Having survived several years of art and design school, Talking Heads have developed a finely honed sense of the absurd. Being on the rock ’n’ roll road most of the year, God knows they need it. And their arrival at a funky-but-chic record store extravaganza in Chicago last summer sorely tested the patience of even the most unflappable road veteran.

The band plunged into the fray, cheerily swapping stories with their fans and autographing albums, while two urchins in white face make-up hovered nearby, their heads bobbing above a table decorated with wine bottles and rubber fruit.

After an hour of this, the group retired to a limousine parked out front. Alas, their hapless chauffeur, a Flintstone Family clone, had locked his keys inside the Cadillac. Jerry Harrison, tne band’s guitarist, hurried off down the street in search of a coat hanger. The remainder of the group, accompanied by their befuddled record company chaperone, circled the car, enduring a steady onslaught of jeers from a motley clump of neighborhood hustlers. One gay blade, clad only in a bikini, suggested that they saw through the

roof. “Convertibles are so inscrutable,” he cooed before bicycling off.