Talking Heads Talking In Tongues Robert Rauschenburg LTD ED LP clear vinyl VG

$

38

Talking Heads

Speaking In Tongues

Limited Edition Robert Rauschenburg Cover Art

Sire Records 1-23771 1983 12" 33rpm (USA)

From the blog post "Bob The Builder" by David Byrne:

I approached Bob Rauschenberg in the mid-’80s to design a cover for the Talking Heads record “Speaking in Tongues.” I had recently seen some of his black-and-white photo collages at Leo Castelli’s gallery on West Broadway and thought they were amazing, and I wondered what he would do with an LP cover.

It was not unusual for a pop musician to approach a fine artist in those days; other contemporary artists had collaborated with pop bands in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when Bob, who died this week, eschewed simply reproducing a work on the album jacket in favor of re-envisioning what the whole LP package could be.

His package consisted of a conceptual collage piece in which the color separation layers — the cyan, magenta and yellow images that combined to make one full-color image — were, well, deconstructed. Only by rotating the LP and the separate plastic disc could one see — and then only intermittently — the three-color images included in the collage. It was a transparent explication of how the three-color process works, yet in this case, one could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.

Needless to say, the design posed some production problems for Warner Bros. Records, so it ended up a limited, but very large, 50,000-copy edition, released in addition to the regular, mass-produced version. Luckily, everyone shared in the crazy idea of making radical art that could also be popular. Nowadays there might be concerns about the return on investment, but at that time the label let these matters slide.

I later became friends with Bob and his collaborators, and it was an incredible world to enter. I sensed immediately that Bob had never become cynical about his work. Even after he found success, he continued to see the world as a work of art that simply hadn’t been framed yet.

Tracklist

A1  Burning Down The House    Percussion – Steve Scales  Synthesizer – Wally Badarou 4:00
A2  Making Flippy Floppy    Guitar – Alex WeirViolin – Shankar 4:36
A3  Girlfriend Is Better    Synthesizer – Bernie Worrell 4:25
A4  Slippery People    Backing Vocals – Dolette McDonald, Nona HendryxPercussion – Raphael DejesusSaxophone – Richard Landry 3:30
A5  I Get Wild / Wild Gravity    Percussion – David Van Tieghem, Raphael Dejesus 4:06
B1  Swamp    Guitar – Alex WeirSynthesizer – Wally Badarou 5:09
B2  Moon Rocks    Guitar – Alex WeirPercussion – Steve Scales 5:04
B3  Pull Up The Roots    Guitar – Alex WeirPercussion – Raphael Dejesus 5:08
B4  This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)    Percussion – David Van TieghemSynthesizer – Wally Badarou 4:56

    Phonographic Copyright (p) – Sire Records Company
    Copyright (c) – Sire Records Company

    Backing Vocals, Double Bass, Guitar, Synthesizer, Music By – Tina Weymouth
    Backing Vocals, Drums, Synthesizer, Music By – Chris Frantz
    Backing Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Music By – Jerry Harrison
    Bass, Percussion, Guitar, Cover, Lyrics By, Music By, Keyboards, Synthesizer, Vocals – David Byrne
    Design [Cover / Package] – Robert Rauschenberg
    Engineer [Assistant Mix] – Franklin Gibson, Jay Mark
    Engineer [Assistant Recording] – John Convertino 
    Engineer [Recording] – Butch Jones
    Management – Gary Kurfirst
    Mastered By – Ted Jensen
    Mixed By, Engineer [Mix] – Alex Sadkin
    Producer – Talking Heads

Basic tracks recorded at Blank Tapes, NY.
Final overdubbing and mixing at Compass Point Studios and Sigma Sound, NY.
Originally Mastered at Sterling Sound, NY.

Limited edition of 50,000. Clear vinyl.
The packaging, designed by Robert Rauschenberg, is a transparent plastic case with artwork and credits printed on 3 12" circular transparent collages, one per primary color.

Condition:  12" clear vinyl record is NEAR MINT, interior artwork discs are EXCELLENT, the customized plastic shell is tea-stained and in FAIR condition. 

A Note About Shipping To The U.S.
We are located in Canada, but have registered ourselves on eBay.com instead of eBay.ca because it gives us significantly better global exposure.  The problem with this is that eBay wants us to charge shipping appropriate to US, where media mail and other options make for fairly reasonable delivery costs. We tried it for a while but ended up losing money on shipping or having to cancel the orders because we couldn't afford to ship for those rates. To manage this we have set the US shipping to run a calculator based on an American location (we chose Plattsburgh as fairly close) and charging according to UPS pricing.  This avoids the cancellation issue, but appears to the buyer to be a prohibitive shipping cost and misrepresents the shipping as being only expedited. If you give us your postal code we will see if we can offer a more reasonable option, but generally we can get a single LP by air to most places in the continental US for $11, a few bucks less for ground.
Thanks for shopping Sir Helmitt,
Jeff Green, e-sales