In the years following its release, "Once in a Lifetime" became a popular subject for parody in other media. A modified audio recording of this performance was included on the accompanying Stop Making Sense live album, released in September 1984, and was released as its lead single the preceding February. Composited from three recorded performances from Talking Heads' 1983 Speaking in Tongues tour, the film included a live performance of "Once in a Lifetime," arranged in the style of the Speaking in Tongues album (shown below). On April 24th, 1984, the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival. While the single itself received only modest sales, the music video was subject to frequent rotation on MTV in the network's infancy, allowing it and the song to garner widespread public attention. The video features Byrne performing erratic dances and rituals atop alternating chroma-keyed backdrops of a white void, religious rituals, computer-generated water ripples and four duplicates of himself. The single release was accompanied by a low-budget music video co-directed by choreographer Toni Basil (shown below). In addition to being included on Remain in Light, "Once in a Lifetime" was released as the album's lead single on February 2nd, 1981. The jam was then elaborated upon by Eno and frontman David Byrne, who respectively contributed a repetitive synth part inspired by the works of minimalist composer Philip Glass and a spoken-word lyrical part inspired by the sermons and performance style of televangelists. "Once in a Lifetime" was specifically formed from a jam session titled "Right Start," consisting of repetitive guitar and bass parts written and performed by Talking Heads members Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. Produced by Brian Eno and combining elements of post-punk, New Wave music, and Afrobeat, the album was developed from improvised studio jams, with specific rhythms isolated from these jams and played ad infinitum to form the base of each song. I almost guarantee that arpeggio is sequenced, because."Once in a Lifetime" was first released on October 8th, 1980, as the fourth track on Talking Heads' fourth album, Remain in Light. They squared it off in the "Stop Making Sense" version.ĭavid Holloway says there's no prerecording, and that may be true, but the main arpeggio is not what the keyboardist on stage is playing, there is a keyboard part behind it, which he's grooving on, it's the part Bernie Worell played for Stop Making Sense. The transition from first verse to chorus drops a beat. The original also has a lot of tape cuts. The "Stop Making Sense" version uses a completely different arpeggio that's more obviously played. It would be kind of pointless to play the sequence, IMO, it's supposed to be very mechanical, and the rest of the song is such a free jam, it would sort of take away from the performance to have someone locked into that pattern. The original song came out of a jam session with David and Brian (they get co-writing credit), and the rest of the band filled in later. If I remember correctly, the original arpeggio is a 7 over 8 note sequence that Eno came up with in the studio. I used to play this song with my band, but it's been a bit.
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