When I graduated from buying 7″ singles to full-length albums at the ripe old age of 9, two of my very first were post-punk classics The Pleasure Principle by Gary Numan and Fear Of Music by Talking Heads. 1979 was an interesting year when many challenging post-punk artists had major label support and could actually have minor hits that reached a kid like me in Dubuque, Iowa. I’d like to say that both blew my mind, but more accurately, they overwhelmed me, and I retreated to more age-appropriate material by Electric Light Orchestra and Queen. But the creepy dread of Fear Of Music stayed under my skin, and my appreciation for it grew gradually over the years. In recent years, a handful of supporters have even suggested that Fear Of Music is just as accomplished, if not more so, than their more celebrated Remain In Light (1980).
In Brooklyn, a teenage Jonathan Lethem heard Fear Of Music at the perfect age where it had a big impact, but his appreciation for it would also ebb and flow over time. Author of some of the best recent American fiction (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress Of Solitude), Lethem is also an accomplished essayist. And it turns out, like his novelist friend Michael Chabon, he has a keen ear for music, resulting in some of the heaviest music writing I’ve ever seen. For casual readers, that could be a bit of a slog, but for fan/geeks of either the album or the writer, it’s a challenging read well worth the effort. | Pop Matters Review
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