#awkward to be using that first image again right away but hey the parallels posting demands it

[dreamofimmortality]

chapter 50, chapter 65: the two times miharu rokujou used the shinrabanshou

[fencesandfrogs]

cloudtail’s daughter: dovewing

so i felt the compulsion to analyze more of the warrior cats bloodlines in terms of genetics but i'm not going to do that, that feels like a bad use of my time.

instead, i'm going to keep writing about the cloudtail's daughter au. namely, now that i've described the basics and gone over some world building stuff, i'm going to discuss each of the protagonists in turn. this isn't going to be about their books, but an overview of what they do across the series. i'll do book summaries later. and then i'll just write the whole fanfiction why-don't-i.

anyway, we're starting strong with dovewing, because she's the whole reason i'm writing this gd au.

section one: lovewing dovewing

so dovewing. i've talked the most about her so this will either be the shortest or the longest post in this collection. my money is on the longest. first, i want to talk about why i love dovewing so much:

i have sensory issues. dovewing has sensory issues. that's all.

oh, and i think her and tigerheart are cute.

anyway, in serious, dovewing is an underappreciated character. she gets a lot of flak for replacing hollyleaf. i hated hollyleaf when i first read the books, so i was happy for a replacement, especially in the form of a fluffy grey kitten, but even now that i'm older and have a larger appreciation for hollyleaf, i still love dovewing.

she's caring and anxious and awkward and easily overwhelmed. she's selfish, but no more than is reasonable in a child. she legitimately loves her sister but can't quite understand why ivypool is mad at her all the time. she's desperate to prove herself, and she's shattered when the external thing she's anchored herself to is ripped away from her, and she really does have sensory issues that plague her throughout the series, are aren't really resolved until she's an adult with kits. (even then, i'd personally argue she's just no longer a focus so we don't see it anymore. given that shadowsight finds her in tigerstar's den a lot, i'd almost bet that she's hiding from the outside world. that's an inference, though, that's weakly grounded.)

so yeah, dovewing appeals to me as a character, but i also understand why people aren't so universal fond of her.

section two: dovekit

dovekit is born to cloudtail and brightheart. she's fluffy. very fluffy. ivykit is also fluffy, but she becomes sleek over time. dovekit stays fluffy.

at first, the nursery thinks she might be deaf, because she's really slow to respond to auditory cues. she's really fast to open her eyes, too, which just compounds everyone's thinking. but they confirm she's not deaf, just, well, they don't know.

her father is big and fluffy and concerned for his wife, so she spends a lot of time with him. cloudtail notices she's always hiding in him, like she's being chased, and she speaks really quietly. so he's like. hey, brightheart, love of my life, i think our daughter is hearing too well.

brightheart is like damn that's a thing? cloudtail is like idk but explain this (and he points to dovekit, repeating their conversation to ivykit too far away to hear it that well.)

everyone is a little aware of firestar's general approach to throw-the-disabled-cats-in-the-healer-hole approach to disabilities, and so they decide to handle it as a family matter. ivykit, being equally young, is mostly left out of this. of course, they don't know how to compensate for hearing too much, only too little, and it eventuall becomes obvious dovekit isn't relying on sight the way she should either. but eventually, she starts to learn the names for what she's hearing, starts to recognize what's coming from in camp and what's coming from out, and that lets her attach images to words in a way she was struggling to do before.

her nose gives her minimal issues, because it's just a little less overwhelming. it's the weakest of her external senses, so she's not smelling the whole territory at once.

anyway, they also realize she's hyper aware of touch. she hates the rain, she's cautious around new textures, and she continues to sleep on top of brightheart for a very long time because mom = soft, nest = not. they don't really know what to do about that, so she just kind of learns to suck it up.

but she really doesn't like it.

anyway, ivykit is a typical kit, and dovekit just kind of sits there. staring. with big, blue (kittens eyes start blue then change colors her eyes will eventually be green) eyes. and just when you think she's zoning out, she turns to another conversation across camp and starts talking in it like they can hear her. but i mean, there have been worse kits starting their apprentices.

