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Chris Frantz - C@nt Or Not?

Started by TheMonk, July 22, 2020, 10:57:49 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jockice

Quote from: PaulTMA on July 26, 2020, 04:33:30 PM
Unless of course he was really annoying.

i can absolutely see that.

New page pulp friction.

famethrowa

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on July 26, 2020, 02:55:32 PM
This Must Be The Place ( To Have A Dump)

( You have to imagine David Byrne stood in his hotel bedroom, looking at his bed with a mischevious look on his face, whilst above his head is a " thinks" balloon depicting an image of a hotel maid looking sad, whilst the bed shows evidence of Byrne's bowel movement, with wavy lines coming off it, and flys flying round it)

oh you got the stink lines and everything!

popcorn

Quote from: TheMonk on July 22, 2020, 11:08:09 AM
More of the same below from The Guardian. I always felt a bit sorry for Frantz for some reason, but he can fuck right off.
https://t.co/xiu9yy6us1

I find this strange, from that article:

QuoteOn a later Talking Heads tour, Byrne hired a second bassist, Busta Jones, to undercut Weymouth's work. According to Frantz, the treatment of his wife throughout the industry expressed blatant sexism. Ziggy Marley, whose music the couple later produced, was particularly condescending towards her. It wasn't only from men. "'If you think the guys are bad,'" Frantz says his wife told him, "'You should have heard the chicks.'"

First, the use of the word "undercut". I find that a slightly strange term here. I assume they mean it like undermine and perhaps even meant to write undermine. Or maybe this is a really common term in this context and I am thick?

Second, that tour was for Remain in Light, which has two bass parts on songs like Born Under Punches, so I always assumed that's why they had a second bassist on stage. It can't simply to have been to punish Weymouth somehow, that sounds bizarre.

Tom Tom Club is definitively the worst music of all time, so I think it's pretty clear the significance that David Byrne had to the Talking Heads.

The Crumb

Quote from: popcorn on July 27, 2020, 12:30:45 AM
Second, that tour was for Remain in Light, which has two bass parts on songs like Born Under Punches, so I always assumed that's why they had a second bassist on stage. It can't simply to have been to punish Weymouth somehow, that sounds bizarre.

Yeah, it also ignores the fact that they had additional percussionists, guitarists and singers on stage. It was obviously to fill out the sound, not some weird power play.

Stoneage Dinosaurs

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on July 27, 2020, 04:49:31 AM
Tom Tom Club is definitively the worst music of all time, so I think it's pretty clear the significance that David Byrne had to the Talking Heads.

Turdy Crappinghood

peanutbutter

Tom Tom Club get a pass for Mariah Carey's Fantasy if nothing else

DrGreggles


They once had a one night stand. Byrne's sperm was Lost In Frantz, inspiring the Bonnie Tyler song.

PaulTMA

Enjoying the audiobook so far, but a little bit unconvinced by the revelation that Damon Albarn served Frantz in a Notting Hill bar during their tour with the Ramones, due to him being about 8 or 9 years old at the time.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: PaulTMA on July 29, 2020, 01:08:02 PM
Enjoying the audiobook so far, but a little bit unconvinced by the revelation that Damon Albarn served Frantz in a Notting Hill bar during their tour with the Ramones, due to him being about 8 or 9 years old at the time.

Just came in to post this.


Chriddof

Didn't Albarn work as bar staff somewhere in the late 80s? I remember him mentioning in an interview that he was working in a hotel in London doing that job when he was a drama student. Once he had to serve U2 - Damon said that Bono was a prick, but The Edge was polite, apparently. Frantz might be mixing up the '77 Ramones tour with a later encounter from about 1987 / 88.

Sebastian Cobb

Adam Clayton, presumably served unnoticed.

Chriddof



CLAYTON: Damon Albarn gave me this spoon with my coffee! If it wasn't for him, I'd have gone insane.

(Bono grabs it, chucks it away)

CLAYTON: Damon's spoon!

(Spoon hits Mr Burns)

MR BURNS: Parklife!

PaulTMA

I'm about halfway through this now.  I don't suppose it will be much of a spoiler to mention that he just seethes with resentment against Byrne throughout, can barely find a good thing to say about him.  I'm at the stage of openly laughing at every negative thing he says against him.  Great fun.

The Crumb

Quote from: PaulTMA on August 01, 2020, 04:12:52 PM
I'm about halfway through this now.  I don't suppose it will be much of a spoiler to mention that he just seethes with resentment against Byrne throughout, can barely find a good thing to say about him.  I'm at the stage of openly laughing at every negative thing he says against him.  Great fun.

Out of interest, how is Jerry Harrison portrayed? He seems to have wisely avoided weighing in on all this.

popcorn

QuoteFrantz covers the band's history and other facets of his life in phenomenal detail, combining his "good memory" with Weymouth's thorough datebooks that listed specific show dates and locations down to the number of encores they performed at each stop. "It was important to me that things be factually correct," Frantz offers. "I noticed I made one mistake."

For the record, he points out that Damon Albarn wasn't the night barman at the Portobello Hotel in London in 1977, when Talking Heads visited. The year was actually 1988, when Tom Tom Club's founding couple ran into Albarn, who is quoted as telling them, "I have a band." (Albarn went on to become Blur's lead singer, then co-founder of Gorillaz.)

https://www.popmatters.com/talking-heads-chris-frantz-interview-2646442618.html

kngen

Just read that Guardian article - he confirms my long-held prejudices about Johnny Ramone, Patti Smith and Lou Reed, so I'm inclined to believe everything he says about Byrne (probably because he's from Dumbarton, too - strange place).

