Fear of music

HOLD on tight. "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around." Jonathan Lethem's monograph on Talking Heads' "Fear of Music" isn't your everyday, step-by-step, track-by-track snapshot of a great record. "This ain't the Mudd Club, or CBGB, I ain't got time for that now." And, most definitely, Lethem's contribution to Continuum's "33 1/3" series isn't a quick spin down memory lane. It's obsessive, passionate and personal. In short, the name of this new book by Jonathan Lethem is "Fear of Music." This is the story of one particular album, recorded by one particular band in 1979, that wrapped itself around one particular fan and never let go. Early in the book, in something Lethem calls a prelude, we're introduced to that fan, or in this case, the boy in the room. This boy, the 15-year-old Lethem, in another reference to "Life During Wartime," lives in "a definite-brownstone in a maybe-ghetto" in Brooklyn. The boy is so obsessed with the record that he wears the vinyl out, memorizes the lyrics, sees the band every chance he gets and later confesses that "at the peak, in 1980 or 1981, my identification was so complete that I might have wished to wear the album 'Fear of Music' in place of my head so as to be mpre clearly seen by those around me." New York City might have been a mess in 1979, but it was great for music. Of course there was CB's and Max's, but there were a couple of new places downtown that booked live music, Tier 3 and the Mudd Club. There was also Hurrah, and by the time " Life During Wartime" was on the charts, Danceteria was about to open. They all had killer D.J.'s. You could hear "Off the Wall" by Michael Jackson right next to "Contort Yourself" by the Contortions. The playiist might include "Public Image" by John Lydon's new band, PiL, or maybe the new record by Grace Jones or Chic, and the D.J. would then blast into Teenage Jesus. You might hear the same records at the legendary dance club Paradise Garage. Disco wasn't dead, and neither was rock 'n' roll. Talking Heads found a spot between the two and covered it better than anyone else. "Life During Wartime" was all over the clubs. It sounded fantastic, and at 2, 3, maybe 4 in the morning, after a set at Danceteria, it was the perfect New York City record. It was the perfect New York City record no matter what club you were in. It had flashing lights and warning signs and the sound of gunfire mixed in with a lethal groove. That was New York City in 1979. Lethem handles this territory just right. Thankfully, he's "uninterested in the personal historical facts," the gossip, the trivia or the grievances. He also avoids unnecessarily dissecting the music in technical terms. Well, he does say that "Animals" is James Brown's "Super Bad" played "super badly," which I don't really agree with, but it made me laugh, and you don't get many descriptions of music like that. Lester Bangs could do that, and I often found myself thinking about him while I was reading this book. He was a master, and as David Byrne once said, "He used music as a way of discussing pretty much anything he felt like talking about." Bangs casts a long shadow. In fact, Lethem refers to him a couple of times and quotes from his highly edited review of " Fear of Music" in The Village Voice. In a truly tender moment in the book, and there are more than a few, Lethem recalls seeing the big "Stop Making Sense" version of the band at the Forest Hills tennis stadium in Flushing in 1982. By this time the boy in his room is "increasingly out of his room." The way Lethem remembers it, "the 'evolved' Talking Heads dragged the boy bodily through transformations he couldn't have known to invite but didn't remotely care to resist." At one point during the concert the boy turns to his best friend and says something like, "We must never, ever, miss a chance to do this again." Sure, drugs were involved, and Lethem admits it. But without a blink he elaborates: "To doubt that recollection would be to doubt pleasure itself. If we all have two or three moments to which we'll forever ache to return, this is one of mine." That is what music is at its best. This is from a true fan who is now a writer who writes beautiful books. I began to wonder if my copy of the record "Fear of Music" could hold up under the weight of all those words. I put it on and listened. It can. It's a great record. Pat Irwin most recently composed the score for the 2011 season of HBO's "Bored to Death." He was a member of the Raybeats and the B-52s.

There are currently 86 titles in Continuum's "33 1/3" series and the latest entry, by novelist Lethem (Chronic City), follows the standard series format. He recounts how the music changed his life while providing a song-by-song analysis, exploring the cultural context of the album, and explicating the work's musical and artistic influences, including references to Fritz Lang, Edgar Allen Poe, Patti Smith, and Dadaist poet Hugo Ball, among many others. Lethem shares his deep and abiding attachment to Fear of Music, and his strong connection to the album ("I didn't want to write about Fear of Music, I wanted to write Fear of Music") is the kind of infectious admiration that widens a circle of admirers and shouts "listen to this!" His enthusiasm will lead readers straight to their iPods, laptops, and record players. Delightful. Verdict For a generation raised on popular music, Lethem provides an admiring primer on a recording that continues to resonate long after that wonderfully described first play.-Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.