Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live (Remastered) Talking Heads

• 1 Psycho Killer (September 1975 Demo) 04:15
• 2 Tentative Decisions (September 1975 Demo) 04:37
• 3 No Compassion (September 1975 Demo) 03:35
• 4 Warning Sign (September 1975 Demo) 04:52
• 5 I'm Not in Love (1976 Demo) 04:26
• 6 Thank You for Sending Me an Angel (1976 Demo) 02:05
• 7 The Book I Read (1976 Demo) 03:42
• 8 I Wish You Wouldn't Say That (1976 Demo) 02:56
• 9 Love Goes to a Building on Fire (1976 Demo) 03:18
• 10 Happy Day (1976 Demo) 03:43
• 11 Artists Only (Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, New York, NY, 8/17/76) 04:55
• 12 Psycho Killer 04:19
• 13 Warning Sign 02:56
• 14 Psycho Killer (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:31
• 15 Sugar on My Tongue (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:15
• 16 Thank You for Sending Me an Angel (CBS/Columbia Demo) 02:01
• 17 I Want to Live (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:50
• 18 I Wish You Wouldn't Say That (CBS/Columbia Demo) 02:09
• 19 The Girls Want to Be With the Girls (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:04
• 20 Who Is It? (CBS/Columbia Demo) 02:20
• 21 With Our Love (CBS/Columbia Demo) 04:09
• 22 Stay Hungry (CBS/Columbia Demo) 04:29
• 23 Tentative Decisions (CBS/Columbia Demo) 02:42
• 24 Warning Sign (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:33
• 25 I'm Not in Love (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:52
• 26 The Book I Read (CBS/Columbia Demo) 02:53
• 27 Love Goes to a Building on Fire (CBS/Columbia Demo) 02:35
• 28 No Compassion (CBS/Columbia Demo) 03:41
• 29 Artists Only (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 05:26
• 30 1, 2, 3 Red Light (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 02:02
• 31 Happy Day (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 03:44
• 32 Don't Worry About the Government (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 03:19
• 33 Psycho Killer (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 05:15
• 34 Love Goes to a Building on Fire (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 03:55
• 35 Thank You for Sending Me an Angel (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 02:50
• 36 With Our Love (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 05:14
• 37 Pablo Picasso (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 03:06
• 38 I'm Not in Love (Live at Max's Kansas City, New York, NY, 10/9/76) 03:57
• 39 No Compassion (Live at the Jabberwocky Club, Syracuse, NY, 1/26/77) 05:40
• 40 New Feeling (Live at the Jabberwocky Club, Syracuse, NY, 1/26/77) 03:45
• 41 Psycho Killer (Live at the Jabberwocky Club, Syracuse, NY, 1/26/77) 04:52
• 42 A Clean Break (Let's Work) [Live at the Jabberwocky Club, Syracuse, NY, 1/26/77] 05:15
• 43 Sugar on My Tongue (Live at the Jabberwocky Club, Syracuse, NY, 1/26/77) 04:09
• 44 I Wish You Wouldn't Say That (Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, New York, NY, 8/17/76) 03:14
• 45 Take Me to the River (Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, New York, NY, 8/17/76) 03:38
• Total Runtime 02:47:04

Info for Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live (Remastered)

Talking Heads members Chris Frantz and David Byrne met as students at Rhode Island School of Design, and made music in a college band called The Artistics. In spring semester 1974, the band gathered in Frantz’s Benefit Street apartment to record a demo tape. The cassette featured tracks soon to be classics in the Talking Heads discography: “Warning Sign” and “Psycho Killer.”

This collection for RSD Black Friday includes this newly discovered material alongside an additional eleven demo and live tracks recorded by the original trio lineup of the band (Bassist Tina Weymouth alongside Frantz and Byrne) in 1975 and 1976.

After relocating from Rhode Island to New York City in early 1975, Byrne, Frantz, and Weymouth began recording early demos with their late friend, J.R. Rost, to get an idea of what they sounded like; those recordings open the collection. That September, at the request of Mark Spector, they recorded an album’s worth of demos at CBS Studios. The session didn’t result in a contract, but it did preserve early versions of songs that would form the backbone of Talking Heads’ first two albums: “Don’t Worry About The Government,” “The Book I Read,” “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel,” and “Stay Hungry.”

Tentative Decisions also uncovers a cache of live recordings from 1976 and 1977, capturing the band at key moments. The October 1976 performance at Max’s Kansas City took place just a few weeks before the group met with Seymour Stein and signed to Sire Records. A few months later, the January 1977 show at The Jabberwocky Club in Syracuse would be among the last by the original trio before Jerry Harrison joined in March.

