Tom Tom Club

Tom Tom Club was originally a side project for the husband-and-wife team of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, the Talking Heads' drummer and bass player, who made three albums while waiting around for David Byrne to reconvene the band and a fourth after he pulled the plug. The self-titled debut (and the only one of the early albums still available) sounds like a delightful accident: funky beats collide with dub reggae keyboards; rap ("Wordy Rappinghood") bumps into new wave ("Genius of Love") on the dance floor. Like a vacation trip on which everything clicks into place, this insouciant groove seems impossible to duplicate. "Pleasure of Love" is about as close as the followup comes. By the time of the forced, hollow-sounding Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom from 1989, Tom Tom Club couldn't help but reflect some of Frantz and Weymouth's frustration with the uncertain status of their old band. Ironically, Tom Tom Club's sense of wonder (and of humor) is exactly what's missing from much of Byrne's solo work. After an eight-year break, Franz and Weymouth cut an uneven fifth album immediately following a Talking Heads reunion minus Byrne (now there's a genius idea). Tom Tom Club's intermittent career winds up proving an old rock & roll adage: Breaking up is hard to do. (MARK COLEMAN/BUD SCOPPA)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide