Talking Heads

Artist: Talking Heads

LP: 7" single
Song: "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town"

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I started collecting 45s in early 1982, when I was 12, visiting the Yakima record stores regularly to see what they had that was new. Usually, a new single might have a 'limited-edition' picture sleeve when it first came out, but then after a while it would be sold with the plain company sleeve, or a generic white paper sleeve, instead. The Yakima stores usually carried only the top 60 hits, so singles that didn't chart, or that didn't chart high enough to reach the top 60, didn't often turn up in my town. 

At some point in 1983 or 1984 I started visiting Tower Records in Seattle when my family (or my church group) made trips to the big city over the mountains. Sometimes if my dad was traveling to Seattle for business, I'd give him a short list of singles and he'd stop by Tower to pick them up for me. That's how I ended up with a copy of Echo & the Bunnymen's "Bring On the Dancing Horses," which didn't make it onto the charts in the USA.

Tower Records had everything! They had singles displayed on their new release wall that hadn't cracked the top 100, but were still available for the very few who were interested. It was at Tower that I really built my collection of not-very-popular new save singles of the early-to-mid 1980s that I continue adding to today. 

Still, even with the plentiful bounty my young self found at Tower, I couldn't help but think of all the 7" treasures I'd missed. Imagine if I'd begun visiting Tower Records in 1977 instead! Over the past 35 years of crate-digging I've come across nice copies of some of the singles released during the 1977-to-1983 time period (by Devo, Blondie, the B-52s, etc.) but there were still some that were released briefly and that nobody bought, and that I still had never laid eyes upon. Talking Heads is one of my favorite groups that released several such singles. But now, thanks to the Internet in general and to Discogs in particular, releases like "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town" from 1977 are included my collection! You can find the complete Talking Heads discography on Wikipedia here.

[ Talking Heads ]