Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
95th out of 95 books
—
24 voters
Fear of Music (33⅓ #86)
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) t...more
Paperback, 160 pages
Published
April 26th 2012
by Continuum
(first published March 24th 2011)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
528)
Full disclosure. I did not read all of this book. I listed to Lethem read several chapters while this band composed of cutie hipsters (who all looked about 17 years of age) played talking heads songs. Sometimes book readings at skylight books turn out that way. Anyhow, I managed to not have a horrible, rabid fan girl moment with Lethem and listened to what he had to say about his perception of my favorite Talking Heads album instead of tearing out hy hair and shouting, "I really like what you di...more
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 serie...more
Apr 30, 2012
Nat
added it
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...more
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...more
"Yet it recalls the houses scattered like green Monopoly tokens through Talking Heads' work; 'Love Goes to a Building on Fire,' 'Don't Worry About the Government' ('They all need buildings to help them along'), More Songs About Buildings and Food, 'Houses in Motion,' 'This is not my beautiful house,' etc., etc. There's something needful in the persistence of this oblique conflation of houses and selves, buildings and bodies" (pg. 43).
"Talking Heads were the definitive New York rock band. […] Thi...more
"Talking Heads were the definitive New York rock band. […] Thi...more
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 i...more
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 i...more
Having read this book, I have a better appreciation for this album I already loved, but I could've done without the ongoing mentions of "that boy in his room" referring to the teenaged Letham. The review is very subjective, speculative, and poetic, and there's not much factual information regarding the actual production of the album [compare the highly specific musical structure analysis in (Steely Dan's) Aja by Don Breithaupt or the technical analysis of recording strategies in (Captain Beefhea...more
Fear Of Music (1979) by Talking Heads is the latest book from the 33 1/3 series by Continuum written by novelist Jonathan Lethem. Other than the hit, "Life During Wartime," this is an album that I was mostly unfamiliar with, so it was interesting to get to know it in the context of its being written about by Lethem. Letham chose to write about he music from a purely personal context, he didn't interview anyone and seems to have done little research about the album and group members. I would have...more
Having now read six books in this series, I think it's pretty safe to say that they primarily exist as an argument that writing about a single album should exist in no format longer than a "lengthy essay," or perhaps a "pamphlet." I actually enjoyed this book the second best of those I've read, (in rough order, Let's Talk About Love, Fear of Music, Bee Thousand, Armed Forces, Daydream Nation, Loveless) and really appreciated that Lethem devoted himself wholly to interpretation, but about 66 2/3%...more
I think perhaps I truly dislike this book (book? tract? essay? rant?). I went into this knowing that the 33 1/3 series is a mixed bag - it could be revealing journalism, it could be fiction, it could be a long interview with the artist, or it could be self-indulgent shenanigans that crawls up the hidey-hole of its own meta-meta-meta-meanderings. I'll let you guess which box I tick with this one. If Lethem spent as much space writing about the actual album as he does writing about writing a book...more
I didn't enjoy this book.
I may have enjoyed it more if I read it when I was younger.
I don't mind when 33 1/3 books take a big divergence.
"Dusty in Springfield" is largely about white appropriation of black music and
less about the album. I didn't expect that turn - but it was a great read.
I wouldn't mind Letham's loose and honestly beat-y
descriptions of songs if it was backed up by wizz-bang facts I didn't know about
the album's creation.
Read "This Must Be the Place" if you're looking for a book t...more
I may have enjoyed it more if I read it when I was younger.
I don't mind when 33 1/3 books take a big divergence.
"Dusty in Springfield" is largely about white appropriation of black music and
less about the album. I didn't expect that turn - but it was a great read.
I wouldn't mind Letham's loose and honestly beat-y
descriptions of songs if it was backed up by wizz-bang facts I didn't know about
the album's creation.
