Tom Tom Club [Untitled first album]

I had somehow never acquired this previously. It is the first album by this Talking Heads side project, in which Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz get to play with other musicians and make strangely funky music. I think this is one of those records that everyone else in the world has already so I will not say too much about it, but it is a fun listen – insistent rhythms coupled with almost naïve sounding group vocals. 'Wordy Rappinghood' and 'Genius of Love' are the two totally amazing standout tracks – to know them is to love them – and possibly the rest of the record is a bit redundant, but these two are definitely worth the price of admission alone.

If you have ever seen Stop Making Sense you will recall the bit in it where Talking Heads are replaced by the Tom Tom Club for one song ('Genius of Love'). You may also recall Chris Frantz's embarrassing white-man-gets-funky vocal additions, about as dreadful a vocal contribution as if the next album by [insert name of kewl rapper here*] were to have your dad on guest rapping**. Well thankfully on this one they managed to give him the dud microphone, so you only really get his drumming.

I get the impression that while people love this album they do not really have that much time for later Tom Tom Club records. I am not quite sure why this is the case – are the later records that bad, and if so why? Maybe Weymouth and Frantz just ran out of creative steam, or maybe they had better collaborators on the first album. Or maybe I am completely wrong, as I have never actually heard later Tom Tom Club records. What do you think?

In other news, I understand that the Tom Tom Club are playing Dublin quite soon… do you reckon this would be worth going to? this suggests yes

wordy pandahood

* I am so behind the curve these days that I genuinely do not know the currently hip rappers.

**Reader's Voice: "My father is actually Chuck D of Public Enemy, so I don't see what the problem is".

An inuit panda production