(leafpool thinks its a shame they have a fully trained medicine cat, or she would make, well, not a good medicine cat, but certainly better than a warrior. jayfeather does not want that. jayfeather is right.)

section three: dovepaw I, pre-beavers

dovepaw and cinderheart are a good duo. cinderheart is young, but patient and caring. and no one thinks dovepaw will be a difficult apprentice.

she excels at scenting territory, even if she is a little cautious of where the borders are, and she can seek out prey very well. she lands a couple of early catches, making ivypaw grumble, but for, like, a moon afterwards, she fails to catch a single thing.

not a ton happens in this time, to be frank. dovepaw and ivypaw squabble but there's no wedge between them yet. dovepaw wants to impress cinderheart but she can't focus. she can locate prey but she never catches it, and her crouch is always perfect but she misses the target, and she doesn't understand why. cinderheart doesn't either.

so, dovepaw knows everyone is treating her with kid gloves, and she's pretty resentful about that. she decides to sneak out at night and practice hunting. she's mostly unsuccessful, and she eventually falls down the tunnels and meets fallen leaves and is stuck there for about three days. ivypaw finds her, and helps lead her out. dovepaw is thankful to be home, but feels like even more of a failure. this is when she becomes full and proper anxiety child. (this is actually a major part of book one, distance whispers, but it's really more part of ivypaw's journey that dovepaw, because dovepaw spends most of it hurt and scared and hungry.)

then, dovepaw hears the beavers. (in the tunnels, she could kind of hear the other parts of thunderclan, but not the beavers. eventually she's like, "yo cinderheart what part of territory has the loud click clackers." cinderheart is like "wtf.") the lake has been drying up, but dovepaw was born into a drought. she doesn't know what's going on, not how bad its getting. but the beavers? yeah. she tells cinderheart about them and cinderheart is like "ohhhhhh. dovepaw is special. that explains a lot." and tells firestar about it. anxiety dovepaw vibrates by her side the entire time.

interestingly, dovepaw is a lot closer to firestar in kinship than she is in the original (because she's actually kin of his kin), but she's still not super close to him. he's pretty old, and she's decently far removed from him. he cares about her as cloudtail's daughter, not as dovepaw, if that makes sense? like any care for her beyond the care extended to any other apprentice is not because it's dovepaw, but because she's cloudtail's daughter.

section four: dovepaw II, beavers

so dovepaw knows she's dragging 9 cats on a crazy quest.

(why nine? a) i think it's neat if nine is a holy number for cats. much better than eight. b) hollyleaf needs to come so there's a narrator during this. it can't be cinderheart or hollyleaf and jayfeather & lionblaze and cinderheart share their books like ivypool and dovewing, and i don't like that because then there's a false parallel being drawn where it doesn't make sense. like, i could do that, but the problem is, the books don't line up with key points in their relationships. so. doesn't work.)

anyway, dovepaw knows this is insane and she feels desperate to prove herself. she's in front of warriors from other clans, and she can barely hunt, and her senses are going wild. cinderheart takes her aside and is like, "so dovepaw, do you want to tell them what's up? we can explain."

and dovepaw, anxiety child and desperate, is like "sounds like an excuse, so, no."

tigerheart is like, this dovepaw. she's fluffy. she's cute. dovepaw is like. this tigerheart. he's fluffy. he's cute. and they get off like gangbusters. tigerheart is gentle towards dovepaw, but not in a way that makes her feel like its because she's fragile. it's because she's dovepaw. and he wants to be gentle to her. cinderheart is like, "this might be a problem," but this is also the first time she's seen dovepaw out of her shell and talking at a reasonable volume. so she's not about to stop this. at least, not yet.

(cinderpelt may or may not be like "hey hey hey do you remember the leafpool drama? do you want to do this again?")

tigerheart is also super quiet. this isn't really a product of him, so much as their environment, but he's quiet when he's not talking and loud when he is, and dovepaw just feels safe around him. so they get close.

for the most part, the rest of beavers proceeds as in canon. there's no reason to change it, even if cinderheart wasn't strong like lionblaze, having hollyleaf there would definitely compensate. so they're fine.

they return victorious. dovepaw, by the end of the journey, is practically sleeping on top of tigerheart.

it's not really romantic yet, by the way. dovepaw started this journey sleeping on top of cinderheart. everyone in thunderclan knows that dovepaw sleeps on top of people. but tigerheart is big so he basically doesn't notice when dovepaw, who is tiny and isn't done filling out (she's full height all the apprentices are that's how cats grow) is on top of him.

cinderheart is like, "this is definitely a problem." hollyleaf and cinderpelt are facepalming.

but no one wants dovepaw to go back to being quiet, and she's already kind of shut down after the deaths taking care of the beavers, so they all try to bring dovepaw into the group, and dovepaw doesn't resist, she just likes tigerheart. she's going to miss him a lot when they get back, and that's why they keep meeting. because tigerheart doesn't treat dovepaw the way most thunderclan cats do, and she likes that.

also, after they get back, she develops a huge crush on him.

