Actually, I don’t like cherry pies, or cherries in any recognizable form, but I dig “Nothing But Flowers” by Talking Heads. It’s almost frightening to think that this video is more than twenty years old, and yet it feels like it could have been made last year, or even some time in the near future. The lyrics “… and as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention” ring far too true.
This song is a milestone on the journey of Talking Heads from being (relatively) harmless entertainment to entertainment with a social conscience. There had been political and social themes in their early work (such as the sublimely minimal, whimsical and utterly perfect “Don’t Worry About the Government“, and the disturbing and perhaps prophetic “Listening Wind”), but following this they started to show much more of their social and political concern in their music and performances–or at least the concerns of David Byrne, the principle writer. They didn’t last much longer as a band. Byrne eventually but inconsistently refocused his undeniable genius on the intellectually rigorous silliness that made Talking Heads so great, but it was too little, too late, and we can only lament the loss of the greatest swivel/groove band the world has seen, as illustrated in “Found a Job“, “Slippery People“, and the elemental “Psycho Killer“. But the bloom was off the rose. You can’t be the grooviest punk in the world and an angry young man at the same time.
