Talking Heads' Fear of Music

33⅓ Main Series #86

by Jonathan Lethem

Fear of Music, the third album by Talking Heads, was recorded and released in 1979. It is, like each of their first four albums, a masterpiece. Edgy, paranoid, funky, addictive, rhythmic, repetitive, spooky, and fun - with Brian Eno's production, it's a record that bursts out of the downtown scene that birthed the band, and hints at the directions (positive and negative) they'd take in the near future. Here, Jonathan Lethem takes us back to the late 1970s in New York City and situates Talking Heads as one of the most remarkable and enigmatic American bands. Incorporating theory, fiction, and memoir, and placing Fear of Music alongside Fritz Lang, Edgar Allen Poe, Patti Smith, and David Foster Wallace. Lethem's book is a virtuoso performance by a writer at the peak of his powers, tackling one of his great obsessions.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism, Rock N Roll, Pop Culture, Cultural

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2011

About the author

Jonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer.

His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller.

In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship

Reviews

[Alias Pending · Rating 1 out of 5]

Before we begin, I have to confess this one star rating is a lie, it is, in fact, as they say on Amazon, a zero star rating, but I didn't have that option.

Warning. I'm not going to be nice.

Short Review: Shit Sandwich.

Medium Sized Review: Approaching the end of this work, I desperately wanted the meth-addled author to finally confess his own secret, "I'm just kidding. No one could possibly write an essay about Fear of Music that was this pretentious, this smug, this self-absorbed. I just wanted to see how many people would make it to the end without having an aneurysm."

End: Lethem doesn't apologize for his actions, however. And there ends my relationship with this author. I will never touch anything by him again (except the Exegesis of Philip K Dick which Lethem had something to do with, unfortunately). His babbling stream of consciousness faux-intellectualism is enough to induce READ RAGE. This sorry volume was neither educational nor entertaining, and if this is what the 33 1/3 series has to offer, I'm done with them too.

Time to listen to Fear of Music and try to forget this ever happened.

[Kaoru · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been listening to „Fear of Music“ quite a lot lately, and finding out that there was a book in the „33 1/3“ series about it, I picked it up to learn something about the making of the album and a lot of other behind-the-scenes-stuff. After a few pages though I had to realize that it was one of those books. That's right, this is not one of the „33 1/3“ releases in which there's something to learn, this is one of the books written by people who consider themselves as far more interesting than the music they're writing about. So what you get is a 160 pages long ramble about his personal interpretations of the lyrics and soundscapes with obscure references to art and architecture and whathaveyou. So nothing about how it came to be that the band hooked up with Brian Eno in the first place, anything about the production, the contemporary reception, nothing, anything, zero.

Pretty telling are the chapter titles, as they reveal the author's 'cleverness' and his approach to writing this book. „Is Fear of Music a Talking Heads Record?“ Come on, really? „Is Fear of Music a Text?“ Blimey. „Is Fear of Music an Asperger's Record?“ Christ on a stick.
So, here in return are the chapter titles from the book that I'm going to write about the author (assuming that I'll ever come with enough indulgence that could fill 160 pages):
- „Is Jonathan Lethem an author?“
- „Is Jonathan Lethem a purple tinted Cronos?
- „Is Jonathan Lethem entitled to rectangular grass cubes that twaddle in peace?“
- „Is Jonathan Lethem largely bespoken before chivalrous oranges above a sunset?“
- „How many Jonathan Lethems does it take to change a light bulb?
- „Will you marry me?“
- „I love a good fart joke!“

[Ken · Rating 1 out of 5]

An author I like writing about a band I like? What could go wrong?

Oh, where to begin?

Maybe it's that he has no insights into the music? Or the words? Or the history of the band? Or the place of this album in pop history? Or why it's enjoyable?

I kept wondering... How did he bamboozle the publishers into paying for these random observations?

This may not be the worst book ever written. But damn, it's got to be in the bottom 10.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite type of critique on a particular piece of art is the one where the author uses it as a subject matter - and then goes off into the inner world of that art work - or in this case the Talking Head's album "The Fear Of Music." Jonathan Lethem tears into the album if it was a mysterious lost code in his childhood. If you want to know about the making of "The Fear of Music," or what the band was thinking about - this is not the book. But if you are either a fan of Lethem or just interested how an album can affect someone - then this is a mighty good read. One of the better books in the pretty mighty world of 33 1/3 series.

[Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I find it ironic that the most solipsistic book I have EVER read uses the word so many times. I would hate to know Jonathan Lethem, a man who is such a self centered pretentious ass that a book about the Talking Heads became a book about himself... though if I ever meet him, he's paying me back for buying this book, which deserves no stars and no reviews written because it would waste even more of my time.

