david byrne's voice in my head

Damn the man.

And his constantly shifting multi-layered poly-rhythms.

Art for art's sake (who's/whose art?) is what the heads talked about, and that's something I can appreciate. Investigating the frame and what it contains as well as what it doesn't just to make some crazy psychokilling post-modern punkadelic electricdiscodance music for paranoid androids. (Yes, virginia... "Radio Head" begat Radiohead)

Simply put, the music and the message are the same. None of it is left to chance, and all of it seems to have sprung wildly and uncontrollably from Byrne's head. I don't know how it got in there, but I'm happy it got out. And judging by the sound and fury of it, so is he. If i had that kind of stuff trapped in my brain I'd be happy to get it out too.

The strange thing is the grand idea of making paranoid nutty dance music always brings me back to Steely Dan when I consider it all. They made crazy paranoid slightly funkdafied west-coast guitar soloed studio smooth elevator music. About the craziest things you can imagine. Just like how fools recognize Steely Dan and know a couple of words and think to themselves "This is some nice background music" there is some feeling that the Heads are just some kinda dancey crap with a full-on strange as hell high-opinion of himself frontman. Both are just so incredibly wrong that it is laughable, man - ha ha!

In some sense, there are two camps of music. Unfiltered, unadulterated (see Ramones and the like) and supremely processed (like what I'm talking about here). And I love bits of both, but there is something about the conscious creation of levels within the music and considering the way it is perceived versus the expectations of the listener and all that really seems to get into my head these days.

So... that's that.