Return of the Son of Long Time, No Listen

As the originator of this thread, I'm jumping back in as Delvin has so admirably taken the baton and run with it.

Like my first few, these are all TP artists pulled from my vinyl collection. Minimum of 10 years by my estimate since last listen. Only 5 this time. Rated on a 1-10 scale of how much I enjoyed listening this time. After this, I'll move on to my CD collection.

Elvis Costello - Goodbye Cruel World - 8
For some reason, I thought this album was really weak and have avoided it since first listen many years ago. What a pleasant surprise! Definitely not EC's best, but I really enjoyed this. Outside of "Only Flame in Town" I didn't remember any of these songs. That one is very smooth and I thought I remember the rest of the album being in that vein. It doesn't rock like This Year's Model, but it's not the pile of mush that I thought it was. There was really just one song that I hated ("I Wanna Be Loved") but the rest was very good.

Jerry Harrison - The Red and the Black - 7
Another winner! I've always loved "Worlds in Collision" and that's what I remembered before spinning this one again. Oh, and some song where he talks about being in a traffic jam and getting over it. Anyway, there is not a ton of variety here, but what it does it does well. Having Belew on hand doing his thing is always a good thing for this style of music.

Ranking Roger - Radical Departure - 6
This is one that I expected to like better, but it had too many bland moments. But the up-tempo numbers are really good, especially "So Excited." Maybe it's unfair on my part, but I want this style of music to be fun, and there are too many un-fun moments as Roger tries hard to be serious. If that weakens the album for me, then that's probably more my fault. Anyway, I'd still rank this album slightly above average on my scale.

Graham Parker - Squeezing Out Sparks - 7
I bought this at Wax Trax in Denver on a work trip in 2012 or so. I listened once, decided it wasn't for me, and shelved it. Now 14-ish years later, I wonder what was wrong with me back then. I enjoyed the first song, then the second, and then kept telling myself it's going to go to crap any minute now, but that never happened. I enjoyed it from end to end. I also own The Real Macaw, which based on my unreliable memory, I thought I liked better than Squeezing Out Sparks. We'll see.

The Swingers - Counting the Beat - 5
When I first heard the title song about 25 years ago or so, I knew I needed to own this album. I was also on a huge Split Enz kick at the time. Well, you can only listen to that one song so many times. The rest of the album does not live up to its lofty standards, but there are some good moments here, including a pretty cool instrumental. This is mostly fun, high energy music. Phil Judd and Bones Hillman have certainly played on better albums with better bands.

Graham Parker played the little movie theater/performance venue a block from my house a couple weeks ago. It was a solo acoustic show marking the 50th birthday of his debut Howling Wind, so it leaned heavily, but not exclusively, on songs from that album. He was in good voice the entire show, which included lots of banter and story telling, as is customary with most of the codgers who play the Wildey. The place was maybe 3/5 full, which I guess wasn't bad, but could've been better if St. Louisans didn't have the weird belief that the Mississippi is a trickle when crossing from Illinois to Missouri, but wide as the Pacific going from MO to IL, unless one is going to the east side strip clubs.

Anyhow, Graham declared the Wildey to have the best sound of any place he'd played on the tour, which made my hometown chest swell with pride.

I think "Waiting for the UFOs" was the only song he played from Squeezing Out Sparks, but I'll have see if anyone posted the setlisr to remember for sure.

I had all these on vinyl, and recall nothing about any of them except for the Parker release… that was a notch above the rest, with good critical reception. You picked a perfectly bland set of releases, and they’re terrific to discuss!!

The E.C. got so many bad reviews that it would scare anyone away from listening.

Funny that you’re ranking Ranking Roger. Would you rank Roger, the 80s synth funk artist?

I think there was a video for counting the beat? That whole affair just felt like a cardboard cutout.

Jerry Harrison I’d like to listen to… I may have bought it played it once then moved on. But I remember really liking some of the things on the Casual Gods lp, like Bobby and Man with a Gun

Thank you, Zoo, for rating my desultory efforts as being "admirable."

Just the mention of Wax Trax lifts my heart. I still do my best to visit that store when I'm in Denver.

> The E.C. got so many bad reviews that it would scare
> anyone away from listening.

Including one from the artist himself! In the liner notes to the Rykodisc reissue: "Congratulations! You've just purchased our worst album."

Huh. I was such a big Talking Heads fan, also loved the Byrne, and Tom Tom Club albums, by never bought any Jerry Harrison. There was just no buzz surrounding them whatsoever. College/public station that played the hell out of the Heads/Byrne/TomTom avoided the Harrison albums like radioactive waste. Never saw any reviews, and don't remember any videos either. I'd see his albums sitting forlornly in the bins, untouched.

So I should check 'em out. Esp w/Adrian Belew on board?! Why didn't someone tell me!

Did these albums get any traction elsewhere? Maybe I missed it, or it wasn't in my town. How did you guys discover them, just cuz you were picking up anything Heads-related?


Correction: I certainly would have read the TP review. Just re-read it, and doesn't make those albums sound too exciting.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2026 10:58AM by MrFab.

> College/public station that played the hell out of
> the Heads/Byrne/TomTom avoided the Harrison
> albums like radioactive waste.