[Nat]

Every couple of years, the 33 1/3 series has an open call for proposals (the current deadline is actually today, so get to work on your deconstruction of Spiderland or Exile in Guyville (which were, from a quick look, the most proposed albums in the last call)).

In the last open call, my brother and I submitted one of two proposals for Fear of Music. I think we might have overemphasized the importance of the Baader-Meinhof gang for understanding the album (in 1979, Baader-Meinhof terrorists were crossing into the United States using forged Iranian passports--look it up in the NYT). Anyway, we didn't get picked. But it was almost as good to see that Jonathan Lethem was going to write about the album.

And the remark that makes it totally clear that Lethem is coming at the album from more or less exactly the same place as my brother and me is the following:

"If you cared for [everything urban and remotely alienated] as a mode of inquiry, as an angle of attack on everything, there were only two choices: Devo, and Talking Heads. The boy in his room looked at that menu and said I'll have both please" (p.84). We did that/felt that way too!

Here are a few specific worries (these did not distract from the fact that the book is a huge amount of fun):

There was an annoying "warning" right at the start of the book that readers may suffer demystification/mystification "vis-a-vis a cherished cultural artifact" after reading Lethem's analysis. Really? I'm not too worried. My Fear of Music credentials are pretty solid. For example, I attended a school in Germany named after the author of the lyrics of "I Zimbra" (Hugo Ball Gymnasium, in Pirmasens, Germany).

Occasionally Lethem gets carried away and says some stuff that's either clearly false or just nonsense. Some examples:

p.17-18: "It's been proposed that 'Fear of (signifier)' is the key to parsing the album: the 'real' subject being fear of air, fear of drugs, fear of heaven, fear of cities and animals and so forth".

-How is that at all plausible? "Cities" is not about fear of cities--its mood is giddy about moving around. "Heaven" is not about fear of heaven: it's "exciting" and "fun". Anyway.

p.18: "There's never anything you can point out to another person and say: 'This is mind, right here!' The more you press the case, the more the subject slips away. And yet it's also everywhere. Or at least everywhere we look".

-Really? There's mind in my coffee?

p.19: "Perhaps if mind exists at all, it's a bourgeois vestige, best left behind like the burned notebooks in 'Life During Wartime': mind won't help you survive".

-Try doing without mind, I expect you won't last long.

p.73: "we're never less free from ourselves than precisely in the act of failing...to free ourselves".

-Is this true? I doubt it. I actually find it kind of hard to understand what this is saying.

p.78: [Describing "Air"]: "The song flirts with metrosexual vanity---what's happening to your skin, buddy? Buy a higher grade of sunblock. Give me a break".

-I doubt that that's a misreading that would occur to someone who has ever had real trouble with his skin.

p.91: Here's a more subtle linguistic issue, concerning this line in "Heaven": "It's hard to imagine that nothing at all/ Could be so exciting, could be so much fun".

Lethem says: "The word 'nothing' is itself a hinge, or dumb pun: is nothing exciting, a description of a situation that's rather convincingly boring..., since when nothing's exciting there's nothing interesting at all---or is nothing exciting, a very rare and fascinating condition in which the less there is the more scintillating we're finding "it" to be?"

Ok, Lethem proposes two possible readings of the line:

1. There is nothing that is exciting.
2. Nothing(ness) is exciting.

I think the only reasonable reading of the line from Heaven is (2.)---it's just not possible to hear it as saying "It's hard to imagine that [there is] nothing at all/ [that] could be exciting". Notice that that reading requires dropping the "so". If I paid more attention in intro to semantics I might be able to say why that reading isn't available more convincingly.

p.98: [Discussing David Byrne's possibly having Asperger's]: "The question, then, is not how Aspergian David Byrne might be---or whether or not that is even a question worth asking, or appropriate to ask...outside of current fads in the history of the Categorical Imperative".

-I know what the Categorical Imperative is, and I have no idea what that sentence means.

p.86: there is a goofy misspelling of "Sao Paulo" as "Sau Paulo".

Those aren't big problems, though. And they don't really distract from some really awesome lines and observations about the album. I won't spoil them by simply recounting them, except for the following two one liners:

[Discussing "Big Country"]: "This is the Cary Grant North by Northwest crop-duster sensation---the nightmare, in flyover country, of becoming the one flown over" (p.42).

[About "Air"]: "We have nothing to fear but nothing itself".

