Talking Heads wrote a song titled “The Book I Read” — and while the book that David Byrne had in mind was figurative — I’ve decided to follow suit, and write a lighthearted blog about music that reminds me of books I’ve read!

Cat’s Cradle: The Book I Read

Cat’s Cradle was a short satire. Written a few years after the Cold War, it speculated an icy end to humanity due to an invention by Oppenheimer’s parody. But what does that have to do with Talking Heads’ playful romance song? While Cradle's narrator is far from the perfect protagonist, I did enjoy the novel enough to make a playlist for it, simply naming it after the book. With its inception, Kianna, a friend of mine, had asked what the playlist was for and I replied:
”it’s for a book i read”

To which she said:
”there’s a talking heads song about this”

Nothing crazy. I put it as the first song of the playlist, without listening to it beforehand. I trusted (early) Talking Heads and I trusted in my friend’s taste. But when I did get around to listening to it, the song did made sense with Cat’s Cradle. Although nowhere as near as morbid, it was funky, perky and sticks with you.
Conveniently, there is one more similarity. Take a look at the string game that makes up a cat’s cradle. “No damn cat. No damn cradle.” And no damn book!

Neuromancer: The Sprawl

Neuromancer was my first bout with cyberpunk — and this rang true for many others, considering it’s inception popularised the subgenre. Novels by Phillip K.Dick and Delaney, or short stories by Gibson himself preceded Neuromancer, but this literary feat indeed cemented cyberpunk’s place in science fiction. Sonic Youth’s The Sprawl is a direct reference to Neuromancer’s centric setting — which may sound like a cop-out on my end, but the song genuinely emulates what I imagine the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis to sound like. Kim Gordon’s litany of imploring us to “buy some more more more more”; suggestions of rough trade; their gritty, yet bright sonics, with an instrumental segment that starts after the end of the lyrics , that sprawls across the span of 5 minutes.

The Time Machine: Foo Fighters (album)

H.G Wells was undeniably a notable figure in literature, especially so in science fiction. Him and Dave Ghrol have a few things in common: they’ve both made significant changes to their respective industries, married twice, and had affairs. Haha

The Time Machine and Foo Fighters were both debut works. While the two are clearly juvenile works in the grand scheme of their craftsmanship, they’re inspired and clearly full of passion. The album is grungy and at times, melodic; the novel is dystopic, while initially being deceptively utopic. I could hear Wattershed and Alone + Easy Target during scenes in the Morlock’s caves; Floaty and Big Me is reminiscent of the naivete of Well’s Eloi, and the Time Traveler’s brief romance. However, more simply, the eponymous album does have loose elements of sci-fi — the disintegrator pistol on its cover and its naming convention.