THE NAME OF THIS BAND IS TALKING HEADS

Let down by variable sound quality on the source recordings, The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads is otherwise a decent live summation of the early Talking Heads sound. Unlike Stop Making Sense, it doesn't present a whole show, rather than a grab-bag of snippets from shows ranging from 1977 to 1981. On the one hand, this does mean that the album lacks the cohesiveness that a single show would offer. On the other hand, it does give the listener the chance to hear how the band's live sound evolved alongside its studio advances. Frankly, I tend to find that the best material on here is the earliest - in particular, there's a dynamite version of Psycho Killer on here - whereas the group would struggle to recreate some of their later studio weirdness in a live context (though David Byrne gives it a good college try).

Recent rereleases of this expand the track list from an already overlong but just about bearable 17 tracks to a downright ridiculous 33 tracks, which I found downright impossible to sit through.