There were a couple of discussions that were really nice:

-Lethem discusses whether Fear of Music is a "concept" album (p.33), and he spends some time discussing the fact that many of the song titles are one-word labels: "Mind", "Paper", "Animals", "Air", "Cities", "Drugs". But you could argue that it's literally a concept album, in the sense that those song titles are just names for simple concepts.

-After reading his account of "Paper" I would want to argue that it has a lot to say about bureaucracy: after spending time in a French immigration office, the line "Even though it was never written down / Still might be a chance that it might work out" resonates very strongly.

-Lethem's discussion of "Cities" is awesome, and I'm now convinced it's my favorite Talking Heads song.

[Jade Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonathan Lethem is both an excellent writer and, to me, and immensely annoying and smarmy guy. This is worth reading if you’re a fan of the band or the album, and many of Lethem’s criticisms and descriptions of the music were fantastic, but *god* did his voice get to me after a while.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incomprehensible, faux-intellectual word vomit that sometimes mentions Talking Heads.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I learned a lesson from this book: Next time, if I can truly tell that I hate reading a book, I won't be ashamed of abandoning it.

Why waste precious time?

I thank God I don't listen to music the same way as Jonathan Lethem.

This would be a zero star review if it could be.

[Uli Vogel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never been an ardent Talking Heads fan but was attracted by the author. I liked the concept of listening to the album while reading along.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

This starts promisingly, reminding me why I was always so interested in this album: its creepy radio ads. And it interested me that Lethem was determined to base his response to the album on his early reactions to it and his current reflections on it--no research. But as soon as I got a copy and began listening again, I found that nothing Lethem thought or theorized or thrilled in about the record was as interesting as listening to the record itself. Get a copy.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Recommendation: While using this product, actually listening to the record is strongly indicated. I don't mean just on those crappy little speakers built into your computer, either. And turn it up, for fuck's sake."

Here's a link to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb6iz...

[John Spiller · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it a quarter of the way through and gave up. I loved "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Gun with Occasional Music." Lethem's indulgent, discursive take on the Talking Heads "Fear of Music" confirms the old Onion headline, "Music History Written by the Losers."

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overwritten, lazy, nonsense.

[GloriaGloom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Piccole avvertenze. Questo è un libro solo per i fans di Jonathan Lethem; questo è un libro solo per i fans di Jonathan Lethem che hanno amato Chronic City; questo è un libro per tutti quelli che oltre ad appartenere alle due precedenti categorie di lettori sono mossi da un altrettanto fanatico amore verso il balbettante Verbo dei Talking Heads; e se anche possedete tutti questi requisiti ma pensate che Remain in Light sia più bello o importante di Fear of Music potete evitare di perder tempo tra queste pagine; se avete agevolmente scavalcato gli ostacoli precedenti ora chiedetevi cosa volete da un libro intorno a un prodotto talmente effimero e volubile come un disco di trenta anni fa, da una indagine tra le pieghe sempre scivolose della popular music: cercate nomi, interviste, misteri svelati, la marca delle cuffie di Brian Eno o il tipo di accordatura delle chitarre di David Byrne, sentirvi dire che è un disco "seminale" ? In questo caso non ve lo meritate Jonathan Lethem! Per gustarvi questo libro dovete appartenere alla nobile scuola di chi pensa, chi sa, che la materia di cui è fatto un disco non è il vil vinile o la musica che esce fuori dai diffusori, ma l'ossessione, il mistero, quello chè è proprio il naturale concime della "fear of music".
Lethem parte da un ragazzino di 15 anni, sotto le coperte del suo lettino di Brooklyn, che ascoltando la radio di notte intercetta la monotona voce di David Byrne annunciare l'uscita del disco. Da dove arriva quella voce così anomala/anonima che nel mezzo dell'inquietudine notturna di un ragazzino pronuncia quel misterioso titolo? Fear of Music sarà l'ossessione dello scrittore lungo tutta la sua vita, come il monolite di 2001 a cui associa l'impenetrabile copertina nera, una pietra sonora scagliata nel mondo del simbolico su cui tornare (o meglio, che torna su) in età e situazioni differenti. Da sezionare in modalità parossistica per scoprire chissà quali misteri, messaggi, quali speculazioni intellettuali sia possibile innestare su quella manciata di canzoni al di là della effettiva consapevolezza degli autori (che qui, e per fortuna, non sono mai cercati, intervistati, chiamati a chiarimenti). Un corpo a corpo dickiano in uno spazio simbolico talmente elastico da divenire un mondo parallelo. Uno sguardo con la vista periferica, come direbbe Wallace.
Su molte cose sono d'accordo con il preoccupante Letham, su altre meno, ma non importa, il bello di questo libro è il metodo, l'assolutà arbitrarietà di esplorazione che ognuno di noi può osare rispetto alla più seriale e immateriale delle invenzioni come la musica registrata.
E Fear of Music si presta alla grande perchè è l'ultimo grande disco della modernità, l'ultima volta che il rock ha lambito la sfera del Mitologico prima di scivolare nella volgarità dell'Estetica o del Postmoderno( e questa è un'arbitraria mia affermazione ma condivisa in parte anche da Lethem tratta del mio "Tractatus Prosaico intorno alla musica popolare moderna ad uso degli ultimi avventori ubriachi del bar sottocasa" che scriverò quando andrò in pensione). E' un disco pieno di promesse disattese (dov'è il frenetico melting pot in cui scioglierci tutti promesso da I Zimbra e dalla sua lingua multiuso? affogato nei barconi a largo di Lampedusa? nella macelleria di piazza con il Corano in mano? - Lethem si inerpica in una gustosissima quanto falsa ricerca dell'origine di quella lingua risalendo fino al dadaista anarchico Hugo Ball ), è un elenco di segni spaventosi nella loro nuda semplicità - città, giornali, animali, droghe- una teoria di sintomi messi a nudo. E' un disco di droghe lente che annucia droghe veloci. ( a ripensarci ora ecco un'ottima domanda, non dove eravate, ma che droghe usavate quando avete ascoltato la prima volta Fear of Music? )

