Talk:Remain in Light

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[edit] need a little help

"Featuring funky African rhythms, the album became an influential post punk, world music and New Wave recording". come on people. AFRICA is a CONTINENT. and like any other continent, it's home to a mindboggling range of musical idioms.

now i know for a fact that david byrne was a fan of fela kuti (originator and high-priest of Afro-beat, in nigeria, west african you could say), AND IN FACT david byrne has even said that The Great Curve was supposed to sound like a fela kuti arrangement.

and the Great Curve horn section does kind of resemble fela's afrobeat in form. except the tempo, rhythm, and instrumentation is completely different.

anyway, the "featuring funky african rhythm" passage is LOATHSOME. david byrne has even RANTED against the non-category "world music".128.119.132.42 19:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, good for David. He rants about the CIA breeding AIDS as well. Hmm. Is this the same Fela Kuti who accosted Paul and Linda McCartney in Lagos in 1973 and accused them of stealing his music? Yes, the paragraph was egregious. Fantailfan 11:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV issue

There's a whole paragraph here which seems badly written, and contains some POV issues, especially - If one plays back the LP at a speed lowered by approximately 20%, the music becomes more expressive and dancable, and for a foreigner that I am the English lyrics become understandable, but the sound of the vocals and some instruments become slightly un-natural. Cnwb 03:29, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The "…and for a foreigner that I am…" portion has already been removed. However, regarding the tape speeds etc. I'd like to know the source(s) of information for that entire paragraph. Byrne's voice doesn't sound as though it's in a different range from any of his other recordings. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 06:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I can hear the words fine at normal speed, and the music is perfectly danceable (apart from "The Overload", that is!). Whoever wrote that is probably just unused to African music. it's no more "too fast" than are Fela Kuti or King Sunny Ade. Delete, as OR and POV.Totnesmartin 16:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and removed the paragraph in question. It's been over two years and no one has defended the text. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The album cover art description is completely bogus

The album art was done at MIT's Architecture Machine Group, since some of the researchers in that group knew some of the members of the band. (The album liner includes unexplained thanks to a group of user IDs, that being most -- see later -- of the members of the ArchMach team at the time.)

The front cover may in fact have been a concept they came in with; I wasn't involved in that particular image.

However, the back cover -- red planes over mountainside -- was a pre-existing image I created as part of a class project, writing and demonstrating an image-collage tool. The colorized planes and the mountainside were pre-existing images; I overlaid one on the other, somewhat further distorting the colors at the same time.

This is a serious sore point for me, both because they failed to tell me that they liked the image and wanted to use it -- the first I discovered this was when the album hit the store shelves -- and because, to add insult to injury, it turned out that my user ID was left off the list in the liner notes.

I decided it wasn't worth either pursuing legal action or threatening to blackmail the band ("Talking Heads Rips Off Student's Art, film at 11!"), since if they had actually had the courtesy to ask I would have been delighted to let them use this picture.

The important thing here is that the description of the cover art's origin is a myth -- "not verifiable" in Wiki terms. I'm sure you don't want to include all this detail, so what I would recommend is that the paragraph be rewritten to say that the images were produced by the students and staff at ArchMach (incompletely credited in the liner notes; the userID "JKESS" should be added to that list) and _selected_ because they had this set of meanings to the band.

-- Joe Kesselman, keshlam-nospam at comcast dot net (yes, -nospam is part of the user name) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.33.1.37 (talk) 17:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

The paragraph, as currently written, does not cite any sources and I propose that we remove it unless/until we can verify the claims. But by the same token, if you wish to add this new information to the article, then we need some way to verify what you've described. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
In the meantime, someone has provided a reference for the Tina Weymouth story.[1] (Perhaps both stories are true, e.g. they picked a particular, pre-existing image based upon Tina's background) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 04:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need more articles, one for each song

I think this album is legendary enough for it to warrant an article for every song, explaining what they mean. Thoughts? Jbeckwith (talk) 21:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polyrhythms

There are several mentions of African polyrhythms in this article. I can't hear any anywhere on the album. It's very rhythmic, percussive, etc. but I have been unable to find a single example of two distinct, simultaneous meters anywhere. Unless someone can come up with a good reason not to, I'd like to remove any mention of polyrhythm. 85.134.222.139 (talk) 18:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. I'd heard before that the album had 'polyrhythms' on it, but never thought any more about it because I don't know what that word means. I note that the polyrhythm (god is that word hard to spell) statements are all uncited, so maybe it would be better to fact-tag them instead of deleting them. Also, watch out for original research. Alexwoods (talk) 18:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Clarifying the above observation from 85.134.222.139. The Another matter of potential dispute would be "African." I don't have a specific reference (perhaps its already in the article). Byrne and especially Eno had been listening to and were impressed with Fela Kuti at the time and the polyrhythms which are on the album would probably be more accurately described as African "influenced." Also many years ago I remember reading an interview with one of the other band members who was surprised that the percussion tracks he or she had layed for the album were being called by Byrne as African influenced because the band was unaware of this when they were playing them... keeping in mind the percussion sessions were a collaborative effort among the musicians present. Unfortunately the source material here is only my own memory of the interview. The liner notes for Speaking in Tongues refer to Remain in Light as having "fluidity, ...rhythmic emphasis, ...ethnic (predominately African) influences". Curiously, this description regards what is retained in Speaking in Tongues. Speaking in Tongues doesn't strike me as primarily African, or ethnic. There are many influences audible, but I would argue with the liner notes. Byrne himself may have been influenced by ethnic music at the time, but what was created for Speaking in Tongues was more likely a unique hybrid of many then current influences. - Steve3849 talk 22:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding polyrhythms. I agree that they are scant, but listen to track 6 "Seen and Not Seen;" isn't the lead keyboard that comes in at 0:49 in a different time signature? Still, even if it is, this one example does not constitute the entire album being polyrhythmic. - Steve3849 talk 23:03, 25 March 2008 (UTC)