Read "This Must Be the Place" if you're looking for a book t...more
This is very much a representative 33 1/3 offering: obsessive fanboy dissecting a seminal work by a favorite artist, poking and prodding it to within an inch of its life. I am a huge fan of Talking Heads; I think they are absolutely one of the best ever American rock bands. That being said, I cannot share Lethem's feeling of betrayal over the band's post-Fear of Music career. I choose to see this album as part of an amazing run of brilliance, starting with More Songs About Buildings and Food, an...more
Immersively engrossing, with an elegant and effective format: song-by-song intertextual analysis evenly interspersed with (usually) interrogative macro-thematic chapters (favorites include "Is Fear of Music a Science Fiction Record" and "Is Fear of Music a Paranoid Record?"). In a way, it reads like a compendium of conversations one might have had about the album, while listening to the album, though there's a strong sense of personal, formative encounter (in a broad, protracted sense: with a re...more
I was excited to pick up this 33 1/3. Lethem's great. Fear of Music's great. But Lethem's Fear of Music is not so great. I heard recently that the series is getting an overhaul and that future releases will be a little more academic and researched. I wish these new rules were in effect for Fear of Music. Lethem admits to have intentionally done no real research for this book and as such it's not the most informative of the series. If you like the more personal 33 1/3s or the more fictive ones li...more
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 intereste...more
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 t...more
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 t...more
At my wedding the DJ played Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place" during the dinner portion of the reception. The best man came up to me at the sweethearts table and said, "I know a guy that is obsessed with the Talking Heads."
"I'm kind of obsessed with the Talking Heads," I replied.
"You're who I meant."
And it's true. Case in point: In preparation for reading Jonathem Lethem's contribution to the 33 1/3 book series on The Talking Heads album Fear of Music, I listend to the album daily for a fe...more
"I'm kind of obsessed with the Talking Heads," I replied.
"You're who I meant."
And it's true. Case in point: In preparation for reading Jonathem Lethem's contribution to the 33 1/3 book series on The Talking Heads album Fear of Music, I listend to the album daily for a fe...more
Fear of Music, Talking Heads' third album, is like the overlooked middle child in the band's classic four albums, and as the immediate predecessor to the band's worldbeat masterpiece, 1980's Remain In Light, FoM is easily reduced to the status as the band's "transitional" album, an awkward vestigial organ in the band's evolution. Lethem's book fortunately debunks this version of history and rescues the album from the shadows. In this respect, the book is a necessity. Lethem's prose is heavy on i...more
I actually wrote a review for Goodreads for once. Then it refused to allow me to update it. Let's see if I can reconstruct it shortly.
---
This is not a book about the creative process for Fear of Music. If this is what you're looking for, seek help elsewhere. It is, as discovered on the back cover after (mercifully!) completing the text, about "the ways in which we fall in and out of love with works of art." That sentence has the potential to be really reductive, but for this critique/paen/border...more
---
This is not a book about the creative process for Fear of Music. If this is what you're looking for, seek help elsewhere. It is, as discovered on the back cover after (mercifully!) completing the text, about "the ways in which we fall in and out of love with works of art." That sentence has the potential to be really reductive, but for this critique/paen/border...more
Lethem's introduction is solid, but in later chapters he repeats the same claim - that "Fear of Music" was the best Talking Heads album, and that all of the band's later works went downhill - over and over to the point of tedium. His riff-like passages of musical criticism also verge on being incomprehensible. It's one thing to write enigmatic and expressive passages when discussing music, but it's another thing entirely to be so bizarre. This is really a terrible book.
This is probably the 2nd or 3rd worst book in this entire series. It had pretty much little or nothing to do with any new information, or even pertinent information, regarding Talking Heads. Instead, Lethem seems excited by his own vocabulary and his ability to weave in and out of that lexicon while still leaving asides in it so as to include that "personal" touch. Only time will tell if I end up rating this as the worst one of the entire series. Hate the world.
No one loves Talking Heads third album, Fear of Music, more than Jonathan Lethem. No one. Ever. But if you love this album - with its grocery list of tracks - Cities, Air, Drugs, Electric Guitar, Mind, Paper ... then you're pretty much going to devour this book.
