Every Scratch, Every Click, Every Heartbeat: Talking Heads - "The Big Country" and "Cities" - Page 2

In a more down-to-earth and non-concert setting, during the post-“My Sharona” period when everyone who was going to Get the Knack had already gotten the power pop gem and taken as much of the arrogant group and their derivative Beatlesque slavishness as they could take and the Knuke the Knack backlash was in full swing, I once saw the once overconfident leader Doug Fieger uncharacteristically crestfallen and disconsolate. We were at LAX, and I was flying to Detroit to see relatives in Michigan — Fieger is from there — and he was sitting waiting to board with his girlfriend. It was of course no time to bother him. In any case, I thought the Knuke the Knack campaign was an overreaction. Whatever the group was doing in playing around with its image, I still enjoyed its music enough, albeit lightweight at times, to buy its second 1979 album ...But the Little Girls Understand. I was no little girl by any means, but I understood to certain extent.

Moving forward to 1985, I applied a lot of understanding, and some restraint, to my brush with David Byrne of Talking Heads. We were both on the same flight from Los Angeles to New York, waiting for the plane to depart, when I was going to the Live Aid Philadelphia Concert. I was seated with my friends when Byrne came down the aisle — he was looking dapper during his Panama suit and hat days — when our eyes met, briefly on his part, giving me one of those “leave me alone” glances. It seemed like I was the only one on the packed plane who recognized him anyway, and he gave the impression he preferred that I was out of the picture, too. Fine. I was a respectful Talking Heads fan, and from what I had read I knew he was somewhat reticent and aloof — odd for a Talking Head — so I was satisfied just to have a fortuitous look-see and leave it at that.

But then my immature little musical mind started up with some madness, misery, and much imagination. First, in the form of the loping tongue-in-cheek “The Big Country,” a song about flying over the country, from 1978’s More Songs About Buildings and Food. The track evolves from a country-lilted arrangement driven by Jerry Harrision’s steel guitar to some “Psycho Killer”-style rhythms replete with “Goo goo ga ga ga / Goo goo ga ga ga” burble, a sea change from earlier, more wholesome, if not entirely earnest verses:

I see the shapes,
I remember from maps.
I see the shoreline.
I see the whitecaps.
A baseball diamond, nice weather down there.
I see the school and the houses where the kids are.
Places to park by the fac'tries and buildings.
Restaurants and bars for later in the evening.
Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas

And then comes that chorus where, as the plane is suitably up and away over fly-over territory (or even the coastal area - give me inland, small town country living these days) I’m obnoxiously crouching over Byrne at his window seat and quoting the chorus:

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I couldn't live like that, no siree!
I couldn't do the things the way those people do.
I couldn't live there if you paid me to

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
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