977-1979 are definitely an improvement over the LP or tape. The second CD of 1980-1981 adds some mediocre versions of songs in an attempt to reproduce the concert playlist. However, the CD was so long at this point (>77 minutes) that they axed the slow…
Written by VirtualCtor

Track listing Edit

Credits Edit

  1. composer

  1. performer

    1. Brian Eno [Keyboards, Synthesizer, Vocals (Background), Guitar]

Other versions Edit

17 tracks format: 1 x CD
release dates: Mar 24 1982 in [Worldwide]
view details
The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads 33 tracks format: 1 x CD
record label: Rhino / Wea
catalog number: SIR K 66 112
release dates: Aug 17 2004
view details
The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads 33 tracks format: 1 x CD
record label: Rhino / Wea
catalog number: SIR K 66 112
release dates: Aug 17 2004
view details
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