Every Scratch, Every Click, Every Heartbeat: Talking Heads - "The Big Country" and "Cities" - Page 3

And then, as if that weren’t enough, I could — having by this point scared off the passenger in the aisle seat — have gained access to the seat next to Byrne and moved on to “Cities” from Talking Heads 1979 album Fear of Music. Thereupon I’d be regaling the taciturn head with — well, his own — absurd and deadpan wit mostly in the form of hilarious one-liners, couplets, and quatrains that can be split up periodically as unwanted one-sided nattering as the narrator in the song attempts to “Find a city / Find myself a city to live in”:

• Look over there!... A dry ice factory
  A good place to get some thinking done

• Down El Paso way things get pretty spread out
  People got no idea where in the world they are
  They go up north and come back south
  Still got no idea where in the world they are.

• Did I forget to mention, to mention Memphis
  Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks

Of course, after all, I didn’t attempt any intonational turbulence. It wasn’t because of any fear of music, or, for that matter, fear of more songs about buildings and food. It was because it was a stupid idea, and because I was afraid that Byrne would, beneath the brim of his Panama hat, give me one of those “leave me alone” looks which would really turn out to be mean: are you one yet another of those assholes who really think it’s funny and original to look over my shoulder and quote from “The Big Country” and “Cities”?

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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