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Friday Funk #22 – ‘Genius Of Love’ by Tom Tom Club
Friday Funk #22 – ‘Genius Of Love’ by Tom Tom Club
Friday Funk #22 – ‘Genius Of Love’ by Tom Tom Club
In the years between Talking Heads’ albums Remain in Light (1980) and Speaking in Tongues (1983), bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz started a side project. To their surprise, Tom Tom Club enjoyed more chart success than Heads had found by that time.
Frantz recalled, “we very deliberately set out to be the opposite of what Talking Heads had come to be. First of all, we didn't want to be competing with our own band, and second of all, we needed to have a good time. It was a period in our lives where we needed to have some fun. Being childlike and innocent was the opposite of what was considered to be hip at the time. What was hip was like Siouxsie and the Banshees or something, the darker side of things was what people were gravitating to. But we felt that's not who we are, at least not right now. So let's just be ourselves and do something that we feel is fresh, and not something that everybody else is doing.”
Fun, childlike, innocent, fresh: ‘Genius Of Love’. The fun is there in its first few seconds: the squeaky synth, scratchy guitar, and a deep sliding note on the bass; then the drums starting and everyone playing together on the One.
And it’s there in the opening couplet when Weymouth sings in a nursery rhyme fashion: “What you gonna do when you get out of jail? / I’m gonna have some fun”.
The funky, singable bassline is typical Weymouth. Although she wrote the part, she didn’t actually play it. Given just three days’ studio time for the debut album, and having been playing “around the clock”, Weymouth’s right arm seized up with cramp when it was time to record ‘Genius Of Love’.
The classic line was played by an assistant engineer, either Benji Armbrister or Kendal Stubbs, whose playing was uncredited. (As Paul Thompson has pointed out, Stubbs has bass credits, including playing with Keith Emerson, so it was likely him.) The part has been sampled dozens of times, and was the basis of Mariah Carey’s huge hit ‘Fantasy’ (and the remix with Ol’ Dirty Bastard).
The song features more chord changes than many Talking Heads songs of the same era, but in certain sections simply hops from a G to E minor, and in one of the interludes (“Oops! Your mama”) stays on G. The song essentially switches from the more melodic sections (“I’m in heaven”) to those that are almost entirely groove based.
Frantz said, “Zapp's 'More Bounce to the Ounce' was the jumping off point for us, because we loved the groove of that song, and also the tempo.” The Zapp song was co-produced by Bootsy Collins, one of the musicians shouted out on ‘Genius’ (along with [George] Clinton, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Sly and Robbie, Bohannon, Kurtis Blow, and James Brown.
(Clinton wrote in his memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? that essentially, he produced the track, and credited Bootsy and Zapp’s Roger Troutman, another P-Funker, so they could get what they “deserved”: “some real money.”)
You can hear the influence of ‘More Bounce’’s groove, but thanks in part to the beepy keyboard parts, written by Frantz and Weymouth and played by Steven Stanley, and Adrian Belew’s scratchy guitar, ‘Genius Of Love’ suggests more of the childlike innocence that Frantz was after.
Weymouth, who wrote most of the song’s lyrics, recalled, “A friend told us we'd created a major minor record; she said it's not an important record because it doesn't address serious themes”. In fact, Weymouth says, the lyrics touch on “extremely serious and profound things. To me they're like fairy tales, which deal with dangerous themes people couldn't touch any other way.”
There’s plenty of silliness—“Oops, your mama said uhh!”, the cries of “James Brooowwwn!”—but there are darker moments hidden in lullaby melodies and Weymouth’s soft delivery: “All the weekend / Boyfriend was missing / I surely miss him” and “We went insane when we took cocaine”.
‘Genius Of Love’, Weymouth says, “is about extraordinary pain and loss, but I deliberately did not put people who had died in the lyrics. (...) We were definitely not trying to reach the intello-muso audience of Talking Heads, but those songs are much more dangerous than they first seem.”
Talking Heads performed a great version of the song in their seminal concert film, Stop Making Sense. With David Byrne taking a break off stage, the band temporarily become Tom Tom Club. Weymouth plays with the lyrics, singing “Fun, nasty fun.” Frantz’ vocals are particularly frantic from the get-go with his shouts of “Shock”, to the manic cries of “Bohannon” and his signing off: “Okay, bye!”
