Tom Tom Club – Genius Of Live

Any discussion of Tom Tom Club is inevitably presaged by acknowledging that the band were essentially a side-project of Talking Heads, having been formed during a hiatus from that wildly-more-successful group by husband and wife team Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. But Tom Tom Club have serious cultural clout of their own, a fact signified by the 1981 New Wave staple Genius Of Love, which is remixed by eleven different artists here on an interesting but largely unessential bonus disc.

More crucial is the live recording itself, which finds the band playing in their native New York to an intimate audience of friends shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Much of their classic self-titled debut is rolled-out, with singles like Wordy Rappinghood – a funky stew of disco, reggae and early hip-hop, indicative of the group’s place in musical history – and Genius Of Love losing none of their original vitality. [Martin Skivington]