(since we don't get tigerheart perspective in this series, i'll add in here: tigerheart has complicated feelings about dovepaw. warrior cats do not establish a good age for cats to be with each other, but i'm going to say that if dovepaw and tigerheart were in the same clan, everyone would assume they were leaning towards mates. but they aren't, which makes it complicated. he likes her companionship, and he's not opposed to her as a mate, but mostly he feels deeply protective of her and cares deeply about her. kind of like how i assume brambleclaw and squirrelpaw were supposed to be portrayed, but like, done well.)

section five: dovepaw III, post-beavers (pre-tribe)

so this is probably the section that's most similar to canon, but it'd like to do the tigerheart dovepaw shit better. hopefully, by setting up tiger/dove better before, they'll be more compelling now.

anyway, ivypaw is annoyed at dovepaw, and dovepaw is like, "bruh i can't even hunt"

dovepaw feels really inadequate because now everyone thinks highly of her even though she can't do anything. she overhears someone (greystripe? brambleclaw? lionblaze?) discussing making her a warrior, and she feels even worse. (ivypaw also overhears this, but not for superpower reasons.) she feels especially bad because she knows ivypaw is holding back and now dovepaw is getting rewarded and that can't happen.

so dovepaw is falling apart, and cinderheart decides something needs to be done. piecing together everything she knows about her apprentice, she decides mabye the mountain is helpful.

section six: dovepaw IV, tribe

okay we have a travelling book. not that this is about the books, but this takes place in about one book, so i might as well point that out.

anyway, cinderheart, lionblaze, dovepaw, and ivypaw all head to the tribe. why them? lionblaze knows ivypaw is holding back. anyway, we're not covering them.

so they get there and dovepaw is like "too loud too loud can't hear shit too loud" but the tribe kind of knows how to deal with this. see, tribe kits are born with the waterfall in the background, but every now and then, a queen will kit away from the main cave, and so they have to make a temporary den for first two moons, minimum, of the kits' lives. more if it's winter. so when those kits get to the waterfall, they're overwhelmed.

and here, with nothing to hear or see but what the tribe hears and sees, dovepaw is on level footing. they let dovepaw train with the prey hunter to-bes, and she's basically starting over, but she's not that old compared to the tribe to-bes, and the strategy works well for her. ivypaw doesn't really fit in, but they decide to train her to be a cave guard.

dovepaw is succeeding but barely, and ivypaw is still excelling (from dovepaw's perspective), and all dovepaw wants is to be good enough, and then cinderheart is expecting them to work together, and no one can hear dovepaw because she talks too quiet.

but ivypaw and dovepaw do make a good team. so. two to three moons later, before winter sets in and they can't leave (or they stay over winter, not sure, need to check timeline of books), they head home.

dovepaw, senses blocked, is at 200% anxiety 100% of the time, and she's vibrating, but at least she can hunt. i mean, hunt as well as a fresh apprentice on their first patrol, but she's improving rapidly, as long as ivypaw is with her.

section seven: dovepaw V, post-tribe (final dovepaw)

so dovepaw gets better and better at hunting, and she learns to keep track of non-ivypaw cats, and they're finally made warriors.

dovewing and ivypool sit vigil and dovewing realizes that it's not that hard to not talk to ivypool. and she's not a fan of that.

section eight: dovewing I, tigerheart

at this point, dovewing is in BGCH, so this is probably the most important part of her life for this post. anyway, dovewing and tigerheart continue to meet. they are in L-O-V-E love. it's not in the books because we know it's happening and it'd get boring we had a book of them bonding we don't need another unless it's a romance novel (dovewing's silence, tigerheart's shadow).