p.s io e la bassista dei Talking Heads, Tina Weymouth, abbiamo rischiato di sposarci. E'accaduto a un concerto dei Talking Heads, ci siamo guardati un attimo negli occhi e promessi amore eterno (solo anni dopo, leggendo un' intervista, ho scoperto del suo strabismo), in un secondo è passato nella mia testa il film della nostra futura vita insieme, io e quella donna bionda, di ricca famiglia californiana,l'ho immaginata posare il suo basso - tanto è sempre stata una pessima bassista - e saltare dal palco tra le mie braccia, lasciando di sasso il batterista - incidentalmente suo marito e a differenza di lei bravissimo - e fuggire insieme nella notte verso il golfo del messico: una vita spensierata a coltivare marijuana e a sperperare i suoi diritti d'autore...

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a tough one to rate--full disclosure, never read a book by Lethem before, though I'm aware of his reputation. I went into this one excited, both to sample his writing and also because this album is classic, and only the latter salvaged this for me. The writing was kind of all over the place, to the point where I would read, then re-read, lines of half-baked ideas and wonder how a novelist as successful as he is, or perhaps his editor, would allow it to reach print. For every interesting interpretation or parallel he draws, there are 8 or 9 that miss hard... And yet, I almost gave this a three, because by the end of the book I felt paradoxically warmly toward it, and to the absolute music nerd behind the writer, fearlessly putting forward inane lyrical analysis and liner note conspiracy theories. Well, almost.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my view, the best 33 1/3 books offer a potent mix of personal recollection and cool, well-researched observations about the players, sounds and contexts behind a particular album.

Lethem goes all-in purely for his own personal obsessions and interpretations in the book. He certainly has the literary and intellectual chops to pull it off, and yet... I often found myself wanting more than just his memories and hipper-than-though riffing on the dark, weird soundscapes of Talking Heads' third record. It's a decent entry in the series and his philosophical riffs are enjoyable to read; it's just not what I personally go to the series for.

Definitely play the record and listen along if and when you read this one, his descriptions of the music are fun and sly.

[Tripp]

Part of the 33 ⅓ series on important LPs. Lethem moves song by song through the record, interspersing his deep dives into each track with more global treatments that have titles such as "Is Fear of Music a Science Fiction Album?" Lethem is clearly a fan of all kinds of music and is able to find correspondences and comparisons between this Talking Heads album and the music of James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, Bob Dylanand much more.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is pretty middle-of-the-road for the 33 1/3 series, neither a short and boring hagiography nor an up-its-own-ass over-analyzation of the music, which seem to be the opposing poles that the books in this series mostly hit. It’s mostly just Lethem ranting about each song, and some running themes in the record, and I enjoy his writing enough that this was pretty tolerable.