In the years between Talking Heads’ albums Remain in Light (1980) and Speaking in Tongues (1983), bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz started a side project. To their surprise, Tom Tom Club enjoyed more chart success than Heads had found by that time.
Frantz recalled, “we very deliberately set out to be the opposite of what Talking Heads had come to be. First of all, we didn't want to be competing with our own band, and second of all, we needed to have a good time. It was a period in our lives where we needed to have some fun. Being childlike and innocent was the opposite of what was considered to be hip at the time. What was hip was like Siouxsie and the Banshees or something, the darker side of things was what people were gravitating to. But we felt that's not who we are, at least not right now. So let's just be ourselves and do something that we feel is fresh, and not something that everybody else is doing.”
Fun, childlike, innocent, fresh: ‘Genius Of Love’. The fun is there in its first few seconds: the squeaky synth, scratchy guitar, and a deep sliding note on the bass; then the drums starting and everyone playing together on the One.
And it’s there in the opening couplet when Weymouth sings in a nursery rhyme fashion: “What you gonna do when you get out of jail? / I’m gonna have some fun”.
The funky, singable bassline is typical Weymouth. Although she wrote the part, she didn’t actually play it. Given just three days’ studio time for the debut album, and having been playing “around the clock”, Weymouth’s right arm seized up with cramp when it was time to record ‘Genius Of Love’.
The classic line was played by an assistant engineer, either Benji Armbrister or Kendal Stubbs, whose playing was uncredited. (As Paul Thompson has pointed out, Stubbs has bass credits, including playing with Keith Emerson, so it was likely him.) The part has been sampled dozens of times, and was the basis of Mariah Carey’s huge hit ‘Fantasy’ (and the remix with Ol’ Dirty Bastard).
The song features more chord changes than many Talking Heads songs of the same era, but in certain sections simply hops from a G to E minor, and in one of the interludes (“Oops! Your mama”) stays on G. The song essentially switches from the more melodic sections (“I’m in heaven”) to those that are almost entirely groove based.
Frantz said, “Zapp's 'More Bounce to the Ounce' was the jumping off point for us, because we loved the groove of that song, and also the tempo.” The Zapp song was co-produced by Bootsy Collins, one of the musicians shouted out on ‘Genius’ (along with [George] Clinton, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Sly and Robbie, Bohannon, Kurtis Blow, and James Brown.
(Clinton wrote in his memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? that essentially, he produced the track, and credited Bootsy and Zapp’s Roger Troutman, another P-Funker, so they could get what they “deserved”: “some real money.”)
You can hear the influence of ‘More Bounce’’s groove, but thanks in part to the beepy keyboard parts, written by Frantz and Weymouth and played by Steven Stanley, and Adrian Belew’s scratchy guitar, ‘Genius Of Love’ suggests more of the childlike innocence that Frantz was after.
Weymouth, who wrote most of the song’s lyrics, recalled, “A friend told us we'd created a major minor record; she said it's not an important record because it doesn't address serious themes”. In fact, Weymouth says, the lyrics touch on “extremely serious and profound things. To me they're like fairy tales, which deal with dangerous themes people couldn't touch any other way.”
There’s plenty of silliness—“Oops, your mama said uhh!”, the cries of “James Brooowwwn!”—but there are darker moments hidden in lullaby melodies and Weymouth’s soft delivery: “All the weekend / Boyfriend was missing / I surely miss him” and “We went insane when we took cocaine”.
‘Genius Of Love’, Weymouth says, “is about extraordinary pain and loss, but I deliberately did not put people who had died in the lyrics. (...) We were definitely not trying to reach the intello-muso audience of Talking Heads, but those songs are much more dangerous than they first seem.”
Talking Heads performed a great version of the song in their seminal concert film, Stop Making Sense. With David Byrne taking a break off stage, the band temporarily become Tom Tom Club. Weymouth plays with the lyrics, singing “Fun, nasty fun.” Frantz’ vocals are particularly frantic from the get-go with his shouts of “Shock”, to the manic cries of “Bohannon” and his signing off: “Okay, bye!”
