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Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Talking Heads — and ‘70s N.Y. music scene — deserve better than ‘Burning Down the House'
When an author decides to tackle the story of a popular and important band like Talking Heads, the contours of which are familiar to many of its fans, the remit should be to illuminate the unexplored corners, the hidden details and anecdotes that provide a more full-bodied narrative and ultimately bring the band into sharper relief than ever before. Unfortunately, Jonathan Gould has almost completely ignored this directive in 'Burning Down the House,' his new Talking Heads biography. This lumpy book, full of redundant stories and unnecessary detours that provide little illumination but plenty of needless bulk, lacks participation by the group's members and is not the biography that this great and important band deserves. As fans of the Heads already know, three of the four members met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design in the mid-'70s, children of privilege with artsy aspirations and not much direction. David Byrne came from Baltimore by way of Scotland, a socially awkward dabbler in conceptualist experiments with photography and a veteran of various mediocre cover bands. It was drummer Chris Frantz who enlisted Byrne to join one such band; bassist Tina Weymouth, Frantz's girlfriend and the daughter of a decorated Navy vice admiral, played bass. They were an anti-jam band and pro-avant; the first decent song they came up with was a shambolic version of what became 'Psycho Killer,' with Weymouth contributing the French recitatif in the song's bridge. For the emergent Heads, timing was everything. When Frantz signed the lease on a spacious loft on Chrystie Street in East Village in October 1974, he had unwittingly found the practice space where the three musicians would hone their craft. The loft was also a short walk to CBGB, soon to become the proving ground of New York's punk revolution and the Heads' primary live performance venue at the start of their career. In March 1975, Byrne, Weymouth and Frantz attended a gig by Boston's Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers at the Kitchen, an arts collective space in Soho, and it showed them a new way to approach their music. Richman, 'who dressed like a kid that everyone laughed at in high school,' influenced the band's preppy visual template and Byrne's clenched singing voice. Within a year of moving to the city, Talking Heads had found its look, sound and favored club. When Frantz bumped into Modern Lovers bassist Ernie Brooks in a West Village Cafe, Frantz inquired about keyboardist Jerry Harrison; Brooks gave him Harrison's number, Harrison joined the band and the classic Talking Heads lineup was complete. What followed was a contract with Seymour Stein's label Sire and the band's collaboration with producer Brian Eno, beginning with its second album, 'More Songs About Buildings and Food.' By the time the band released 1980's groundbreaking 'Remain in Light,' Eno's role had expanded beyond his production duties. He was now writing songs with Byrne, which created friction within the band. When Byrne allegedly reneged on songwriting credits (the album listed 'David Byrne, Brian Eno and Talking Heads,' rather than the individual band members), it created a rift that never healed, even as the band was selling millions of copies of its follow-up 'Speaking in Tongues' and the soundtrack to the Jonathan Demme concert film 'Stop Making Sense.' The final act was recriminatory, as Byrne commanded an ever greater share of the spotlight while the other members quietly seethed. The band's final album, 'Naked,' was its weakest, and Talking Heads dissolved in 1991, after Byrne removed himself from the lineup to explore outside projects. Gould does a serviceable job of telling the Heads' story in a book that arrives 50 years after the band's first gig at CBGB. Curiously, for someone who has tasked himself with explaining Manhattan's late '70s downtown renaissance, Gould regards many of the key players in that scene with derision bordering on contempt. Gould refers to Richard Hell, a prime architect of New York punk, as a mediocrity whose 'singing, songwriting and bass playing remained as pedestrian as his poetry.' Patti Smith's music 'verged on a parody of beat poetry,' while the vastly influential Velvet Underground, a band that made New York punk possible, is hobbled by its 'pretensions to hipness, irony and amorality.' Even Chris Frantz's drumming is 'exceptionally unimaginative.' Gould is also careless with his descriptors. Jonathan Richman's band displays a 'willful lack' of commercial instinct, the Heads assert a 'willful conventionality' to their stage appearance, Johnny Ramone is a 'willfully obnoxious' guitarist and so on. It's hard to fathom how a biographer intent on cracking the code of one of rock's seminal bands can do so with so much contempt for the culture that spawned it. An inquiring fan might want to go to Will Hermes' 2011 book 'Love Goes to Buildings on Fire' for a more nuanced and knowledgeable portrait of the creative ferment that made the Heads possible. As for a biography of Talking Heads, we are still left with a lacuna that Gould has unfortunately not filled. Weingarten is the author of 'Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.'
