“More Songs About Buildings and Food”

Mon, 24 Jun 2002 20:00:00 +0000

On July 14, 1978, Talking Heads released their second album, "More Songs About Buildings and Food," a backwards exorcism of frozen-brittle guitars, smeared textures and super-ecstatic vocals. The record brought forth an essential darkness and didn't try to extinguish it. These were songs about emotions that lurk, about the secret part of ourselves that knows people can see right through us on buses, planes and subways, all sung by a disjointed, ferocious, manic, shivering guy named David Byrne. It was a kind of State of the Union address, examining the nation's health from a dozen different angles, including the sky. Now, almost 25 years later, what could be more relevant than songs about buildings and food and love and rage and sorrow and hope and fear?

Today, VH1 specials document the Heads' part in the CBGB years, centered on the downtown Manhattan club where they accompanied the Ramones, Blondie and others in a New York minute that inaugurated American punk. But the Heads were never really punk. For one thing, they looked like their Izod alligators should be wearing them. They were art-school geeks less given to slam-dancing than Polaroid experiments.

David Mamet

Tue, 11 Sep 2001 19:00:00 +0000

Playwright and screenwriter David Mamet knows what Joe Six-Pack likes, but he also knows how Joe Six-Pack lives and talks and what he needs, so much so that motivational experts actually use Mamet's film "Glengarry Glen Ross" -- which does for selling what skewers do for cherry tomatoes -- as a motivational tool. He once wrote porn, and maybe that explains how he mows down bullshit with his satire, yet still sells popcorn.

Mamet's machine-gun dialogue, both an "Airplane"-style joke on noir and a pitch-perfect copy of every overconfident asshole you ever met, is so beautiful yet utilitarian it's like holding a well-made steak knife when there's nothing to cook. You just admire it. His dialogue is so singular that it's called Mamet-speak, and when someone tries on the style, you know the clothes are borrowed.

Mamet's career began in the theater, where he moved from directing and acting to writing, crafting some of the finest plays of the late 20th century, including "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," "Speed the Plow" and "American Buffalo."

Salon.com > Paul A. Toth

“More Songs About Buildings and Food”

David Mamet