Talking Heads

Sean Albiez is an Independent Scholar and musician. He has published on electronic music, music technology, punk and post-punk. He is currently researching topics in electronic music history and has thirty years experience lecturing in popular music at UK universities and colleges. He is co-editor of Kraftwerk: Music Non Stop (Bloomsbury, 2011), Brian Eno: Oblique Music (Bloomsbury, 2016), and The Velvet Underground (Bloomsbury, 2022), and Contributing Editor (Music Technology) for the Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of Popular Music of the World. He produces electronic music as ghost elektron and - with Martin James - as Nostalgia Deathstar.David Pattie is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham, UK. He researches and publishes in a number of areas; popular music performance and culture, contemporary British and Scottish theatre, and the work of Samuel Beckett. He is the author of Rock Music in Performance (Bloomsbury, 2007), and the co-editor of the books Kraftwerk: Music Non Stop (Bloomsbury, 2011) and Brian Eno: Oblique Music (Bloomsbury, 2016), and The Velvet Underground (Bloomsbury, 2022).

• 1. IntroductionSean Albiez, Independent Scholar, Writer and Musician, UK and David Pattie, University of Birmingham, UK2. Talking Heads in ContextVictor Sarafian, University of Toulouse, France3. Downtown TV: Talking Heads, The Configuration of The Human and the Utopia of TelevisionTom Day, Executive Director, NACG/The Film-Makers' Cooperative, USA4. How Talking Heads Mean: The Band as Literature 1977-1980Peter Griffiths, Independent Scholar and Writer, UK5. Talking Heads in the Lonely City: David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and the Observational OutsiderJohn Encarnacao, Western Sydney University, Australia6. “This ‘aint no party”: Dystopia, Despair, and Fear, of MusicSteve Tupai Francis, Independent Scholar and Writer, Australia7. ‘I Zimbra’: An Imagined 'Africa' and the Advent of 'World Music'Timor Kaul, Independent Scholar and Musician, Germany8. We Are Human Samplers: Technology & Remain in Light (1980)Neil O Connor, University of Limerick, Ireland9. ‘Remain in Light’: From Africa To New YorkNigel Sanders, Independent Scholar, Writer and Musician, UK10. Radio On: Sampling Practices in The Bush of GhostsShane O’Sullivan, Kingston School of Art, UK11. ‘Once in a lifetime’: Listened as it Never WasAlejandra Sáenz López and Perfecto Herrera Boyer, Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), Spain12. A Suit That Never Fits: Subversions of Masculinity and Professionalism in the Audiovisual work of David Byrne and Talking HeadsRyann Donnelly, University of Sussex, UK13. ‘True Tales of The Big Country’: Talking Heads and the return to AmericaDavid Pattie, University of Birmingham, UK14. “What the hell have we become?”: Naked, neoliberalism and the 1980sToby Manning, Independent Scholar and Writer, UK15. Talking Covers: Approaching Talking Heads’ Transgressive Aesthetics Through Cover Versions Alexander Kroll, Independent Scholar, Germany16. David Byrne and the Poetics of CollaborationSean Albiez, Independent Scholar, Writer and Musician, UK17. The Man in the SuitDavid Pattie, University of Birmingham, UK18. As Above, So Below: Tom Tom Club and Talking HeadsMartin James, Coventry University, UK