anyway, this is when the bumblestripe drama occurs. she is, for lack of a better word, bumblestripe is courting dovewing while dovewing is planning to elope with tigerheart. but bumblestripe treats dovewing softly. with kid gloves. like she is a fragile thing he needs to protect.

this is distinctly different from tigerheart, who views her as precious and worthy of protection, someone he loves and would dedicate his life to keep safe. she's not fragile. she's strong.

so yeah bumblestripe can't figure out why he doesn't like her. dovewing tries to express it. dovewing also misses ivypool. i'm not sure who she's friends with right now. i don't have a good handle on young cats her age. poppyfrost? briarlight?

honestly, yeah, she gets on with briarlight and jayfeather. her sense of smell was too overpowering as a kit for her to like the medicine cat's den, but now that she's older and she's learned to cope, she starts to bond with briarlight. for one, it gives her a convient bumblestripe spacer, and for another, briarlight and jayfeather are legitmately kind and caring cats.

(yes, jayfeather. we'll talk about him.)

ivypool eventually begins to make it up with her, but both of them are tense about the affair.

anyway, this carries on, status quo, until the prophecy is revealed.

section nine: dovewing II, dovewing in shadowclan

so dovewing and ivypool are sent to shadowclan. tigerheart is a little upset about dovewing not telling him about the prophecy, but she was ordered not to via medicine cat, and that's a higher power he respects. so for the most part, they're okay. a little bit of squabbling as they're adults living together now for the first time, but they're alright. she eventually goes back to sleeping on top of him.

pine needles are prickly, she likes soft things, ivypool is mad at her all of the time. dovewing is good at hunting in shadowclan territory: with less birds and twigs, she can focus on the important sounds. she's not a fan of frogs and lizards but not everyone in shadowclan is.

and most of all, everyone in shadowclan treats her normally. no one cares that she's a prophecy cat. no one minds that she's slow to talk sometimes and she's kind of spacy. she's kind and she's a good hunter and a good tracker, which is a valuable skill considering their land can get pretty wet.

so yeah. dovewing and tigerheart are basically mates in all but name, and she wishes ivypool wasn't mad at her all the time, but she's happy for the first time in ages. they begin to discuss moving her to shadowclan after the battle. things are good.

section ten: dovewing III, the battle

so dovewing's job during the battle is not to listen all the way to the dark forest. that's stupid.

i'm not 100% sure what it is yet, tbh, but it definitely involves informing strategy. i'm thinking she basically opens her mind up to the terretory and jayfeather taps into her mind and communicates this to messengers and the like.

either way, she doesn't really care about it. or, well, it just gets erased from her mind because trauma. that's a better way of saying it.

section eleven: dovewing IV, dovewing's silence, bramblestar's storm, tigerheart's shadow

so this is past the scope of this au, but basically, dovewing gets "trapped" in thunderclan because of the storm and not being ready to move to shadowclan yet. she still does all of her screaming in the tunnels thing because as hard as her senses were to learn to manage, they were her's and she doesn't really know how to function without them.

i'm not sure who dies in the battle, but probably cloudtail. i'm way more attatched to brightheart. maybe they don't lose anyone. i don't know.

she leaves in tigerheart's shadow because she's got self-worth issues and forgot that shadowclan dgaf if she has prophecy powers. tigerheart also makes her feel a little unvalued by not following her. but from there, things go on as in canon.

dovewing? done.

[hollenius]

Talking Heads: Are These Guys Trying To Give Rock A Bad Name?

Having fun trawling the internet for more old interviews and things with different bands & musicians. Here’s a Talking Heads one from 1977.

Talking Heads: Are These Guys Trying To Give Rock A Bad Name?

Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 25 June 1977

TALKING HEADS: it's a term they use up in the high-rise skyscrapers that house all the cogs in the corporate machinery cranking out network television for the American people.

The big-wigs in the boardroom – the William Holdens and Robert Duvalls of Network land – have a name for the lowest common-denominator programme non-personalities – the newscaster, weather-reporters, and other old warhorses who sit head and shoulders directly on camera mouthing out their obligatory tasks. These are the "talking heads" of American TV land; utterly boring, but necessary.

