5 THINGS:

1. At The Daily Beast, Brian Gresko interviews Jonathan Lethem about his 33 1/3 on Talking Heads Fear of Music:

Lethem analyzes each of the songs in his book, alternating between close readings of lyrics, song structure, and meditations on the album as a whole. “Cities” is imagined as a “metropolis on wheels,” “Memories Can't Wait” becomes “a dreadnought of a song, [wearing] an exoskeleton of reverb and sonic crud as it grinds grimly uphill.” His prose is as sharp as ever, and his visual evocations demand accompaniment by the tracks themselves. As he puts it in the epigraph, “turn it up, for f--k's sake.”

2. Lethem reads at Skylight Books in LA this Sunday the 29th at 5pm. More details here.

3. The open call for proposals to write a book in the series ends on MONDAY, APRIL 30TH.  So get down to it this weekend. Guidelines and helpful Qs and As in the comments here.

4. The Lethem volume is finally available via Amazon.com in the US if you are so inclined.

5. Not particularly related to anything, but David has my copy of The One that I'm looking forward to reading eventually. But in the meantime, this weekend I re-read this fantastic 2006 Rolling Stone piece Lethem wrote on James Brown.