- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; New edition edition (19 July 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747568642
- ISBN-13: 978-0747568643
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 274,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Sunday Times
This book is at heart a passionate, irresistible encouragement to listen more, and to listen better.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'An exhilarating history of pop - a brilliant and joyous book' Guardian 'From Cage's 4'33' of silence to total noise, and everything in between - a passionate, irresistible encouragement to listen more, and to listen better' Sunday Times 'At his best he's the Brian Eno of the sentence, setting the whole page buzzing with oblique strategies: the missing link, maybe, between Kenneth Tynan and John Lydon' Time Out 'Briliant ... thought-provoking and intriguing ... anyone with even a pssing interest in perhaps the greatest modern art form should take a dip into these compulsive literary waters' Glasgow Herald
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Paul Morley follows up his wonderful auto/biography/exploration 'Nothing' (2000) with 'Words and Music'- which uses Kylie's Can't Get You Out of My Head as its starting point: Kylie's pop classic pointing back to a past when there was an idea of the future: Kraftwerk, Moroder, Human League, New Order. Morley takes us on a journey from and around Can't Get You Out of My Head- the destination here the lists to end all lists, in a book that flows with cultural reference points- from Morley himself (& other notable music critics, eg Lester Bangs, Nick Kent, Simon Reynolds) to Messiaen to Philip Glass to Amazon to Philip K Dick to Eno to Tangerine Dream to T Rex to Now That's What I Call Music! to The Art of Noise (and on and on and on it flows forwards & backwards & sideways and around...)Anyone who LOVED Paul Morley's now mythic period at the NME (I was mildly too young...)should love this book- in the list sense, it's far more Rick Moody (Demonology-The Black Veil- Ring of Brightest Angels...) than Nick Hornby. Which is a good thing. As with 'Nothing', Morley shifts through many styles- and there are lists galore- there is also some wonderful humour. A wonderful history of pop culture occurs and recurs throughout the book and the presence of The White Stripes in the 1963 section is almost as amusing as The Manic Street Preachers section (as Welsh as...), or the section on Metal Machine Music that concludes with the hilarious list'How to Be Annoying' (TYPE ONLY IN UPPERCASE-Begin all your sentences with 'Ooh,la la'-Leave tips in Bolivian Currency etc) which is the most amusing thing here. Demented humour rules with this list & the handy tip "Rouse your partner from sleep every morning with Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music"!
There's so much here- impossible to get into 1000 words- but it's safe to say you could pretty much forget about buying most of the music press and what's hip this month (moustaches, ironic 70s retro that sounds like Lynrd Skynrd or Nazareth) & get this instead. I'm a great lover of books with lists and bits- the words relating to the music here & would rate this up there with lovely books like JG Ballard's A User's Guide to the Millennium & the Bangs collection Psychotic Reactions&Carburretor Dung. Words & Music and the upcoming publication of more of Bangs writings shows that great music criticism- which may use music as its starting point & go off anywhere (Allen Ginsberg- Eminem- Britney Spears- Scott Walker- Claude Debussy- Eric Satie- Joy Division- Captain Beefheart- Crash- Amazon- I am sitting in a room- Can't Get You Out of My Head- and on and on and on...)- is alive and kicking. You just wouldn't know it if you read the majority of the music press (& can anyone tell me when, or rather why, Uncut has turned into Mojo?). The lists are great, proof that music has never been better and always been as great- wonderful to see nods to such wonderful records as Tilt, I Travel, I'm a Slave 4 U, Rock Bottom, Laughing Stock, John Cage, Faust, Eno/Eno/Eno/Eno/Brian Eno, James Joyce, Madonna, Pop Group, Overload, Neu!, Nick Drake, Magnetic Fields, Depeche Mode etc- because pop can be anything. and everything. and I suppose sometimes nothing. Yes, the lists and the footnotes are an utter joy. Where else can you read about Britney Spears one second and Slint the next? Or about Ballard's Crash then Can't Get You Out of My Head magnified, as if In Every Dream Home a Heartache...