Had there been a band called Radioactive Waste, I bet those college/public radio DJs would've played them.

As for me, I remember reading only two reviews for The Red and the Black — both of which tied it in with The Tom Tom Club and David Byrne's dance score for The Catherine Wheel. (I'm sure one of those reviews was in Rolling Stone.) The main thrust of those reviews was that the creative talent in Talking Heads was much more evenly shared — that the band wasn't David Byrne plus sidemen (and woman). That statement must've been enough to make me shell out the green for The Red and the Black, because I sure don't remember KRCC playing any of Harrison's solo work either. (I've played his tunes a couple of times on 20FR.)

Jerry Harrison's solo work got more attention with Casual Gods, the album and subsequent band, though I've never really known for sure if Casual Gods was really a band or if Harrison just thought band branding might give Walk on Water a bit more oomph. The Red and the Black definitely was lost in the shuffle of the 1981 wave of Talking Heads side projects. Bush of Ghosts and Catherine Wheel got a lot attention because at that time David Byrne was considered to be the geniusest genius out there geniusing, and the albums were experimental to boot, which is just what a geniusy genius ought to have been doing! Tom Tom Club were the cool married couple and they made a fun dance record that contained what probably ended up being the most successful of all Heads-related songs - "Genius of Love" barely made it into the top 40 at the time, but it almost instantly became a sampling staple and I'm sure has buried Chris & Tina under more royalty checks than the Heads ever did, (even though that was probably also a very comfortable pile of cash, although I'm not sure, given the Heads' contentious clashes over songwriting credits).

But Jerry was always just kinda considered the utility player, the fourth guy in the band, the one that looked vaguely like an elf, the Ernie Brooks of Talking Heads. While Byrne's albums were Important Artistic Statements and Tom Tom Club was a dance music smash by the adorable married couple, The Red and the Black was just the album the other guy did because he had to do something while the important people in the band were out impressing people. Hell, Harrison could've billed himself as the Other One, but then Stephen Morris & Gillian Gilbert would've had to come up with a different project name when they found themselves in the same position a decade later when New Order decided to do the side projects thing. It was enormously unfair and I've gotten way more indignant on Harrison's behalf than I intended on a Friday morning. And it's more than a little hypocritical on my part, given that God knows how long it's been since I've given The Red and the Black a listen. Decades, for sure. Physician, heal thyself! Guess I'd better dust it off and give it a spin. (Metaphorically - I'll stream it, since it would take an explorer on par with Vasco da Gama to locate anything in my mound o' physical media these days.)

I do like Casual Gods and Walk on Water quite a bit, and "Man With a Gun" is one of my favorite Heads solo songs. I think I definitely rank it higher than any Byrne solo number I can think of off the top of my head (pun only slightly intended), anyhow.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2026 03:43AM by breno.

Delvin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Had there been a band called Radioactive Waste, I
> bet those college/public radio DJs would've played
> them.
>
There was a band called Radwaste that played in the LA area some years back. Made up of mostly Trotsky Icepick alumni the band sported a 4-piece drum corps. Supposed to be great live.

I'll just say that I have a four-post thread that lasted a week on "The Red + The Black!" But in all fairness, I felt that the fractalizing of TVLKING HEVDS that occurred following their frenzied peak on "Remain In Light" was an across-the-board smash. Listening to "Tom Tom Club," "The Catherine Wheel" and "The Red + The Black" hardly made me chomp at the bit for The Heads to re-group. In 1981, we had no assurances that it would happen! Ultimately, I would have preferred that it had never happened.

Each of those albums I can admit to preferring [several times over, actually] to any of the pallid TVLKING HEVDS albums that eventually followed. I've just done a CD cull and all of the post-1980 studio albums except for the one half decent one, "Speaking In Tongues," [Thanks, Bernie!] got the hook. But even among the admittedly glorious 1981 solo trilogy, my heart and mind belongs to "The Red + The Black." I have enjoyed it ever since it came out and I was immensely glad that one of my friends made a tape of the album and sent it to me at the time, because as was noted in this thread, no outlets were playing it! While the college station I was listening to heavily that year played Tom Tom Club and Byrne's solo effort a lot I couldn't say the same for Jerry! I got a copy of the LP. Years later, the Japanese CD. And recently, the 2xLP original/dub mix! On red + black wax, no less! I have all the other Harrison CDs from Casual Gods. I enjoy them a lot! But it's not "The Red + The Black!"

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2026 02:33AM by Post-Punk Monk.

My kid is 20 and a bit of a crate digger and picked up the The Red + The Black a couple of years ago and likes it a lot. We'd got tickets to the Harrison/Belew Remain in Light concert but then Bluesfest got cancelled, as did most of the associated sideshows. In the end I was grateful to get a refund.

Side note….Aitch, tonite I was scrounging around an old thread of fave 1980 releases and you mentioned Tactics ‘my Houdini’… who I am totally unfamiliar with.

Streaming it just now… very enjoyable! ( I guess that counts as a different type of long time, no listen?)

Glad you're giving it a listen. They're still going but are based in France these days. A new album came out recently.