The earliest recordings on Tentative Decisions reach back to The Artistics, the band Frantz and Byrne formed while they were students at the Rhode Island School of Design. Recorded in 1974 at Frantz’s apartment on Benefit Street in Providence, the demo represents the earliest known recordings of “Psycho Killer” and “Warning Sign.”

In the liner notes, Frantz says The Artistics’ aspiration to become the RISD house band—entertaining friends with covers of The Kinks, Motown, and Al Green—changed when they began writing their own songs. “One day, David knocked on the door of the painting studio Tina and I shared,” Frantz recalls. “He played us the first verse and chorus of ‘Psycho Killer,’ which sounded promising.” Byrne asked Weymouth, who spoke French, to write lyrics for the bridge while Frantz added some verses—and so it began.

Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live continues a series of archival releases launched last year as Talking Heads began celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary. One of the most influential groups of their era, Talking Heads helped shape modern music and expand the creative possibilities of the music video—most recently with the premiere of a new “Psycho Killer” video directed by Mike Mills and starring Saoirse Ronan.

Talking Heads

Digitally remastered

At the start of their career, Talking Heads were all nervous energy, detached emotion, and subdued minimalism. When they released their last album about 12 years later, the band had recorded everything from art-funk to polyrhythmic worldbeat explorations and simple, melodic guitar pop. Between their first album in 1977 and their last in 1988, Talking Heads became one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the '80s, while managing to earn several pop hits. While some of their music can seem too self-consciously experimental, clever, and intellectual for its own good, at their best Talking Heads represent everything good about art-school punks.

And they were literally art-school punks. Guitarist/vocalist David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz, and bassist Tina Weymouth met at the Rhode Island School of Design in the early '70s; they decided to move to New York in 1974 to concentrate on making music. The next year, the band won a spot opening for the Ramones at the seminal New York punk club CBGB. In 1976, keyboardist Jerry Harrison, a former member of Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers, was added to the lineup. By 1977, the band had signed to Sire Records and released its first album, Talking Heads: 77. It received a considerable amount of acclaim for its stripped-down rock & roll, particularly Byrne's geeky, overly intellectual lyrics and uncomfortable, jerky vocals.

For their next album, 1978's More Songs About Buildings and Food, the band worked with producer Brian Eno, recording a set of carefully constructed, arty pop songs, distinguished by extensive experimenting with combined acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as touches of surprisingly credible funk. On their next album, the Eno-produced Fear of Music, Talking Heads began to rely heavily on their rhythm section, adding flourishes of African-styled polyrhythms. This approach came to a full fruition with 1980's Remain in Light, which was again produced by Eno. Talking Heads added several sidemen, including a horn section, leaving them free to explore their dense amalgam of African percussion, funk bass and keyboards, pop songs, and electronics.

After a long tour, the band concentrated on solo projects for a couple of years. By the time of 1983's Speaking in Tongues, the band had severed its ties with Eno; the result was an album that still relied on the rhythmic innovations of Remain in Light, except within a more rigid pop-song structure. After its release, Talking Heads embarked on another extensive tour, which was captured on the Jonathan Demme-directed concert film Stop Making Sense. After releasing the straightforward pop album Little Creatures in 1985, Byrne directed his first movie, True Stories, the following year; the band's next album featured songs from the film. Two years later, Talking Heads released Naked, which marked a return to their worldbeat explorations, although it sometimes suffered from Byrne's lyrical pretensions.

After its release, Talking Heads were put on 'hiatus'; Byrne pursued some solo projects, as did Harrison, and Frantz and Weymouth continued with their side project, Tom Tom Club. In 1991, the band issued an announcement that they had broken up. Shortly thereafter, Harrison's production took off with successful albums by Live and Crash Test Dummies. In 1996, the original lineup minus Byrne reunited for the album No Talking Just Head; Byrne sued Frantz, Weymouth, and Harrison for attempting to record and perform as Talking Heads, so the trio went by the Heads. In 1999, all four worked together to promote a 15th-anniversary edition of Stop Making Sense, and they also performed at the 2002 induction ceremony for their entrance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Through the 2010s, Byrne released a number of solo and collaborative projects. Tom Tom Club continued to tour, while Harrison produced albums for the likes of No Doubt, the Von Bondies, and Hockey. (Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music)

This album contains no booklet.