Tom Tom Club

Tom Tom Club and its eponymous first album in 1981 were created by Chris Frantz (Frantz is pronounced like the country) and Tina Weymouth (Weymouth is pronounced Way-muth, as in Plymouth). Graduates from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD, pronounced Riz-dee) in 1974, they moved to New York City where they founded Talking Heads as a trio with David Byrne in 1975. In 1977, they were joined by ex-Modern Lover Jerry Harrison. After five years of touring and four albums written and recorded with Talking Heads, Chris and Tina were signed in 1981 to Island Records by music industry legend Chris Blackwell, one of the first people to fully appreciate the value of a great rhythm section in and of itself.

Warning sign of things to come. . . Tom Tom Club’s first fresh single, a kooky hip-hop mix of free-styling rap over a funky groove, “Wordy Rappinghood” went into the top of the charts in seventeen countries. More remarkable still was their next single “Genius of Love,” which was promptly scooped up by deejays and pioneer turntablists worldwide, all having by now recognized the Tom Tom Club as their own. Bubbling up from the underground, with dozens of unsolicited remixes and versions (notably, GrandMaster Flash & The Furious Five’s “It’s Nasty/Genius of Love”), “Genius of Love” was a hit all around, in the dance clubs and on the R&B dance charts, earning Tom Tom Club (Island and Sire) a gold album in 1982.

Whatcha gonna do when you get out of jail? “Genius of Love” has, like Mary Shelley’s monster, a life all of its own. For Chris and Tina’s first production outside of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love” was unexpectedly sampled again in 1987 in a remix by Hank Shocklee to make “Tomorrow People,” from the Grammy Award-winning album Conscious Party (Virgin), a No. 1 for Ziggy Marley and The Melody Makers. In 1995, Mariah Carey also had a huge No. 1 with her own version of the song, “Fantasy.” It continues to be frequently sampled by many various artists, including Tupac Shakur and Puff Daddy’s roster of Bad Boy rappers and remixers.

On the line again. . . Tom Tom Club’s second album, Close to the Bone (Island and Sire), released in 1983, contained the underground successes “The Man with the Four-Way Hips,” “Pleasure of Love,” and a fresh take on the soul classic “Under The Boardwalk.” Although these failed to find the mainstream success of their predecessors, club members have good memories of their first tour with Talking Heads in Japan, Europe, and behind the Iron Curtain in 1982. Chris and Tina, along with Bernie Worrell (Woo Warriors; music director/composer of Parliament/Funkadelic), Steve Scales, Lani Weymouth and Laura Weymouthwho sang with Tina and Brian Eno as the Sweet Breaths on Talking Heads 1978 ‘Air’especially remember when they had the wild experience of performing “Pleasure of Love” on the television show Soul Train, a youthful fantasy become giddy reality. Although Close to the Bone is now out of print (it was never issued on CD), it remains part of the history of today’s fresh cult, e.g., in 1995, “Pleasure of Love” was sampled and reprised with a new lyric by rapper L. L. Cool Jay for Tommy Boy as “Hot Hot Hot,” and again by Bad Boy Puff Daddy.

Let’s go suboceana A third album, Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom, was a complete departure, stylistically, for the Tom Tom Club. Released in 1988 in two versions (Fontana and Sire/Repriseboth out of print), this album, which includes “Don’t Say No to Love,” “Challenge of the Love Warriors,” and the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” (featuring Lou Reed playing guitar) was more esoterically minimalist rock than funky hip hop, despite several songs produced by the now legendary Arthur Baker (Planet Rock). It reflected major changes taking place. For Lani and Laura personally, it meant a shift away from singing with the club part-time to full-time motherhood. Laura’s co-write of “Suboceana” with Chris and Tina was a happy success on the dance floor, but with a new baby of her own, nothing could entice her to join a tour that began with a well-remembered three-week residency at CBGBs. Chris and Tina veered off in search of a new form, surprising everyone who saw the quartet perform with their raw, stripped-down, ‘garage band’ sound, several years before the grunge movement would re-popularize that 60s sound. A tour of Europe followed, culminating in a super tuned-in, turned-on invitation from The Grateful Dead to open for their New Year’s Eve extravaganza at the Oakland Colosseum on December 31, 1988.

Kiss me when I get back! The 1989 residency tour that followed was special. Every venue in which the Tom Tom Club set up residency, whether for five nights at Chicago’s Cubby Bear or three weeks at Los Angeles’ Second Coming, was renamed for the duration of its stay “Tom Tom Club,” with popular local unsigned bands opening. No subsequent tour for the group has matched the consistent success of the Tom Tom Club-residency tour, which created instant CBGBs.-meets-Studio 54 party scenes for sharing with artists of every ilk.