I fell in love with this album (album!) in the mid-80s, while on a road trip (ok, cassette recording) to a friends' wedding. Since that time I've been unable to shake "Heaven" as one of my favorite songs, impossibly attracted to this pla...more
Nothing I'm capable of saying will do this justice, so let's just let a particularly Lethem-y passage speak instead:
"The song's impossible to dismiss. Unlike a lot of other things tricked-up to look scary, but which turn out to be Donovan singing 'Season of the Witch' when you peek beneath, the Enoween costume on 'Memories Can't Wait' is laid on top of a face even scarier than the mask...never has this band gone further afield from its disco-funk liaison, that long date they've been keeping en...more
"The song's impossible to dismiss. Unlike a lot of other things tricked-up to look scary, but which turn out to be Donovan singing 'Season of the Witch' when you peek beneath, the Enoween costume on 'Memories Can't Wait' is laid on top of a face even scarier than the mask...never has this band gone further afield from its disco-funk liaison, that long date they've been keeping en...more
What a pleasure to read a novelist I've always admired geek out about my all-time favorite band (okay, maybe tied with XTC). Lethem admits that "Remain in Light" may be a more worthy subject (that's definitely the one that I would have written about), but Lethem is a little bit older than me and so this was the record that commanded his 12-year old self's attention. Sheer fun from start to finish--IF you're a Heads head like I am.
funny that reading about music wasn't as fun as listening to it.
there were interested points and a new point of view since Lethem was looking back on a younger version of himself listening to the album. but I had to plow through to get to the end, guess it just wasn't funny enough to keep my attention.
there were interested points and a new point of view since Lethem was looking back on a younger version of himself listening to the album. but I had to plow through to get to the end, guess it just wasn't funny enough to keep my attention.
Feb 25, 2013
Jonathan Kleefeld
added it
Great example of the sort of stylistic and personnel chances this series should gamble on, or maybe just invest in, more frequently. Lethem's talents allow him to get at multiple angles of our relationship to music, in which approaches he neatly clicks with the feel of the album at hand.
Great read if you love Lethem and love the album. Very well written but if you're not a big music buff you probably won't be motivated to stick with it. Almost tempted to give more stars but reading one long book about one album does not come close to reading a good novel by Lethem.
Many reviewers have complained about the pretense and self-involvement of this book, but anyone who has ever truly loved a record and harbored it like a secret will recognize the sort of pretense and self-involvement that are natural byproducts. The best installments of the 33 1/3 series are the ones that make me re-listen and re-hear a record that has become over-familiar through years of being a harbored secret. Lethem hits that on the head for me by describing his secret version of Fear Of Mu...more
Lethem's voice, overuse of metaphor, and nostalgic tack really irritated me and yet I read this like it was some page-turner genre novel. I love this album, so when he'd get it right, I felt, about Cities and Life During Wartime, or about it as a paranoid concept album, I couldn't wait to see where he went next.
Excellent!!! Lethem describes the album perfectly, and in the process creates a work of art on its own. i listened to the album over and over while reading this book, which is a testament to the quality of the book and the album.
Strange musings on a ineffable work of rock beauty. If you like Lethem and/or Talking Heads, you'll find this interesting. Listening while reading will yield some unique insights.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Lethem has published his stories and essays in The New Yorker, Harpers, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others.
More about Jonathan Lethem...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“The stumbling block will turn out to be the traditional one for students of consciousness: the flashlight is incapable of shining on itself, so we can't trust what its light reveals.”
—
2 people liked it
“Paranoia has its downsides as an agency in daily life, or in the political sphere of collective action, which finds itself beset everywhere by the nightmarish influence of conspiracy thinking (they call it theory, but theories exist to be tested, and conspiracy thinking exists never to be tested, and globally ignores the results of tests imposed by others). The suspicion that malign operators are responsible for every one of the injustices and heartbreaks of existence is a consoling view, a balm to bleak glimpses of the void behind our reality. It's brave to pursue truth, and brave to pursue and expose tricky and well-hidden bad guys (Nazi doctors, Pentagon intelligence-distorters, etc.). It's not brave to think tricky, well-hidden bad guys are the whole truth of what's out there. It might even be bravery's opposite. Or maybe it should go under the name "religion.”
—
1 person liked it
More quotes…
Apr 23, 2012 08:25am