[Ric · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must be mistaken, I thought I picked up a book on the Talking Heads album Fear of Music, not one on the author? I happen to enjoy the vast majority of the 33 1/3 books I’ve read, but this author inserted himself into the story in a way that I’ve never seen and don’t wish to again.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Maybe Zappa was right. Lethem quotes that line in here and it feels accurate. I love this album and I quite like the author but I didn’t get a lot out of this. Very loose and discursive. A bit pretentious. Still, fun to listen to the album on a flight while reading these chapters.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t like to give ratings this low but I had to warn others to skip this one. Pretentious ramblings about how cool the author is rather than anything of substance about the Talking Heads. I knew I was in trouble when the author called his childhood home a “semi-ghetto brownstone”.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entire book on ONE album? Not for everyone. But if the author is Jonathan Lethem and the album is by early Talking Heads, it works for me. It's a wonky, coming-of-age analysis of what we now recognize as groundbreaking music by unique artists, notably David Byrne. I've come to appreciate Lethem's gritty NYC novels Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, but now see a new perspective. I'm familiar with Talking Heads since Stop Making Sense, but enjoy the evolution from their earlier music.

[narwhal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love music reviews because they try and capture the ineffable / sketch out an interior world that can be lost by stream-of-consciousness listening of music. They are also inherently tied to the culture and have the task of connecting their writing to the context of the present which requires a keen social awareness & the knowledge of just a ton of details. I love this because I enter a world, not merely accumulating information. I see patterns, I see the world of music expand, see mentions of disco, funk, Al Green, as well as the literary world, Kafka, Hugo Ball, etc...

I see a lot of hate for this book which makes me question my unfiltered absorption of this book but I also find that the criticisms are beside the point. The criticism is that it is too esoteric or solipsistic, but I feel like the whole point of this review as stated by the author was to offer his interpretation of the album & his relation to it (which is what a lot of music appreciation is– why you like a song is for the large part subjective). This increases empathy for the music as well as increasing a new dimension of appreciation for it. The author is not beneath critiquing himself as well (and his younger self's initial opinions of the album). Also, this is an album by the Talking *Heads* after all... I think it is perfectly legitimate for an analysis to go deeper than the surface level. (Although the ultimate conclusion is to move your body, it takes a while to get there) Finally, isn't it a compliment if an author speaks to the reader as an equal, not having to labor over every explanation?

I may be praising the emperor's new clothes, but I think Lethem is sort of a genius writer. I appreciate the 33 1/3 series b/c each album review has a different author and a completely flexible format, chosen by the author, or should I say, auteur. Auteur Lethem weaves the analysis of each song with interspersed chapters which take a step back to address questions concerning the album and artist. His power is metaphor, which is never ambling, but builds different structures, immersing the reader using second person, whether he is speaking of the album cover's texture or song's soundscape. He can speak to abstract ideas such as the mind but deft with describing what he personally enjoys about the music, while also in constant dialogue with the views of his younger teenage self who initially got into the album. Yet he does not present his opinions matter-of-factly but builds his arguments with logical fluency, considering opposing points of view. This stuff is seriously multidimenisonal!! He has such a great arsenal of vocabulary at hand, none of it vain, superfluous, or hackneyed but serving to serve the images of his work. Aka the author's got an actual voice!!!

I think the core of the author's love for FoM is this very art punk sensibility of a desire for clever, sharp social commentary, no BS, and the purity of fear. Yeah, a particular 'brand of fear...mingled in your environment and neural habitat simultaneously...[resembling] thought itself' (137) with the idea that b/c this band knew this fear, it 'reconquer[ed] those dark towers' (136). I saw hints especially contrasting his mention of the gimmicky science fiction of ELO v.s. the keen analysis of the future by the Talking Heads (also see the 'skeletal ferocity' Gang of Four). This shows that the music of this album is not just music but tied to a specific emotional disposition (fear). Apparently, when this disposition became divorced from the artists, the performance of the music lost their true meaning. But inevitable, because artists can change, they are people. It has something to do with the integrity of music, something like that.

Although I heartily prefer TH's later stuff as they got bigger, especially the jubilant sounds of Speaking in Tongues, I can now appreciate/recognize the darker cousin, the apotheosis of the foursome with FoM (and the apotheosis of their punk). Though, the author would think my artful appreciation a violation of truly 'getting it.'

Overall, the book is a bit dense, I admit, but I read on with the feeling that I was circling the parameters of something really alive and marvelous, multifaceted. Dense like a cake not like a textbook. And I actually got the album. Sort of.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dilution of the song summaries: the journey (from p.134):
'I Zimbra' (no-mind, non-sense)
'Mind' (not a working number)
'Paper' (old methods doubtful)
'Cities' (flee, dance)
'Life during Wartime' (quit dancing, find barricades)
'Memories Can't Wait' (party and war are in your mind)
'Air' (no release on earth)
'Heaven' (release from mind only in death)
'Animals' (no dignity in bodily release)
'Electric Guitar' (doubt rock)
'Drugs' (f up the mind)

