The Talking Heads spawned a number
of worthy side projects and spinoffs—
David Byrne & Brian Eno’s My Life in the
Bush of Ghosts, Jerry Harrison’s The
Red and the Black—but none were as
funky, danceable, and flat-out fun as
Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth’s
Tom Tom Club. Conceived as
something of a larkish break from
the grandly realized intellectual
and artistic pretensions of the
Heads’ Remain in Light record, the
duo’s self-titled 1981 debut was recorded
in Barbados with Weymouth’s sisters and Adrian Belew and Steven Stanley from the
Remain in Light band, and not only spawned a couple of hit singles in “Genius of Love” and
“Wordy Rappinghood” but also became, in its own way, enormously influential. This was
the sound of downtown New York talking, listening, and rapping to the burgeoning hip hop
movement, a hybrid heard in a whole host of acts in the ‘80s and ‘90s, from Madonna to
Mariah Carey to the Beastie Boys and beyond. Weymouth and Frantz went on to record
several more albums under the Tom Tom Club moniker, but this remains the classic. For its
45th anniversary, Real Gone Music is proud to offer Tom Tom Club in a clear with green, pink,
and white splatter vinyl edition that matches the album’s colorful cover and pays homage
to its polyglot sound. Fun, natural fun, limited to 1200 copies!
