'Talking Heads: 77'

This is the Talking Heads' first album. It was released, as you can guess, in 1977, two years after the band formally started performing under this name.

Their first four albums would all make the 1,001 list and it's tough as shit to find them in used CD bins.

Talking Heads fit into that category of band that I completely missed largely because I was born too late to necessarily get into them and I wouldn't exactly call their music "popular" in a way that would have forced them on me due to radio play. Looking back now, I should have been listening to them, Blondie, Roxy Music, Sonic Youth and others instead of the junk that I was filling my head with.

Talking Heads are considered "new wave," a genre of music that sprouted in the 1970s and became insanely popular in the 1980s. In fact, you would probably just call it pop music at a certain point. The music is defined by ... well, the music. Use of electronic noise and instruments including the synthesizer gave the genre its signature sound. As the synthesizer gained in popularity so did the genre. This is rather unusual. The electric guitar and its popularity did not ebb and wan with rock music or its popularity. The electric guitar was used by jazz musicians. You could probably say that rock music would've been just as popular with Elvis' swiveling hips or Chuck Berry's duck walk as it was with the electric guitar.

Fact is, new wave began in the clubs and dingy apartments in London and New York by the likes of the Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello, some punk bands, some ska bands and a whole host of people that were probably ignored by people going to Cyndi Lauper concerts. Unlike country, new wave got cool and it got huge. All thanks to a dumb band from New York City made up of art school kids.