In the years between Talking Heads’ albums Remain in Light (1980) and Speaking in Tongues (1983), bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz started a side project. To their surprise, Tom Tom Club enjoyed more chart success than Heads had found by that time.
Frantz recalled, “we very deliberately set out to be the opposite of what Talking Heads had come to be. First of all, we didn't want to be competing with our own band, and second of all, we needed to have a good time. It was a period in our lives where we needed to have some fun. Being childlike and innocent was the opposite of what was considered to be hip at the time. What was hip was like Siouxsie and the Banshees or something, the darker side of things was what people were gravitating to. But we felt that's not who we are, at least not right now. So let's just be ourselves and do something that we feel is fresh, and not something that everybody else is doing.”
Fun, childlike, innocent, fresh: ‘Genius Of Love’. The fun is there in its first few seconds: the squeaky synth, scratchy guitar, and a deep sliding note on the bass; then the drums starting and everyone playing together on the One.
And it’s there in the opening couplet when Weymouth sings in a nursery rhyme fashion: “What you gonna do when you get out of jail? / I’m gonna have some fun”.
The funky, singable bassline is typical Weymouth. Although she wrote the part, she didn’t actually play it. Given just three days’ studio time for the debut album, and having been playing “around the clock”, Weymouth’s right arm seized up with cramp when it was time to record ‘Genius Of Love’.
The classic line was played by an assistant engineer, either Benji Armbrister or Kendal Stubbs, whose playing was uncredited. (As Paul Thompson has pointed out, Stubbs has bass credits, including playing with Keith Emerson, so it was likely him.) The part has been sampled dozens of times, and was the basis of Mariah Carey’s huge hit ‘Fantasy’ (and the remix with Ol’ Dirty Bastard).
The song features more chord changes than many Talking Heads songs of the same era, but in certain sections simply hops from a G to E minor, and in one of the interludes (“Oops! Your mama”) stays on G. The song essentially switches from the more melodic sections (“I’m in heaven”) to those that are almost entirely groove based.
Frantz said, “Zapp's 'More Bounce to the Ounce' was the jumping off point for us, because we loved the groove of that song, and also the tempo.” The Zapp song was co-produced by Bootsy Collins, one of the musicians shouted out on ‘Genius’ (along with [George] Clinton, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Sly and Robbie, Bohannon, Kurtis Blow, and James Brown.
(Clinton wrote in his memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? that essentially, he produced the track, and credited Bootsy and Zapp’s Roger Troutman, another P-Funker, so they could get what they “deserved”: “some real money.”)
You can hear the influence of ‘More Bounce’’s groove, but thanks in part to the beepy keyboard parts, written by Frantz and Weymouth and played by Steven Stanley, and Adrian Belew’s scratchy guitar, ‘Genius Of Love’ suggests more of the childlike innocence that Frantz was after.
Weymouth, who wrote most of the song’s lyrics, recalled, “A friend told us we'd created a major minor record; she said it's not an important record because it doesn't address serious themes”. In fact, Weymouth says, the lyrics touch on “extremely serious and profound things. To me they're like fairy tales, which deal with dangerous themes people couldn't touch any other way.”
There’s plenty of silliness—“Oops, your mama said uhh!”, the cries of “James Brooowwwn!”—but there are darker moments hidden in lullaby melodies and Weymouth’s soft delivery: “All the weekend / Boyfriend was missing / I surely miss him” and “We went insane when we took cocaine”.
‘Genius Of Love’, Weymouth says, “is about extraordinary pain and loss, but I deliberately did not put people who had died in the lyrics. (...) We were definitely not trying to reach the intello-muso audience of Talking Heads, but those songs are much more dangerous than they first seem.”
Talking Heads performed a great version of the song in their seminal concert film, Stop Making Sense. With David Byrne taking a break off stage, the band temporarily become Tom Tom Club. Weymouth plays with the lyrics, singing “Fun, nasty fun.” Frantz’ vocals are particularly frantic from the get-go with his shouts of “Shock”, to the manic cries of “Bohannon” and his signing off: “Okay, bye!”