Epiphanies:
'I didn't want to write about FoM, I wanted to write FoM. Once begun, I found that the more I invited other stories inside that LP-sized circle...the less I was able to make my own language for what I heard. In our age of information and access, getting off-line is already a commodity...What's less clearly valued...is the value of what Donald Barthelme called 'not knowing': the manifold mercies of ignorance when setting out to do or say nearly anything.' (12)

'If writing about music is, in Frank Zappa's memorable phrase, 'dancing about architecture'...then the act of analyzing lyrics is self-incrimination for that crime, the writer being drawn to the writerly aspect of his subject matter: dancing about the blueprints, instead of the building...Yet an interest in language, in names, categories, and concepts is more than a writer's tropism– it's a human one.' (34)


Keen analysis of music:
'Yet as much as its obnoxiously dry lyrics begs to be taken literally, even 'Big Country' contains a trace of back-door negotiation with what it denounces: the slide guitar, a self-conscious gesture for a punk or even new wave band in 1978...The slide-guitar can be taken two ways: a satirical gesture, furthering the song's atmosphere of scorn by framing a sound that's emblematically 'corny,' or a preemptive musical apology for the slight' (41) Can we talk about the metaphor 'back-door negotiation'??!! D; so good

'Is FoM science fiction? Sure, but only because Kafka is too, and the entire twentieth century. And no, not at all, since... it barely glances at the iconography, the kit of endearing devices and ingrown references.'

'But the sound preceding, the sound of that struggle just before it was solved, generated a field of meanings with an unstable but permanent power.'

'Yet mean and scary as things want to be, the whole drama is enacted within a sympathetic amplitude which keeps clear of 'Animals' territory. Bottom line: he gets the joke – the joke of subjectivity, the joke of paranoia, the inside-outside problem of trying to make an effective observation of anything in particular when the specimens keeps shifting and sliding under the microscope, and the lens keeps reflecting your own face back to you.' (129) Also the prose/metaphor in this.... !!!!!

–really fascinating to read about the Dada-like, 'Frankenstein'-like construction of 'Drugs' btwn Byrne & Eno

Prose (general & in ref to music):
'The names of the downtown nightclubs 'CBGB' and 'Mudd Club' are parochial chocolate chunks lodged in the widescreen allegorical peanut butter.'

'In a world of radio formats and movie soundtracks and headline writers seeking to sound cool, these artifacts float loose of their album surroundings, to drift even beyond the band's name and fame into a constellation of context-reduced cultural 'things' burnished by use as non- or semi-sequiturs...While these could never plausibly exhibit a coherent relation to one another, all feed talismanic juice back to the phrase's source.'

'[the guitar is] laughable, yet, in its modularity as a figure floating in aural vacuum, the squiggle points forward to the spatial palace of 'Drugs.' There, such lost sounds will act less as distress calls than as a kind of mental sonar, taking measure of an uncannily vast interior.' !

'The producer clears out all distortions to frame the little guffaw in sonic clarity, as if the singer had managed to stick his head out a window and gargle with a mouthful of fresh air.'

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty well a sucker for books by Lethem, and this one was getting rave reviews all over the place, seemingly by people who weren't really familiar with the concept of the 33 1/3 series. I'm gonna break it down for you: it's a whole book about one album, which means for this book, a chapter for each of "Fear of Music"'s eleven songs, and a chapter between each trying a different lens through which you might approach the record. That's what Lethem does, and what most of the books in the series (this is the 86th book in the series, if you're curious) does, so thinking it's his crazy idea or he's a genius for undertaking it might mean you're kind of an idiot, or at least a book reviewer who isn't really paying attention....

Anyhow, Lethem is no idiot, and he is pretty smart about these songs, and this album. He does a little of the Greil Marcus style drill-down-deep analysis on these songs and how they tease out different kinds of neuroses. He imagines a storyline, a series of characters and a fantasy landscape in which these songs develop a kind of personality under pressure, though he doesn't do as much as Marcus would with the social history. I mean, there's some of that in here, but not in an overwhelming kind of way-- understanding this album might not help you to better understand America in the 20th century, in other words. But I do think there are flashes more personal than anything Marcus would attempt-- there's a really telling and moving moment where Lethem explains his interest in punk music as a way to a) rebel against mainstream culture without b) embracing black culture, like the nascent hip hop movement. I don't know why, but this really resonated with me, as a kind of third way I think a lot of us have found as young people, and that hopefully you kind of grow out of but which is still very powerful, in terms of identifying your tribe and all that. In some senses, that was very evocative of _Fortress of Solitude_, where Lethem approaches some of these same ideas but with a character more open to black pop culture; I found this potrait, for all its complexity and discomfort, more powerful, but you know, maybe it wouldn't tickle everyone the same way.

