This curious little release was issued as part of a series cassette format singles of WEA label artists, such as Gary Numan and Tubeway Army as featured in a pervious post. Packaged in cute little flip-top box packs, the series shared a common theme of design/layout and would pair two the best tracks by each of the artists chosen. As well as this Talking Heads release, the series featured The Pretenders (two releases, no less), Angelic Upstarts, Rezillos, Tubeway Army, The Ramones, Gary Numan, Saxon and finally Jane Birkin.
This particular Talking Heads release is something of a curio as versions featured on the cassingle are not the album versions. ‘Take Me To The River’ is the shorter 7″ edit. Meanwhile, ‘Psycho Killer’ is the ‘alternative’ version featured on side two of the 12″ single release from 1977. As far as I am aware neither of these versions have ever been issued on CD/digitally. The ‘Psycho Killer’ (Acoustic)’ version released on the CD re-issue of ‘Talking Heads: 77’ is not the same version as was featured on the 12″ single – it bears some clear similarities and is obviously from the same take, but is mixed quite differently and brings different instruments, such as the cello, in at different times.
The series appears to have been issued on Friday 17 April 1981 as best as I can tell. In the UK at least, at the time there was a lot of interest in the cassette single format and I assume that this was WEA’s testing of the market’s appetite for such releases.
