"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." Thus Jonathan Lethem lays his cards on the table early but, unlike some volumes in Continuum's versatile 33⅓ series about classic albums, his book is no memoir. Nor does it concern itself with external data about recording sessions or late-70s New York. It's a single-minded investigation into why Talking Heads' extraordinary third album should be as addictive and puzzling to the middle-aged novelist as it was to the teenage fan he refers to as "the boy in the room".
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