Jockice

Quote from: kngen on August 01, 2020, 04:38:26 PM
Just read that Guardian article - he confirms my long-held prejudices about Johnny Ramone, Patti Smith and Lou Reed, so I'm inclined to believe everything he says about Byrne (probably because he's from Dumbarton, too - strange place).

Hey. don't diss my hood.

PaulTMA

Quote from: The Crumb on August 01, 2020, 04:22:16 PM
Out of interest, how is Jerry Harrison portrayed? He seems to have wisely avoided weighing in on all this.

So far, he gets accused of moaning a lot.  Can't wait until the actual breakup period.  I really want to hear him address the asking Adrian Belew to replace Byrne stuff and possibly his denial of a Tom Tom Club writing credit, in spite of Frantz's whines about being denied credit by Byrne.  Somehow it's just so easy to take Byrne's side in everything based only on a hunch and the fact that Frantz and Weymouth sound like total misery.

kngen

Quote from: Jockice on August 01, 2020, 04:50:08 PM
Hey. don't diss my hood.

Sorry. It's nicer than Port Glasgow, I'll give it that.

Jockice

Quote from: kngen on August 02, 2020, 09:08:43 PM
Sorry. It's nicer than Port Glasgow, I'll give it that.

Which isn't really saying much.

PaulTMA

Just finished this the now.  So good and constant laughs pretty much from as soon as TH become a signed band.  Alternate titles I could have suggested would have been Boasts And Bitterness or David Byrne Ruined Our Lives.  He reveals that Tina too is working on her own book.  Remain in LOLs.

Are the laughs based on not really giving a shit whether the stuff is true or not, and feeling that all the characters are equally ridiculous? My reading of the thread is that it started by asking who was thd cunt in this story and has concluded they all are.

I don't disagree but wonder how such a group of dysfunctional individuals made so many good records. Maybe there are certain kinds of bands that work well that way, e.g. Velvet Underground?

greenman

Quote from: The Crumb on August 01, 2020, 04:22:16 PM
Out of interest, how is Jerry Harrison portrayed? He seems to have wisely avoided weighing in on all this.

So undermined by Adrian Belew he doesn't have the confidence to show himself in public anymore.

PaulTMA

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on August 05, 2020, 01:29:17 AM
Are the laughs based on not really giving a shit whether the stuff is true or not, and feeling that all the characters are equally ridiculous? My reading of the thread is that it started by asking who was thd cunt in this story and has concluded they all are.

I don't disagree but wonder how such a group of dysfunctional individuals made so many good records. Maybe there are certain kinds of bands that work well that way, e.g. Velvet Underground?

It's definitely unintentionally CBGB Spinal Tap for the largest large part.  Frantz appears to lack the self-awareness to realise he is falling down the age-old trap of using a memoir for score-settling and self-aggrandisement, plus he completely fails to make himself sound likable in the process.  I still haven't read Mike Love's book, which I understand is far gentler than one would expect, but the sheer amount of sourness towards Byrne and the determination to document all of his specific contributions to TH and Tom Tom Club ("did you know I also wrote part of that classic synth riff on Genius Of Love"?) are the kind of thing you'd expect for him, or the Brian May character in the Queen film bizarrely mentioning he wrote the Bohemian Rhapsody solo, even though everyone has seen the song officially credited to Freddie over the years.  Perhaps had Frantz could have used this opportunity to claim the upper hand had he been able to destroy Byrne's defective behavior with actual wit, but this never takes place.  There's an interesting anecdote about meeting Byrne's parents at their house for the first time which is told in such a way which to me only paints Frantz as plain nasty, in spite of all his numerous musical celb chums who you get to hear about his experiences with.

There are many great anecdotes and indeed Byrne comes across terribly, but Frantz is so curmudgeonly with his thinly-veiled intentions that the book becomes increasingly laughable. At the same time, I couldn't help but shrug and feel some possibly misplaced sympathy for Byrne. Like I said, this is enormous fun to listen to - his drawling narration is perfect for conveying the actual toxic waste levels of bitterness.

McChesney Duntz

Tina's book, if that is indeed happening, can't but be even more venomous than her spouse's. She wasn't exactly reticent about dissing Byrne in public, even in TH's heyday (one of her most famous utterances had something to do about Byrne, Eno and Bowie winding up isolated and alone with only each other to talk to; she also slipped a not-especially-veiled dis of Byrne into the Tom Tom Club's "Wordy Rappinghood"), which, it must be said, never endeared her to me too much. Sounded like a lot of passive-aggressiveness in that whole ensemble. Which may have stoked the creative fires a bit, but it still leaves a sour taste.

popcorn

This book has the effect of making you sympathetic to Byrne because Frantz's scorn for him is so one-sided and simplistic. It's so easy to imagine the other side of the story.

For example, Frantz says how Byrne and Eno kicked him and Weymouth out of the control room at some point while they were working on Remain in Light. "There are too many people in the room!" said Eno, apparently. Of course it's easy to imagine how this could be infuriating, to be chucked out of the control room while you're working on your album. But I can also imagine a thousand reasons why it might have been the right call - too many cooks is a real thing, and Eno and Byrne clearly had a good collaborative energy going, and considering the magic of the end result it probably paid off to give them some space.

He just makes everything suspiciously simplistic, and considering how much he complains about people not being enugh credit, he's weirdly ungenerous about Byrne and Eno's obvious contributions.

popcorn

It's also hilarious how Jerry Harrison is barely mentioned at all.

PaulTMA

The book also fails to acknowledge that
Spoiler alert
the Heads' 'No Talking, Just Head'
[close]
even existed and was considered
Spoiler alert
an unmitigated disaster
[close]
.