From KP Duty to the Groove Den: Talking Heads and a Thanksgiving Surprise.

I do this blog for shits and giggles, a creative release, and a way to share my musical interests and maybe a few stories with family and friends. 

My daughter Emily and her boyfriend Matt are also collecting albums and having fun in the vinyl resurrection.  A few weeks ago she texted me this photo of her and Matt on the hunt in NYC at Vinyl Fair. Check out this wild scene. I bet there are some great finds here…and little did I know I would soon have some of these finds.

On the hunt at Vinyl Fair, NYC

Emily, Matt and their dog Maggie came home for Thanksgiving and completely blindsided me with an early Christmas gift — a stack of vinyl that just about knocked me out of my chair. I got a little emotional over one record I’m saving for later. But one in the stack completely took me by surprise and immediately this post came to life.

 Talking Heads — Speaking In Tongues.

Here’s the thing… Talking Heads hits different for me. I’ve never seen them live. Not in some sweaty arena, not at a festival, not even a random opening slot back in the ’80s. Nothing. I did see Stop Making Sense however. Talking Heads has been part of my personal soundtrack just as deeply as the bands I did see. And that connection traces back to one unlikely place:

KP duty in Germany.

Ask any soldier and they’ll tell you — music saves you in those moments. Kitchen Patrol/Kitchen Police was hot, long and chaotic, and felt like the Army’s way of reminding you that peeling 100 pounds of potatoes builds character.

I catch KP duty one week and I show up for my first shift. One of the GIs rolled in with a brand-new cassette — Talking Heads’ Little Creatures (released June 10, 1985) — fresh from back in the “world”. (That’s what we called stateside.) New guys arriving in the country always had the freshest stuff.  I remember seeing Reboks for the first time on the feet of some new kid.  This was the golden age of boom boxes. Cassettes were it. Every barracks room had some kind of tape deck, and I had my reel to reel going making legendary mix tapes. He pops it in … and I’m hooked. Little did I know that four decades later, I’d hold another Talking Heads album in my hands — a gift from my daughter — and the memories would come rushing back.

“And She Was,” “Road To Nowhere,” “Stay Up Late,” echoing off stainless steel walls while steam blasted from the dishwashers as we tried not to slip on a floor coated in mystery grease. We were tired, sweaty, probably half-delirious — but Talking Heads made it fun. Those songs didn’t just play in the background — they were imprinted.  We played it every day for a week of KP. I later borrowed his cassette and copied it to my reel to reel tape. 

So when my daughter handed me Speaking In Tongues, it wasn’t just a record. It was a blast of memory. And now tonight I’m in the groove den, home alone and the Klipsch are cranked up! 

Could there be a better opening track than Burning Down the House? That subtle guitar riff slowly builds into the drums - then it’s full-on David Byrne magic. Speaking In Tongues captures the band at the peak of their power. In fact the Stop Making Sense movie and live album are mostly drawn from this tour.

Dropping the needing and texting my buddy Rob who started all this with me.

This record is just a complete and total masterpiece. It’s still amazing to me how I can drop the needle and in a blink of an eye, the side is over. Time flies when you’re having fun right? Byrne’s quirky vocals, stop-and-start phrasing, and nervous energy make every track feel alive. Whether it’s the funky urgency of Girlfriend Is Better, the swampy groove of Swamp, or the comforting warmth of This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), the band’s chemistry is palpable.

They all sound so fantastic on this setup.  I forgot to mention after the last post, I dug out an old Cerwin-Vega powered subwoofer from the attic and I ran the speakers through this sub.  It adds a really nice touch, giving the low end a punch it needed. When people say music connects us, this is exactly what they mean to me. A connection to a band I’ve never seen, but somehow feel like I grew up with.

A reminder that sometimes the music that sticks with you the deepest didn’t come from a concert at all — it came from a cassette in a boom box on a day when you needed it. A connection to your daughter who arrives for the holiday with a record you didn’t know you needed. 

Me and Emily after Thanksgiving, 2025

Now I get to drop that needle, crank “Burning Down The House” on actual vinyl, and time-travel right back to 1985… minus the steam, sweat, and 100 gallons of potatoes.