Talking heads with greying hair, dabs of make-up and dandruff removed from the shoulders of their suit-jackets, they sit austerely informing the public of the nation's daily occurences – the rapes and murders, the military campaigns abroad, the latest government manouevres. No opinions, no subjective slant to their reports – they simply precis it down, feed it out to those millions of tubes and when it's over they go away, back to the bar or to the suburban home, wife and kids.

David Byrne, guitarist and singer for the Talking Heads, an American rock group, has a song that he wrote and performs entitled 'Don't Worry About The Government'. It usually gets played early on in the set, with no prefacing explanation – just Byrne's reedy high-pitched voice almost stammering "This next song is called..."

And every time he introduced it to an audience in England, certain factions would snigger or boo or howl derisively because Talking Heads after all are a NEW WAVE group and if you are a New Wave group you must write direct anti-status quo, sloganeering songs of dissent. Just like The Clash or Chelsea or...

But Byrne's song isn't like that at all.

It's about an ordinary man who owns an apartment in some American suburb and who lives a quiet, fairly inconsequential existence, going to work in the morning and returning in the evening, who gains pleasure from life simply through drinking wine with friends or reading a book. There is no hint of moral castigation, no hint of cynicism, Byrne just places himself in his character's psyche and explains himself through his song.

It's a rare talent this, something much closer to the art of the very best short-story writers, a talent that only Ray Davies and Randy Newman before him, out of all the thousands of post-war song-writers, have bothered to identify with and explore perceptively.

"I just thought," said Byrne, "that lyrics could be used to strip down conversations, just normal day-to-day converstions and dialogues, and strip away all the phoney embellishments and posturing right down to essentials so that they would actually say something directly, without having to throw in all the 'Oh yeah, baby' or 'Hey, bitch I'm coming to get ya right now' or...

"Pa-a-arty," chips in Jerry Harrison, the Talking Heads' keyboard player.

Everybody laughs.

NOT AN easy band to write about, these Talking Heads. They mystify arid confuse simply because they so patently lack any dint of the arch brand of mystique that forms a patented cloak for the rock star enigma. Four intelligent, straightforward individuals, the very straightforward nature of their music and their image is somehow unique to the genre they have chosen to work within.

Not that the press haven't attempted time and time again to write about them, almost always in flattering terms.

They emerged as a live attraction in the hot summer of 1975 when Manhattan's CBGB's had suddenly been designated the centre-point of all new-wave rock activity, and were immediately slotted in with the likes of Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, and Heartbreakers as the pace-setters right there at the vanguard of this brave new scene. Convenient tags like 'punk' and 'art-rock' found themselves strange bed-fellows in numerous articles consummated by the inevitable bandying of the term 'minimalism'.

New York rock critics, having witnessed the ugly death of the New York Dolls brand of gashed-up rock, latched on fast to this new austerely dressed-down form of the music, and the Talking Heads, suddenly caught in the swell, found themselves holding down the cover of the prestigious Village Voice with a photograph taken at only their third gig. Inside was a rave-review of said show with an extensive article.

Since then, coverage has been as extensive as it has been perplexingly unforthcoming in regard to mere bottom line info on what the band were actually all about.

What was disclosed was that the band was a trio then, led by the angular, neurotic-looking Byrne who carried all guitar, vocal and composing chores, while the bass-player was a slight blonde-haired girl called Tina Weymouth whose basic feminist features were undermined by a slightly asexual manner. Drummer Chris Frantz was baby-faced and pleasantly effeminate.

Their music, though, seemed incapable of being pigeon-holed and continually presented reviewers with a daunting problem.

Having witnessed the band on four separate occasions over this last highly successful European tour, it became at once apparent that the care of Talking Heads' repertoire – principally Byrne's songs – is not something that casual acquaintance can unveil. At first, they intrigue as much as they bemuse, but the deeper you dig the more you uncover. Like Television, Talking Heads must be divorced from pigeon-holed surroundings because there is nothing currently existing in the rock context that they can be favourably compared to.

Byrne's melodies are so insidious that they often totally by-pass the conventional quarters that rock music usually attempts to stimulate, instead going deeper, often lodging themselves in your subconscious. One song, after I'd witnessed the band only once at the Rock Garden, somehow kept manifesting itself in my dreams – this strange, utterly disarming descending chord motif would haunt me until I'd wake up desperately trying to recall it. It was only later that I even got to learn the song's title, 'The Book I Read'.