Words And Music is a great book for those who can't get either out of their heads, for those who want more and think more of music than the Cowell-Fuller 50s exploitation department, or the futile retro of Oasis. Morley's argument about Radiohead is one I'm coming round to- much more interesting than the majority who wish Radiohead were like The Bends (again)- it points out how unweird Radiohead are and offers a few lists to show why. Rather than bemoaning Radiohead for not being a conservative sub-Zooropa band, they should be bemoaned for not being weird enough- they're not exactly Swans, are they? Words & Music is shockingly NOW, which is great, as the music scene has severe problems- mainly derived from its increasingly corporate behaviour (merge, drop, etc). & for anyone who has read or written about music on the net- here on Amazon maybe?- Page 122 will be a joy! A great book, one that I'll come back to again and again...(Thanks, Paul)...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Paul obviously has an encyclopedic knowledge of "pop" and other branches of music that serve his cause but to me the book felt a little rushed, a stream of conciousness which needed a bit more editing. Maybe this "Karourac"style was intentional showing his enthusiasm but it left me exhausted and trying to keep up. However the lists, links and
musical references are fantastic, and if like me, you share Paul's tastes the book is well worth making the effort to read.
musical references are fantastic, and if like me, you share Paul's tastes the book is well worth making the effort to read.
Format:Paperback
After reading this book for a couple of days, I still wasn't sure whether to love it or to hate it. To love the rich allusive exploration of music that explores the connections between genres with wit and enthusiasm; to hate the repetitive pretentiousness of the style, the endless comparisons. What this book is not is a history of pop- the 50s and 60s hardly get mentioned- it's as if the Beatles, the Stones, Motown and the Kinks never happened. Instead Morley focuses on the work of experimental composers- Reich, Glass, Schoenberg and traces how their experimental recording methods have influenced modern music.
Morley's unwitting narrator is Kylie Minogue driving through her recent video, but the book is not so much about Kylie as the recordings that may have influenced the construction of her music. Why then the dull sections on the Human League and Fad Gadget? Why long lists of recordings and artists at the end that are never mentioned in the narrative of the book?
Yet, just as I got so frustrated by one section that I wanted to get rid of the book, Morley would produce a piece of prose so insightful and dynamic that I longed to hear the music.
Morley claims that he has been at one point in his lifetime the greatest writer about the music scene, and in truth this is a book about him and the music he loves, its infuriating inconsistency at times obscuring the wisdom of his ideas.
I'd skip rereading the 23 page interview with Jarvis Cocker or the 15 page discussion of Kraftwerk that hardly touches on their music but would return to many of the other element of this highly original and imaginative work time and again.
Morley's unwitting narrator is Kylie Minogue driving through her recent video, but the book is not so much about Kylie as the recordings that may have influenced the construction of her music. Why then the dull sections on the Human League and Fad Gadget? Why long lists of recordings and artists at the end that are never mentioned in the narrative of the book?
Yet, just as I got so frustrated by one section that I wanted to get rid of the book, Morley would produce a piece of prose so insightful and dynamic that I longed to hear the music.
Morley claims that he has been at one point in his lifetime the greatest writer about the music scene, and in truth this is a book about him and the music he loves, its infuriating inconsistency at times obscuring the wisdom of his ideas.
I'd skip rereading the 23 page interview with Jarvis Cocker or the 15 page discussion of Kraftwerk that hardly touches on their music but would return to many of the other element of this highly original and imaginative work time and again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
DOUBLE CHIN
First off may i state my bias position,i detest Paul Morley with every fibre of my puny body.Whether it be as a talking head or guest on Late Review. Read more
Published 13 months ago by mister joe
The music is the star, even if he probably is the best rock writer of...
Possibly the greatest rock writer of all time, possibly the natural heir to Wittgenstein, possibly the greatest book ever written about Pop music. Read more
Published on 21 July 2007 by zissou
Can't get it out of my head
Gives you a fresh pair of ears in order to see the world with.
If you've ever been transported somewhere else by music then this book will do the literary equivalent. Read more
If you've ever been transported somewhere else by music then this book will do the literary equivalent. Read more
Published on 12 Nov 2003 by D. P. Woolford
pure passion for music
Morley's wonderful book is dazzling, infuriating, confusing, obsessional--and spot on about the life-affirming power of music; if you want a tour d'horizon of everything pop music... Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2003
Some kind of wonderful
There are good books and bad books about music. As a music lover I've bought a lot of them. In my opinion Words and Music is a peerless book. It is in a class of its own. Read more
Published on 9 Sep 2003 by David Johnson
Let's get ready to ramble...
There's a thoroughly insightful book lurking in here. It's about a fifth of the size of 'Words And Music' (I'm being generous) but unfortunately you will have to scan through the... Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2003 by mark northfield
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