Director Mary Harron told the actors to do the scene several times in different ways. Perhaps the best comparison is a certain scene in the 2000 film American Psycho, in which Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a serial killer, is talking with a detective (Willem Dafoe) that is looking for a man that Bateman killed days earlier. It's a cool effect that you rarely see in music. As the producer of the song, Eno decided to make each band member record their part independent of each other, with either rhythm in mind, so that the final mix would have both of these rhythmical interpretations playing against each other as a polyrhythm in the style of Fela Kuti. Eno, however, heard the beat emphasizing the third beat of each meter, much like reggae beat. Where do you start each meter of the two-bar rhythm? The band heard the bass line like you probably do, starting on the first beat of each meter. Try listening to the song yourself and counting out the 4/4 rhythm. According to Brian Eno, the band and he heard the bass riff, which was the first part of the song the band completed, with different "ones," different rhythms. "Once in a Lifetime" doesn't have this exact scenario going on, but it does contain two conflicting rhythms, and it is all heard in the bass groove. For example, if a drummer is playing a bar of 4/4 but he plays eighth notes on his snare drum and triplets on his hi-hat, he is playing a polyrhythm. Polyrhythms, or "cross-rhythms," are the result of two conflicting rhythms happening on top of each other. Kuti's music was an essential influence on the band as it introduced Byrne and Eno to polyrhythms. With Remain in Light, Eno introduced the band to Fela Kuti's Open & Close, an album of African-funk-and-jazz fusion music known as Afrobeat. Eno has a knack for accurately predicting and creating big new directions in music. The massively influential pop producer Brian Eno, who worked with David Bowie and U2 during their most successful periods, produced Remain in Light. The album's iconic song, "Once in a Lifetime," capitalized on two important developing styles: rap music and Afrobeat. 1980's Remain in Light transformed Talking Heads' musical style with just these forms. In reality, though, Talking Heads were simply injecting new forms of Black pop music into the mainstream white American consciousness before these forms were fully accepted. What they probably mean to say is that the blues and jazz influences of early rock had been done away with. Some music writers have commented that the Talking Heads and much of the New Wave movement of the 1980s had purged themselves of the influence of Black music. Talking Heads defined their early sound with clean guitar, un-syncopated beats, and Byrne singing in his honest, everyman voice about every day things like listening to records. Walk onstage in your street clothes and sing with no affectation in a kind of unromantic but passionate way." ( Source) I thought: Let's see if we can just throw all that out, start from square one. Lead singer David Byrne thought the new punk revolution "wasn't saying anything new, it was just a sloppier version of the Stones, the same clothes and the same pose. They didn't flex their musical muscles-muscicles?-with insane long, laborious guitar solos, and they weren't interested in the sloppy-on-purpose style of punk rock. And they weren't interested in the things that most rock bands were interested in, either. With their clean, cut look, clothes that fit, and unique musical style, Talking Heads weren't your normal rock group. When Talking Heads first walked into the punk club CBGB where they got their start, it was clear that they didn't fit into either category. By the early 1980s, rock music had split into two separate realms: the Led Zeppelin-inspired classic rockers with long hair, tight pants, and mad guitar skills and the three-chord punk rockers like the Ramones.
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