The Totally Frightful Issue: Tom Tom Club
Remember The Tom Tom Club? Sure you do! How could anyone forget the Talking Heads’ spin-off new wave girl group?
If you don’t know them, you’ve certainly heard at least some variation of their monster single, “Genius of Love:” it’s allegedly the most sampled song in the world.
Sure, it’s a great song and all, but we’ve always been partial to “Wordy Rappinghood,” which you may recognize from the Chicks on Speed cover. We love it so much, we’ve posted a vintage video above.
So, why does this qualify as part of The Totally Frightful Issue? Their lip synching scares the pants off us, their dancing reminds us of a strung out zombie, and the random Spanish announcement caught us off guard.
While there may be a few scary things about this video, it’s still totally fucking awesome.
But, don’t take our word for it…
That’s Italian, not Spanish!!
Girl Group? I concede that all the vocals on the first album were by Talking Head Tina Weymouth and her sisters, but even on that album the featured players were Tina’s husband (and fellow Talking Head) Chris Frantz and guitarist extroaordinaire Adrian Belew. Beginning with the second album Tina was the only female vocalist (and sole female influence for the most part) in the group.
Yeah, you dolts! Not sure what program that was, but it was definitely Italian television.
Now if you could only find a video of them performing “l’éléphant”. That would be the shit. We love you anyway. *sigh*
Jerry is right – I don’t know quite what you have posted but it’s not the “actual” Tom Tom Club. Scaaary!
Italian? French? Who gives a shit. It’s about the bows in their hair! YEAH!!!!!!!!
I LOVED Tom Tom Club… Until I saw this video.
Their lip-synch didn’t scare me as much as that choreography! Thank gawd I never saw them perform on TV when I was a kid…