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
Rescue operation launched after eight migrants die off coast of Djibouti, IOM says
The UN migration agency said on Wednesday that eight migrants died and 22 others are missing after they were forced off a boat near the coast of Djibouti. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in a statement the migrants were part of a group of 150 who were forced by smugglers to disembark a boat and swim to shore on 5 June. The migrants were found in the desert by IOM patrol teams and taken to a migrant response centre. The IOM and authorities in Djibouti are continuing with a search and rescue operation to find the missing migrants. "Every life lost at sea is a tragedy that should never happen," Celestine Frantz, the IOM Regional Director for the East, Horn and Southern Africa, said. Frantz said that the migrants were "forced into impossible choices by smugglers who show no regard for human life." Thousands of migrants from African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries seeking a better life in Europe attempt irregular migration every year. People smugglers pack vessels full of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach continental Europe. Most of the vessels get migrants across the Red Sea to Gulf countries before they proceed further to European nations. Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa trying to reach Gulf countries for work, with hundreds of thousands attempting the route each year. However Frontex, the EU's external border protection agency, reported a 31% drop in illegal migrant crossings in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period one year ago. Related UK migrant crossings hit yearly high as pressure mounts on Labour government Seven dead as migrant boat capsizes off Canary Islands Crossings fell to nearly 33,600 with a decline reported across every single route leading to Europe. A significant drop, around 30%, was observed on the Western African route, which connects Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia and Western Sahara to Spain's Canary Islands. Similarly, a 29% fall was reported in crossings along the Eastern Mediterranean route, mostly leading to Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria from Afghanistan, Sudan and Egypt. The third sharpest fall, -26%, was on the Central Mediterranean route, from western and central Africa through Niger and Libya across the Central Mediterranean towards Europe, in particular Italy.
Euronews
11-06-2025
- Euronews
UN launches rescue operation after eight migrants die off Djibouti
The UN migration agency said on Wednesday that eight migrants died and 22 others are missing after they were forced off a boat near the coast of Djibouti. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in a statement the migrants were part of a group of 150 who were forced by smugglers to disembark a boat and swim to shore on 5 June. The migrants were found in the desert by IOM patrol teams and taken to a migrant response centre. The IOM and authorities in Djibouti are continuing with a search and rescue operation to find the missing migrants. "Every life lost at sea is a tragedy that should never happen," Celestine Frantz, the IOM Regional Director for the East, Horn and Southern Africa, said. Frantz said that the migrants were "forced into impossible choices by smugglers who show no regard for human life." Thousands of migrants from African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries seeking a better life in Europe attempt irregular migration every year. People smugglers pack vessels full of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach continental Europe. Most of the vessels get migrants across the Red Sea to Gulf countries before they proceed further to European nations. Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa trying to reach Gulf countries for work, with hundreds of thousands attempting the route each year. However Frontex, the EU's external border protection agency, reported a 31% drop in illegal migrant crossings in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period one year ago. Crossings fell to nearly 33,600 with a decline reported across every single route leading to Europe. A significant drop, around 30%, was observed on the Western African route, which connects Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia and Western Sahara to Spain's Canary Islands. Similarly, a 29% fall was reported in crossings along the Eastern Mediterranean route, mostly leading to Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria from Afghanistan, Sudan and Egypt. The third sharpest fall, -26%, was on the Central Mediterranean route, from western and central Africa through Niger and Libya across the Central Mediterranean towards Europe, in particular Italy.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
UN launches a rescue operation after 8 migrants die off Djiboutian coast
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The U.N migration agency said Wednesday that eight migrants died and 22 others were missing after they were forced off a boat near the Djiboutian coast. The International Organization for Migration, or IOM, in a statement said the migrants were part of a group of 150 others who were forced by smugglers to disembark a boat and swim to shore on June 5. The migrants were found in the desert by IOM patrol teams and taken to a migrant response center. The IOM and authorities in Djibouti are continuing with a search and rescue operation to find the missing migrants. 'Every life lost at sea is a tragedy that should never happen,' Celestine Frantz, said IOM Regional Director for the East, Horn and Southern Africa. Frantz said that the migrants were 'forced into impossible choices by smugglers who show no regard for human life.' Thousands of migrants from African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries seeking a better life in Europe attempt irregular migration every year. Smugglers pack vessels full of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach continental Europe. Most of the vessels get migrants across the Red Sea to Gulf countries before they proceed further to European nations. Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa trying to reach Gulf countries for work, with hundreds of thousands attempting the route each year.
11-06-2025
UN launches a rescue operation after 8 migrants die off Djiboutian coast
NAIROBI, Kenya -- The U.N migration agency said Wednesday that eight migrants died and 22 others were missing after they were forced off a boat near the Djiboutian coast. The International Organization for Migration, or IOM, in a statement said the migrants were part of a group of 150 others who were forced by smugglers to disembark a boat and swim to shore on June 5. The migrants were found in the desert by IOM patrol teams and taken to a migrant response center. The IOM and authorities in Djibouti are continuing with a search and rescue operation to find the missing migrants. 'Every life lost at sea is a tragedy that should never happen,' Celestine Frantz, said IOM Regional Director for the East, Horn and Southern Africa. Frantz said that the migrants were 'forced into impossible choices by smugglers who show no regard for human life.' Thousands of migrants from African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries seeking a better life in Europe attempt irregular migration every year. Smugglers pack vessels full of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach continental Europe. Most of the vessels get migrants across the Red Sea to Gulf countries before they proceed further to European nations. Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa trying to reach Gulf countries for work, with hundreds of thousands attempting the route each year.
