Jonathan Lethem - Talking Heads Fear of Music

FEAR OF MUSIC

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Fear of Music

Jonathan Lethem

Continuum International Publishing Group

80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Jonathan Lethem, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lethem, Jonathan.

Talking Heads Fear of music / by Jonathan Lethem.

p. cm. -- (33 1/3)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-2100-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-4411-2100-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Talking Heads (Musical group). Fear of music. I. Title.

ML421.T27L47 2012

782.421660922--dc23

2012003060

ISBN: 978-1-4411-3292-5

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

For

Joel Simon

Donna Jones

& Philip Price

Warning: Contents under pressure of interpretation. User may suffer unwanted effects vis--vis a cherished cultural token possibly including sensations of demystification, or its opposite, mystification.

Recommendation: While using this product, actually listening to the record is strongly indicated. I dont mean just on those crappy little speakers built into your computer, either. And turn it up, for fucks sake.

Prelude I: Talking Heads Have a New Album. Its Called Fear of Music

In the summer of 1979, in New York City, a fifteen-year-old boy sitting in his bedroom heard a voice speaking to him over his radio. The voice said: Talking Heads have a new album. Its called Fear of Music. The voice was that of David Byrne, the lead singer of the band Talking Heads. The voice had restricted itself deliberately to a halting and monotonous presentation, but the words, spoken softly, their speaker miked close, admitted a degree of tenderness that high, reedy vulnerability this singer generally finds it hard to mask, even as he delights in masks, in vocal mummery.

Now, after a heartbeat interval dead air, in radio jargon, and an enigma, on the terms of a 30-second radio spot meant to advertise a rock-and-roll record the line repeats: Talking Heads have a new album. Its called Fear of Music. The voice hasnt altered its sense-neutralized, dead-but-still-warm delivery, but its been altered, by some force of distortion. A phase shifter? A vocoder? (A similarly sound-effected, flat-affected human voice would hit the charts, in 1981, with Laurie Andersons O Superman.) Whatever the element, the illusion created is that of the voice multiplying into a swarm of ethereal clones, a chorale of electronic angels. The result is to both modulate and highlight the flat voices lonely presence in the foreground: if a man stumbling across a cold landscape is shadowed by flights of seraphim, but cannot join in their ascent, is he better off, or worse?

Eventually the voices begin to reverberate and echo, becoming like a tide caressing a pebble as it washes backwards and forwards simultaneously. Talking Heads have a new album new album. Its called Fear of Music Fear of Music. Talking Heads Talking Heads have a new album a new album Talking Heads its called Fear of Music its called Fear of Music. The pebble of the singers spoken voice is smoothed or soothed away; the cipher transmission concludes without having varied once, nor repeated itself, not exactly. FM.102.7, WNEW (Where Rock Lives) resumed its regular broadcast, the soothing, informal voice of Vin Scelsa or Pete Fornatale or Jonathan Schwartz commanding the dial, hyping a Bruce Springsteen appearance on the King Biscuit Flour Hour , or setting up the new Randy Newman single Its Money That I Love.

Flights of seraphim? Unlike any other piece of close description in this book, theres likely no way to triangulate my paraphrase with your own ears. Dont go fishing for this experience in the infosea; it isnt there to be found. Those of us who received the original transmission have had to make do with our cargo cult recollections for three decades now, and counting.

Speaking of whom, what about the boy in his bedroom? Cant we leave him where we found him? Need we contend with the burden of his awe and innocence, or may we hit eject? Nope, hes along for this ride. In fact, sometimes, as I set out in this work, I find my present self slackening into passivity. Suddenly the keyboards entirely in that kids hands. In 2003 I wrote: I played the third album by Talking Heads, called Fear of Music , to the point of destroying the vinyl, then replaced it with another copy. I memorized the lyrics, memorized the lyrics to other Talking Heads albums, saw Talking Heads play any chance I got 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 more clearly seen by those around me. Like everything Ive ever said about Talking Heads, or about any other thing Ive loved with such dreadful longing theres only a few this looks to me completely inadequate, even in the extremeness of its claims, or especially for the extremeness of its claims. Its untruthful in its bogus tone of retrospective consummation, its false finality. As though Id imagined I could have left it at that!