133. TV Dinners

133. "Found a Job" by Talking Heads

I absolutely love the way this song blasts out of the gate. No countdown. No drum or bass lead in. No opening chords. There is not a single second of music over which a DJ can talk. It simply goes from zero to sixty on the first note, beginning with the line "Damn that television!"



I also love the story in this song about two people that get so fed up with nothing being on TV that they start making their own shows. They have so much fun doing it, they save their relationship that was previously in jeopardy because of their fighting over the TV.

Of course, younguns today might think it ridiculous for people to fight over television shows because they can watch any show they want anytime they want on the telephone/television/computer they carry in their pocket. But in my youth, if you wanted to watch a TV show and some other member of the family wanted to watch something on the other channel, a fight would always break out. We had only one television in the living room, so that's where I remember most of the fights I had with my siblings. But even after we got a second television in our house in the "new room"--a converted attached garage--we still had arguments about who would watch what show. (Dad came home one day to find that Mom had purchased a new television and had it set up in the kitchen. He got upset and berated her loudly saying, "Roberta! Why did you go buy another television?! We've already got two!" Mom's response was, "Oh, Earl! It's a microwave oven!")

Back when this song first came out in 1978, the idea that someone could make their own TV show was delightfully absurd. We had ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS, and nobody but nobody was going to get on TV without dealing with one of those networks! And there were no video cameras or VCR recorders to record a show for later viewing. We either watched it live, or we didn't see it at all.

Today, anybody on the planet can make all the shows they want and let the whole world watch them on their very own free YouTube channel. In fact, the networks now publish their shows on YouTube because for some shows they can get more views on YouTube than they can on their television network. Consequently, this song is more relevant to our society today than it was nearly 40 years ago when it first came out.

Besides the opening and the story, I also love this song for two lines that come toward the end of it:

     So think about this little scene; apply it to your life.
     If your work isn't what you love, then something isn't right.

I've had jobs where I felt utterly miserable, so I can attest to the fact that the Talking Heads are telling the truth when they say that if you don't love your work, something isn't right. And it is because of that piece of sage advice that this song makes it into my Top 200 list.