Talking Heads: “Nothing But Flowers” (1988)
A rare video from Talking Heads’ last album, featuring not only Mr D Byrne and pals on the verge of splitting up, but also Mr J Marr fresh from splitting up The Smiths. And Ms K MacColl fresh from THAT Pogues duet, to boot. An pro-environmental song of sorts, but with a witty twist. It’s a kind of retort to Ms Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, where the protaganist laments Paradise being paved to ‘put up a parking lot’. Here, Mr Byrne’s character is in some kind of post-apocalypse rural Paradise, but misses the parking lots, shopping malls and billboards that went before.
Musically, it reminds me somewhat of The Smiths’ “Ask”: Mr Marr’s jangly summer guitar, Ms MacColl’s winning pop harmonies.
If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower
Here’s another Talking Heads song, the better-known “Once In A Lifetime”. As covered by Mr K Frog and The Muppets. Oh yes!
Finally, here’s fellow New York witty art-pop purveyor Ms Laurie Anderson, delivering a short spoken word piece about Women And Money. Proving her advice on how best to avoid accusations of pretension while making Art: take the mickey out of yourself. I can’t watch her these days without thinking of the UK comedienne Ms Jo Neary, who I saw in Edinburgh last year. One of her character routines is essentially ‘Laurie Anderson Orders A Bag Of Chips’. It was a pretty funny impersonation, though I did wonder if your average UK comedy audience would recognise a Laurie Anderson spoof. It’s not like she’s Tony Blair. Actually, Ms Anderson’s latest show, Happiness, includes her account of SELLING bags of chips, when she worked at a NYC branch of McDonalds, just out of wondering what it was like. In her (puts on Laurie Anderson voice)… de- tached…. ar-ty ec-cen-tric… vague-ly a-sexual… a-loof but po-litical… way.
You can see why I relate to her.