We feel the call of the wild In the summer of 1990, just for fun, Tom Tom Club joined Debbie Harry, The Ramones, and Jerry Harrison to create the “Escape from New York” tour through the U.S. and Canada. A Lollapalooza concert concept before its time, the lucky and the hip who saw this show have never forgotten it. We believe in miracles By early 1991, Chris and Tina had built the Clubhouse, a painting and music studio, over their garage on Cock Island, Connecticut. From the new studio came the fourth Tom Tom Club album, Dark Sneak Love Action (Sire/Reprise), released in 1992. A free mix of experimental rock and dance, its dozen songs were a return to funky form, featuring “Sunshine & Ecstasy” and a fresh take on Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing.” The 1992 tour favorites live also included “Love Wave,” “Who Wants an Ugly Girl?” and “Irresistible Party Dip.” Babies are born; they accept the bizarre In 1993 and 1994, Chris and Tina again took time off from Tom Tom Club to produce other artists. First was Angelfish (Radioactive) for Shirley Manson, whose song “Suffocate Me” brought Butch Vig to full attention: he simply had to have her in his new band, Garbage. Following that, Chris and Tina worked to produce the platinum-selling Rey Azucar (Sony Latin America) for the talented, Grammy Award-winning artists Los Fabulosos Cadillacs from Buenos Aires, which included collaborations with Mick Jones (of B.A.D..; The Clash), Jamaica’s “Big Youth,” and Debbie Harry.

Stop making sense. . . Please! All during their Tom Tom Club musical adventures, Chris and Tina led parallel lives with their beloved and eccentric rock group, Talking Heads. However, in May of 1995, after eight truly original studio albums and tours, an unsurpassed “rockumentary” filmStop Making Senseand twenty years of unflagging support from fans and critics alike, David Byrne, the singer of Talking Heads, officially left to pursue an exclusively solo career, leaving Chris, Tina, and Jerry Harrison free to form a new band they called The Heads. Although sad that Byrne refused to continue (Talking Heads had not toured since early 1984), they were thrilled to find themselves writing and playing together again; they were finally happy to move forward as The Heads.

No talking, just head By turns inspired by the example of great older artists, or revved by the new sounds they were hearing in the underground music scenes in the cities, on the net, the bands they were producing, and coming from baby bands and artists just burgeoning, Chris, Tina, and Jerry decided for their first project, released in 1996, to write and record with a very different singer of note on every song, making for a uniquely varied, highly individual album, No Talking Just Head (Radioactive/MCA), that surprised and delighted fans old and new. The Heads performed intimate, passionate shows in venues across North America, the U.K. and Europe, Concrete Blond’s Johnette Napolitano mightily filling in on lead vocals and other guest singers making powerful surprise appearances in different cities. (Another project, dubbed Mystereo, is still in the works.)

Superdreaming. . . By the end of 1997, back at the Clubhouse, Chris and Tina had begun composing the basic tracks of what would become the fifth and newest Tom Tom Club album, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE FUNKY.

We be musical vegetables In 1998, Chris and Tina began writing for and with the newest member of the Tom Tom crew, soul singer extraordinaire Charles Pettigrew, formerly of Charles and Eddie, who sang their hit singles “Would I Lie To You” and “Shine” in the Tom Tom Club Oktoberfest tour later that year. This was a short tour of select clubs on the East Coast only, which also featured longtime club members Bruce Martin on keyboards and percussion, and Steve Scales on congas and percussion. Rocking the guitar for the first time for the club was Robby Aceto. Chris and Tina played drums and bass as usual. Tina and Charles sang together or took turns singing lead. With all six musicians blending their vocals to the musical mix, it made for an ecstatic, soulful set that ranged from eerie to cathartic. The first show of the tour was a benefit at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel for Chris and Tina’s alma mater RISD (RIZ-DEE) alumni scholarship fund, a benefit they repeated by popular demand in 1999. Chris, Tina, and Steve Scales agreed, the live band was the best they had experienced since Stop Making Sense.

Time to bounce Encouraged by the artistic success of the 1998 Tom Tom Club Oktoberfest tour, gigs at favorite old digs (CBGBs) and new (SOBs) in New York City followed. Tom Tom Club classics were reworked and updated; newly written songs were broken in. In September of 1999, Chris and Tina took the band to the West Coast for the Seattle Bumbershoot and Crested Butte One World Music Festivals, in Washington state and Colorado, where their original, deft funk and contagious hip-hop stylings rocked jubilant, jumping crowds.

It’s all good Back at the Clubhouse in the Fall of 1999, the new party album THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE FUNKY, consisting of ten original tracks and two classic covers, assumed its final shape. (For more details about the songs on THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE FUNKY, see New Album Features.) Tip top, gonna feel so good! By the end of 1999, Chris & Tina formed their own label called Tip Top Music. Early in the year 2000, two of the album’s songs were remixed for other compilations. Cause-n-ff-ect Records released the Tom Novy remix of Tom Tom Club’s version of the famous Donna Summer song “Love To Love You, Baby” on its DJEmpire tribute album to Giorgio Moroder which is available in stores now. The compilation album made for Mary Haron’s film based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho, also included a Philip Steir remix of the Tom Tom Club original “Who Feelin It.” The good, the bad, and the funky Having observed the high quality of RykoPalm’s release of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense film on DVD, Chris & Tina formed a deal to release their new album with indie label Rykodisc (http://www.rykodisc.com), now owned by their old friend Chris Blackwell.