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.
Get ready to anchor your groove with “Let There Be Love”, a brand-new boxed set collecting all six legendary studio albums from the architects of dancefloor rhythm, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.
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 the debut remains the classic.
The bubblegum smack of synth that introduces “Genius of Love” holds a special place in the hearts of Tom Tom Club fans. Bold and assertive, the instrumentals scorn the group’s debut self-titled record, trailing the typewriter clicks and subsequent ring of new waves beckoning to early hip hop trends asserted on “Wordy Rappinghood.” Now, 45 years after their debut, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club project is gearing up for the release of the three-decade boxing of “Let There Be Love” via Rhino – a 7LP and 6CD collection arriving July 24th.
The new set pulls from Tom Tom Club records such as Tom Tom Club (1981), Close to the Bone (1983), Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom (1988), Dark Sneak Love Action (1991), The Good, the Bad, and the Funky (2000), plus Downtown Rockers (2012). As a compilation, it provides a path for listeners to experience a near-complete oeuvre that links ’80s new wave tendencies to the inception of hip-hop’s dynamic flow.
Frantz, Weymouth, and Talking Heads started recording 1978’s “More Songs About Buildings and Food” and 1980’s “Remain in Light” “at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, a place Tom Tom Club returned to during the David Byrne-cited project’s ensuing hiatus a year later. It was there that Frantz and Weymouth began playing with Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Uzziah “Sticky” Thompson, and Tyrone Downie as the Compass Point All Stars – while also tapping Adrian Belew and vocalists Lani, Laura, and Loric Weymouth.
The Fat Angel Sings 