THIS IS how the band's music works – in a way that transcends conventional avenues of 'rock criticism' where parallels to established musical forms become redundant and trite. When one has finally achieved some intimacy and contact with the repertoire, the music alone is overwhelming at times. One song – Byrne's 'I'm Not In Love' – twists and turns, its twined guitar rhythms chattering and spitting like snap-dragons with sudden unsettling changes, its chorus brash and pointedly announced – before it charges off, climaxing in a devastating one chord richochet of sound. Each song takes on a personality of its own as one becomes more and more acquainted – the jagged paranoid thrashings of 'What Is It?' full of technical malevolence, the richly textured abrasive changes of 'No Compassion', that utterly disarming motif to 'The Book I Read'.

Similarly the lyrics make themselves apparent in this same insidious fashion, via sudden dazzling couplets or single lines that grab you as Byrne's introvert-gone-psychotic delivery tortuously builds up and up, eyes reeling like wild horses in a flood, his pitching often totally awry but his sheer intensity galvanising because this man is truly grabbing hold of his songs, each and every utterance, like a drowning man grabbing straws.

Byrne's performance is, in fact, full of the tortured passion and gut-commitment that many of us were hoping for and found so disappointingly lacking in Tom Verlaine's recent shows in Britain. Like Verlaine, Byrne is totally the master of his chosen medium, yet there is an edge to Byrne that is so much more human.

Where Verlaine is oh-so calculatingly distant, Byrne's thrashing desperate need to communicate his songs grants his music a whole other dimension of sheer humanity and warmth a million light years removed from the cold arch-romanticism of Television's guiding light.

OFF-STAGE, sitting with his cohorts in Talking Heads, Byrne exudes all the cooped-up mannerisms of a caged bird. He seems to be suffering from some arch nervous defect that would need a constant ingestion of valium to assuage. Twitching almost, he sits hunched up in a chair, ungainly like a parody of look-alike Tony Perkins. When he talks, his voice is weak and reedy and often his attempts to explain certain facets of his songs – particularly his lyrics – lead him into weird tangential awkward ramblings that cause other members of the band, Tina Weymouth in particular, to open displays of ridicule which make him even more edgy. He looks embarrassed and bows his head slightly.

Observing him, I can't help feeling concerned for his obvious discomfort, as if any form of socializing causes the man to undergo real psychic pain. He later admits to the gross discomfort of what is really just a fairly casual conversation, and claims that performing affords him infinite more relaxation.

"I can express parts of my personality on stage that I would never dare do in any other context."

Byrne's past remains obscured by the haziness of his own recollections. He talks about working in art galleries in the past, though he didn't in fact paint, while he claims his previous vocation while in college was to write up detailed questionnaires, until song-writing became an infinitely more agreeable pastime.

In contrast, the other three members of Talking Heads carry themselves in this social set-up with an ease and general open-ness.

Tina Weymouth appears fairly disinterested at first, more concerned with scanning the pages of the latest Oui, but is suddenly forthcoming when a question is either directed her way or else grabs her attention. Chris Frantz seems perfectly in sync with the whole interview routine, lavishing over most of his answers with great and entertainingly 'camp' detail.

And then there is Jerry Harrison, the newest member in the group, a veteran of only six months or less, but who has already obviously orientated himself into the consortium with great alacrity. Harrison is the most locquacious of the band and, with Frantz, the most forthcoming. His history as a musician is already full of worthy fodder for discourse, since he started his career as an integral founding force with Jonathon Richman in the Modern Lovers, about whom his reminiscences are nothing if not extremely witty.

"Well, you probably know that we started the Modern Lovers as a real cause – y'know, we were anti-drugs for a start, due to the fact that at that time in the States all the kids were just oohing themselves on quaaludes. So we'd go onstage and start our sets with this number called 'I'm Straight' which would immediately cause all the audience to start throwing things – oh, rotten fruit, bottles, cans, anything – at us."

The Lovers' history was short due firstly to their corporate snooty attitude to playing clubs of the ilk of Max's Kansas City – "We didn't want to be associated with the N.Y. Dolls or this or that...so we never played anywhere" – plus the traumas that followed the band being signed by John Cale to Warner Bros, who after financing an album (produced by Cale – it was finally released last year by Beserkley) decided to drop the band, leaving them penniless in Los Angeles.

