You can point to obvious antecedents for many new wave and punk bands. In Blondie’s music, for example, you can hear the influence of so-called girl groups from the 1960s. You can also draw a straight line from the Ramones to several hits from that decade, such as the Chris Montez’s “Let’s Dance” and the Rivieras’ “California Sun,” both of which they covered.

But what about Talking Heads? Starting with Talking Heads: 77, their debut LP, it was clear that this outfit marched to the beat of its own drummer, not to mention its own frenetic lead singer, David Byrne. How on earth (or elsewhere!) did this group’s sound originate, and how did it evolve?

Though a 2026 three-CD box set called Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live surveys the band’s earliest years, it doesn’t answer those questions. That’s because these seminal tracks suggest that Talking Heads’ music was already rather well developed by the time somebody first hit the record button.

True, the group later tweaked tempos, inflections and more, and the performances collected here are somewhat less polished and forceful than the ones on Talking Heads’ debut and sophomore LPs. As this box makes clear, however, most of the songs on those albums had not only been composed but whipped into pretty good shape several years before the band garnered widespread attention. Even on its earliest demos, Talking Heads’ trademark sound is mostly in place, as are many of the arrangements, and Byrne already comes across as the “tense and nervous” misfit he personifies in the first album’s classic “Psycho Killer.”

That said, serious fans will likely appreciate this collection, which includes most of the songs that surfaced on Talking Heads’ first two LPs. The tracks primarily date from 1975 and 1976, when the band was still a trio consisting of Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. (Jerry Harrison, a veteran of Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers, joined them in January 1977.) There are 25 demo recordings from these years, 15 of which were previously released. There are also two previously available numbers from 1974, when the group billed itself as the Artistics.

The remaining 18 tracks, all unreleased until now, come from early concerts at three now-defunct venues. There are 10 songs from an October 1976 gig at New York’s Max’s Kansas City, five from a January 1977 concert at the Jabberwocky Club in Syracuse, N.Y., and three from an August 1976 show at New York’s Lower Manhattan Ocean Club. Like the demos, these performances include many songs that would show up on the debut and sophomore albums, but there is also a pair of covers that you could previously find only on bootlegs: Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” and—believe it or not—the 1910 Fruitgum Company’s “1, 2, 3 Red Light.”

The 3-CD set, released on March 6, is available in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.

Related: Our review of Talking Heads’ expanded More Songs About Buildings and Food