You Can't Teach A Talking Head Cheap Tricks

BY Seany Bhoy

When doing a comparative review of two of the greatest bands of the televised popular culture era, it is hard to go past Cheap Trick and Talking Heads. Both have been the obscure warhorses of the standard soundtrack, the score behind our everyday lives, the frustrating song that lingers at the back of our conscience tickling the recoils of our recollection. It is these bands, rather than the blockbusting chart toppers that so often grease the wheels of the popular culture machine, that are our contemporary society.

Whether it be through the annals of Simpsons folklore or the soundtrack of a cult classic, Cheap Trick and Talking Heads have been the glue that has stuck our memories onto one giant montage of our childhood. Cheap Trick’s song “Mighty Wings”, an early 80s power clash of guitar and bass, has been the theme song from everything from Top Gun and Karate Kid to the stage music from Ken Masters’s Street Fighter II series of games. Even before I knew who they were their, music was being tiger upper-cut into me by Ryu as I struggled for the other 40 cents in my pocket.

“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads has backed more songs than David Byrne has had group sex, and continues to be found everywhere from the Muppet Show to Channel Ten’s new show NUMB3RS. Coincidently the star of that show, David Krumholtz, played the geeky Michael Eckman in 10 Things I Hate About You whose theme song was a cover of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me”. Talking Heads was also the favourite band of the fictional Patrick Bateman of American Psycho fame, in a tongue in cheek reference to their famous track, “Psycho Killer”.

The Simpsons is a living diary of all the major events, social patterns and of course musical trends of the last two decades and any band worthy of accolade has been transformed into a yellow-skinned, joke-cracking version of their former selves. Both Cheap Trick and Talking Heads have achieved such accolades – Homer goes as far as saying “I prefer to listen to Cheap Trick” in one episode, even though in another he actually collaborates with David Byrne of Talking Heads to write a song about how much he hates Flanders.

That song in your head, that jingle that won’t go away, chances are it’s by one of two bands. Trouble is… which one?