I tried to do like Lethem said, and listen to this album, and especially particular songs, while he was talking about them. It was a pretty powerful experience. Though it's kind of coincidental, this is the one TH record I own (okay, cd) and I wasn't crazy about it. But I feel like I have a much fuller appreciation for it now.

[Rob Mentzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Jonathan Lethem and all but this is just noodling. Maybe that is what most of these 33 1/3 books are? The only other one I've read is "Let's Talk About Love" and it is one of my favorite books of all time so not a fair comparison.

The problem with this book is that it doesn't have an argument and it doesn't have reporting and it doesn't really have enough personal content to give it an arc. It is just variations on a guy saying, "Oh, man, I love this record. Isn't it great?" Of course it is great, but come on.

Lethem does seem to be having fun, sort of, but the critical points just don't land. "This is a 'the slow song,'" Lethem writes about "Heaven," "not because the tempo's so different from 'Memories Can't Wait' or 'Mind' (and 'Drugs' will be far slower), but because the song demands it be understood that way." Um, okay?

And then you get these sort of quasi-parodies of bad grad school essays, stuff like:

If "Talking Heads" are the collective "implicit author" of Fear of Music, and David Byrne is, in turn, the band's "auteur," and if David Byrne is the type of rock musician who will eventually end up writing "real" (as opposed to "as-told-to") books, and if books, including this one, are written about the band and its singer-lyricist-leader and its songs and albums, and if songs have lyrics which are quotable and analyzable, and if Fear of Music is, in at least certain quarters, received as a kind of "concept album," does any of this mean, necessarily, that there is a text in this class?

I see a few sort-of jokes in there but it's not enough.

So, yeah, Lethem is terrific and Talking Heads are the greatest but this is not a keeper. It's not very long, though, so that is good.

[edga net · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting one to rate, More of an authors reflection on his relationship to the band than an album biography(can’t say I learnt anything about the album itself). Dudes a big wanker and loves over analyzing things(to the point where I had to skip pages), but he’s an entertaining wanker. Great accompaniment while listening to the album itself, does a great job helping set the mood each track. Cheers liamos

[Frank Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jonathan Lethem is the author of one of my favorite contemporary novels, Motherless Brooklyn and another I loved, As She Climbed Across The Table so I'm not surprised that his contribution to the wonderful 33 1/3 series of "biographies" of various albums is itself a mesmerizing work of art. His is no mere recital of facts about the making of Fear of Music nor does he spend much time at all on the bank qua band, though the band obviously runs through the whole book which in part is a meditation on who or what is or was Talking Heads!

There's a warning at the beginning of this book: "Contents under pressure of interpretation. User may suffer unwanted effects vis-à-vis a cherished cultural token -- possibly including sensations of demystification, or its opposite, mystification." And it's a warning well heeded! Lethem's artistry is in his personal interpretations of a popular and popularly shared cultural icon (making this also a memoir) that are both fictional re-creations and auto-biographical self-analysis that end up being an example of the Groucho/Harpo mirror/doorway routine Lethem actually goes to more than once toward the conclusion of this album.

Lethem is 8 years younger then me, and while his 15-year old high school self for whom this album was new and intriguingly exciting when released in 1979 appears throughout as Lethem reflects upon him then and now in a kind of dialogue, I was 23 and so his remembrances brought me face to face with my 23-year old self attending some of the same concerts (such as the Talking Heads at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium) and having similar experiences, and questions.

Fear of Music can be seen as the end of the beginning OR as the beginning of the end of Talking Heads. Lethem goes song by song through the album, with intervening chapters titled "Is Fear of Music a Talking Heads Record?"; "Is Fear of Music a David Byrne Album?"; "Is Fear of Music a Text?";"Two Cities Hiding"; "Is Fear of Music a New York album?" and ends his "review" of Side One with "So Fear of Music is a Concept Album. What Happens on Side Two?" and while the concept may only have arisen in the mind of Jonathan Lethem, it's a concept that expands upon not just this album, but the cultural milieu in which it was written, recorded, and received.

The inter-song chapters for Side Two are titled "Is Fear of Music a Science Fiction Record?"; "Is Fear of Music An Asperger's Record?"; "Is Fear of Music a Paranoid Record?"; "What Was the Fate of the Fear of Music Songs in Live Performance?" which is a relevant and pertinent question to ask given the nature of the music and the amorphously changing band and the final chapter, after his break-down of "Drugs" the concluding song of the album is titled "Breaking Up With Fear of Music.

