TRUE STORIES

TRUR STORIES

Gregg Turner

by

THE KINSEY REPORT

TALKING HEADS

True Stories

(Warner Bros.)

Samantha, a 32 yr-old paralegal from Wisconsin, cannot achieve orgasm. Her fiance, Henry, a singer and poet from Minneapolis, is a premature ejaculator. I—K. Heinrich Hoffmann—am the doctor of psycho-sexual therapy treating this young couple’s temporary but tenacious dysfunction.

Henry began masturbating to Sex Pistols records back in 1979; however, not long after the demise of Sid Vicious, he experienced difficulty maintaining an erection. Four months into his relationship with Samantha, he found himself surrendering to powerful, unyielding compulsions. Foremost of these involved demands that the sex act be performed synchronous to rock music blasting from the bedroom stereo. To this, Samantha capitulated (though she preferred the “Batman” theme and the Turtles to the Circle Jerks). Not until his insistence that they experiment with 101 Strings Play Dylan did she become confron, tational. Eventually, Samantha denied Henry participation bringing her to climax unless it was to the Talking Heads. Well, here we • have the problem in a nutshell as it were. Henry sincerely disliked this fellow, David Byrne, and by the time of their fourth release his ejaculations occurred within a few seconds after the needle scraped out the first notes of the first song on Side One.

Which brings us to the present tense, of course. Ja—this is always the case, you see—first the past, then the present! Well, it seems she now cannot achieve orgasm no' matter what she listens to, and Henry finishes moments after he, how would you say it, pulls down his pants. The prescribed course of therapy indicates a desensitization to the core of the matter here—David Byrne and the Talking Heads; ja, there is no question about this. Henry has somehow confused his sexual identity w/this singerperson Byrne and is submerged w/some sort of intractable personality crisis. And Samantha apparently harbors some hostility to this Tina Weymouth person.

So, in accordance with this, I instructed the couple to proceed as’they normally would, however —this time—to the newly released True Stories album. Henry, naturally, knew nothing of the movie from which these songs were culled; Samantha did not seem to care. Nevertheless, I counseled them both to orient their sexual activity to this music not as a soundtrack (it conspicuously lacks the conceptual glue or otherwise continuity of that which most soundtrack or movie-songs records exude— perhaps because these are band-executed renditions of songs actor-people originally performed in the film)—but as a legitimate new-album entry. This, they complied with readily.

The response, surprisingly enough, was very positive. Both reported interest in the recordipg’s music, that the songs as songs were all quite engaging. In fact, they conceded listening to this record all the way through— with their clothes on! They commented that several of the record’s tunes were “pretty” and that the absence of the singer singing like and acting “Negroid” was a positive sign.

I naturally probed whether or not this was indicative of perhaps some sort of racist ideation; this they rejected out of hand, maintaining they enjoyed the singer’s voice and the songs uncluttered with the boring, how did they say it, “R&B funk type crap.” That, stripped of this, the band has plugged into some more than OK melodies and “rock-rhythms.” Then, it occurred to Henry that his premature ejaculation might have more to do with resenting the singer’s “spastic soul-man inclinations” than anything personal to do with Samantha. He cited the absence of this problem, for example, when the two of them experimented with a Tom Verlaine solo album.

Samanmtha seemed particularly fond of the calypso-like, “Radio Head,” while Henry agreed that “People Like Us” and “City of Dreams” evoked what he termed “the better moments of Ray Davies.” This is particularly curious as I remember several patients commenting that this Byrne fellow, at his songwriting peak, delivers the best of the Ray Davies marriage of word and melody.

Curiously, Sam and Henry did not, as they say, get-it-on to this record. But they reported a newfound sense of peace w/the Talking Heads; she indicated no longer a persistent vitriol pointed to the bassist and he described a strange affection to the singer’s presence on this album. That, in fact, the tune they’ve both heard on the radio, “Wild Wild Life,” is not only arresting but (their words) “action-packed.”

I find this an encouraging sign; and, in one subsequent session, Henry— nowadays a popular figure himself in the musicscene—described a “born-again passion” in his penis. Quite likely this self-confidence will affect Samantha and a solution to their difficulties could possibly be not too far away.

I keep a copy of True Stories on file these days and use this as the first course in a prescribed therapy plan for most of the individuals t see. I plan to someday publish these results— perhaps in one of those rockmusic trade magazines—and explain to its constituency the true value of a True Story...