Talking Heads drummer Chris Franz and bassist Tina Weymouth formed Tom Tom Club to continue exploring the polyrhythmic experiments conducted on the Heads' Remain in Light release. On this self-titled debut, the husband-and-wife team mixed urban and arty new wave elements, generating two mammoth dance-floor hits. "Wordy Rappinghood" is a study in art-school rap as it percolates along with the help of funk beats and synthesized bleeps. The brilliant "Genius of Love" gives props to James Brown. A slow, slinky funk masterpiece, it includes call-and-response vocals, a rap, and a lilting melody. "L'Elephant" is a pure delight, rollicking like a nursery rhyme from some ultrahip daycare center. The band also tackles the doo-wop standard "Under the Boardwalk," though it feels like a mere novelty item. Still, Tom Tom Club proves that David Byrne wasn't the only genius in Talking Heads. --Steve Gdula
Review by Ted Mills
"Who needs to think when your feet just go?" So sings Tina Weymouth on Tom Tom Club's debut album. And rightly so -- this was the sunny break in the islands that the rhythm section of Talking Heads wanted, and they got it, away from the art-school intellectualism that had resulted in the classic but understandably very unsunny Remain in Light. This album, a collection of funky, sprightly little tunes recorded in Barbados with Weymouth's sisters, hubbie and drummer Chris Frantz, and several of the members of the Remain in Light tour group: Adrian Belew, guitar, and Steven Stanley, percussion. Ironically, hoping to toss off a fun album under the radar, the group came out with an album, the best tracks of which, "Genius of Love" and "Wordy Rappinghood," became enormously influential throughout the '80s and '90s, eventually getting ripped off wholeheartedly for Mariah Carey's "Daydream." The album also marks a point in music history when the New York alternative scene and the burgeoning hip-hop scene were influencing each other, when both parties were on to something new. It's a snapshot of a time, and still holds together fairly well.
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