And here is where the mirror reflection most spoke to me. Lethem says "I might not have played Fear of Music once in ten years." Not once throughout the 90s. "We were exes, the album and I." And truth be told, before reading this book, I cannot remember the last time I took a Talking Heads album off the shelf and listened to it. Me... who had each of the first four albums on turntable repeat for months after each one's release! Lethem tells of the ambivalence of liking and not liking what came later. "Too often, I felt, the band's later albums courted harmlessness and disclaimed complicity.... This is not what you want from artists who had shown you -- in a world where "scary" things like Blue Oyster Cult's 'Don't Fear the Reaper' and The Exorcist had only seemed silly, overwrought, and superstitious -- what your own brand of fear truly consisted of. How it mingled in your environment and neural habitat simultaneously, how much it seemed to resemble thought itself."

And this disappointment is something I recognize the taste of. And Lethem knows this too: "...some version of my sulky feelings could probably be located in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of persons whose coming of age was congruent, like mine, with this band's career." His biggest surprise, he shares, in coming full circle back to Fear of Music is in how often the throb of Dylan's "Don't Look Back" or "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" is to be heard in the music on this album and in to Talking Heads in general. "That note of permanent goodbye, where a potentially tender feeling makes itself callous in order to spare sentimentality, to circumvent wallowing." Lethem asks, "Who are we people who sometimes need to destroy and depart, who find that losing things -- people and cities, time and mind -- is often the only way to taste having had them at all?"

Lethem lost his mother as an adolescent and he has shared in interviews how this loss permeates so much of his life and his work. Reading this, I remember how moved I was the first time I heard David Thomas of Pere Ubu sing, "I wondered what I'd want without you" or the poignancy of what's left unsaid as Chris Issac sings "And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you."

Some of us listen to music, or read books, or watch films for entertainment. Some of us find much more in art. We are passionately engaged and come face to face with ourselves... or a reflection. Or, perhaps more tellingly the false reflection Lethem returns to: "In a sense Fear of Music and I are like Groucho and Harpo, meeting one night in that doorway that pretends to be a mirror. The false reflection displayed to me a self that was just enough off-register to be completely revealing. Yet this was only possible because we met at a time when we were both wearing the same disguise."

Lethem puts words to an experience I think all us denizens of art are familiar with: "The punishing intensity we bring to the imperfect reflections we find in the mirror of artworks we choose to love, and our readiness to be betrayed by their failure to continue to match our next moves in the mime-show, our next steps in the dance, is likely a form of mercy." We can't face such punishing intensity for long periods of time. The very relationship between the artist and their audience is one of perpetual possibility of disappointment and if both fan and artist are honest with themselves, they know that such disappointment is "above all a human situation.

Lethem asks, "where did our fear go?" and again and ever so common a human experience, to realize it was right where we left it.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jonathan Lethem wrote a book about Fear of Music by Talking Heads. I really wanted, and expected, to love this book, but was left mostly disappointed. The experience of reading Fear of Music was kind of like hanging out late one night in college with someone who you thought was super-cool, and probably a lot smarter than you, and who had edgier taste in music (and books, and art, and movies) than you, and they put on a record that they're really into and start deconstructing its cultural significance and its personal significance to them, and they're probably stoned, and maybe you're stoned too, and as they ponder questions like "Is Fear of Music a text? Is Fear of Music a New York album? Is Fear of Music an Asperger's record?" you can't tell if this is just how much smarter than you they are or maybe they're just full of shit. It could be both. But then occasionally he (Lethem) will strike upon something like "Above all, 'Memories' chides that 'Life During Wartime' wasn't the end of Side One," and you're (I'm) like, YES!! I KNOW, RIGHT??!!

Fear of Music is a fucking awesome record, though.

[Nowhere Girl · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is some good analysis here, a few insights that are worth putting in a book. But my god. The writing.
This author is unbearable. Not only is his analysis way to autobiographical, it is terribly, terribly written. The prose is painful and undercuts any point he may have. Whatever emotion he was trying to convey is lost in some of the worst writing I've had to sit through. And while there are some good insights, there are also a lot of bad ones, delivered in the most annoying way possible. Every once in a whole I'd find myself nodding along to some statement, only for my goodwill to be stretched and torn by another abomination of a sentence.
I hate this book. But in the end, my appreciation for the album has somewhat increased by reading it, and so I can't write it off entirely. And it does get easier suffering through the author's style the further along you get, once you know what you're in for.
Try and find a page of the book to scan. If you like the style (it's distinct enough to imagine many would), read the book. If you don't, you'll just have to ask yourself how much you really need to know about fear of music.