Even when the album was being made, Harrison claims there were problems.

"Well this was around the time when Jonathan was starting to want to write and sing only happy songs (laughs). So there'd be continual arguments between Cale and him over how we should sing certain numbers. Cale would be saying 'Now, Jonathon, I want you to sing this in a mean way. And Jonathon would just look at him, y'know – 'Mean? I won't sing mean! I don't feel mean!"

"And he (Richman) kept going through changes of direction. Like one time he'd be totally into the Velvet Underground and early Stooges, and then he was suddenly enamoured with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and he'd want to alter his whole style. Also he's a total astrology freak. You know that song, 'Astral Plane'? Well he was always having these visions – or so he said – and writing songs about them. Things like....oh God (he starts laughing again) 'I saw you by, the waterway, the waterway, the waterway' – just on and on. We'd have to tell him to forget it."

After the Modern Lovers broke up, Richman briefly went onstage backed only by a bunch of kids beating rolled-up newspapers in time to his songs, before disappearing altogether for a long spell to (according to John Cale) lock himself in his bedroom.

When Harrison is asked whether he feels more comfortable being in Talking Heads than Richman's motley crew he simply sighs, "Infinitely."

MUCH OF the conversation is taken up with the subject of the British New Wave and how the remarkably civilised T. Heads have found themselves having to cope with the more agressive elements at their concerts, particularly as they've been supporting the head-banger's friend, The Ramones.

Seems the atmosphere has never actually soured and that circumstances have been pretty agreeable all the way along.

From the other new wave bands of this country, T. Heads claim not to have incurred any particular animosity.

"Only Rat Scabies has caused a scene," claims Weymouth. "He appeared backstage at the Greyhound in Croydon and tried to get one of us to fight him. When we showed ourselves to be totally disinterested in that course of action, he contented himself with spitting on the floor and walking out. I felt rather sorry for him."

Meanwhile back in New York, the band have yet to break out of the New York club circuit set-up they've been working in for at least the last two years.

A record deal with Sire (whose head, Seymour Stein, is the only executive to have fully committed himself to the New Wave, having also inked The Ramones, Richard Hell, and now, apparently, The Dead Boys, – a Cleveland pastiche of England's punk excesses) has produced the single 'Love Goes To Building On Fire', an addictive though comparatively slight song from the band's repertoire.

A Talking Heads album however is scheduled for September release produced by Tony Bongiovi and with five backing tracks already in the can. Ten tracks are scheduled – all Byrne originals including 'Pyschokiller', 'The Book I Read', 'No Compassion', 'Happy Day', and 'I'm Not In Love', the only unfortunate matter being the probable exclusion of the band's brilliantly terse rendering of Al Green's 'Take Me To The River'.

The band are still a guaranteed sell-out at C.B.G.B.'s on any given night, a not inconsiderable feat as many other similarly prestigious local bands are unable apparently to do the same – and on their own minor league waterfront they've gauged a strong cult audience.

But then there is something extremely addictive about this band's music – potent enough to make Byrne an object of paranoid fear in the eyes of Tom Verlaine (who according to Weymouth is very nervous of Byrne's status on the New York scene – as perverted a compliment as anything that can be divined from Verlaine's psyche one supposes). Meanwhile Byrne is also considered the most singularly brilliant new songwriter currently in the States by John Cale, and even Lou Reed has lent a sizeable quota of suspiciously paternal advice.

Weymouth: "Yeah, I'd say he was actually genuinely trying to help us. I wouldn't say he was trying to rip us off, for example."

Byrne: "That's not true."

Weymouth: "How can you say that, David? I mean..."

Byrne: "Because he told me he ripped some of my ideas off. Not that I'm angry or anything."

How did the...uh gentleman go about this paternal business then?

"God...he'd invite us round to his apartment and insult us for a solid hour, particularly me. He'd always insult the clothes I was wearing, or my shoes. Then after that, he'd start to be more reasonable and actually have an agreeable conversation with us."

Byrne goes silent for a minute and then, for the first time, he seems calm and relaxed.

"Do you want to know...I'll tell you how much we've come on in the last two years, the real symbol of progress in Talking Heads, Now I can go round to Lou Reed's apartment and I can be rude to him!"