![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/truestories.jpg?resize=218%2C398&ssl=1\" "\\"Poster")
Talking Heads was one of those bands which I probably never would have picked up on — not on my own, anyhow. Predictably, in retrospect, it took a nudge from my brother.<\/p>\nTalking Heads was one of those bands which I probably never would have picked up on — not on my own, anyhow. Predictably, in retrospect, it took a nudge from my brother.<\/p>\n
Or rather, a couple of different nudges. One of the later ones came in 1986, with the release of the musical film True Stories<\/em>. Mike pointed me to a couple of reviews and then, somehow, he managed to corral a bunch of us to accompany him to Philadelphia to see it one night.<\/p>\n Nominally, it’s a Talking Heads film: the group released a not-quite-soundtrack album containing its versions of the songs. But in the film — written and directed by, and “starring,” the Heads’ lead singer, David Byrne — with few exceptions, the songs are performed by other people in the cast. For instance, a voodoo priest (played by gospel\/R&B star Pops Staples) sings a song called “Papa Legba” to bring love and good fortune to Louis (The Dancing Bear) Fyne (played by John Goodman).<\/p>\n The general idea for the film came to him, Byrne has said, from tabloid stories — how they might represent people from a single town.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For intance, in the fictional town of Virgil, Texas, which the film purports to document, there’s a woman who never gets out of bed; a woman who lies about, well, everything<\/em>, in fantastic pathological bursts of imagination; and a man — Goodman’s character — who has been sufficiently frustrated in his search for matrimony that he does a local TV commercial seeking a mate. (“Call 844, w, i, f, e, that’s 844-WIFE”).<\/p>\n One of the set pieces in the film is the song “Puzzlin’ Evidence,” which seems appropriate for this political season (and appropriately apolitical for Running After My Hat<\/em>). In the YouTube clip below, you can see a preacher (played by John Ingle) as he details for his congregation the suspicious connections among dozens of mid- to late-20th-century cultural touchstones: the TV networks, the JFK assassination, the CIA, Elvis Presley, the Vietnam War…<\/p>\n (By the way, that’s The Lying Woman who stands up uninvited, before the music starts, and testifies about John Kennedy, and “60 Minutes” and how “Mike Wallace wants my body…”)<\/p>\n The music itself begins at around 3:18 or so — just when the choir gets to its feet. (Lyrics below.)<\/p>\n