Forty Words For Fear

Forty Words For Fear

In a review of Madison Smartt Bell's novel, "Anything Goes", Mark Lindquist wrote this:

"Elvis Costello once said that writing about music is like “dancing about architecture, it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” With “Anything Goes,” Madison Smartt Bell joins the ranks of Salman Rushdie and Don DeLillo — accomplished authors who’ve written rock ‘n’ roll novels that seem like a really stupid thing to want to do."

If you don't know who Madison Smartt Bell is, well, you're lucky. He's written a lot, and it's quite good. What you might not know is that he is a musician. Of sorts. He cut a demo of some songs that came out of Anything Goes, and put it on his website.

Scott Beal got the demo tape from Bell, and sent it on to Don Dixon, best known for producing REM's first records, along with Mitch Easter. Dixon right away agreed with Beal that the music--featuring Bell on guitar--was intriguing. The only trouble was, they didn't think much of the vocalists on most of the tracks. What they did like, however, was the unbuffed, unpolished barfly voice on two of the tracks, "On Eight Mile" and "40 Words for Fear." Bell was shy about admitting that he was the one singing on those tracks.

"They said, 'We were listening to this and we wanted that guy who sang those two songs--Can you get him?'" Bell remembered.

"I thought they were joking. I refused to answer that question for about three rounds. And then I finally said, 'Yeah, I can get that guy.'"

Beal was surprised when he found out the truth.

"I told him, 'Well, you can't sing, but it's the WAY you can't sing that's good,'" Beal said. "It has sort of a dark, sleazy feel to it. They had about three or four people doing vocals on there, and this one voice stood out. It was kind of a combination of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits."

You can read more about the adventures that these guys embarked on at Mitch Easter's Fidelitorium at the link below. There is also an mp3 of "On Eight Mile", which I'm listening to as I write this.

You can find the entire album here: https://www.amazon.com/Forty-Words-Madison-Smartt-Cooper/dp/B00009MGOW
http://faculty.goucher.edu/mbell/AnythingGoes/forty_words_for_fear.htm

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