Paul Morley's new book

Anyone else read Paul Morley's new book "Words and Music" yet? I am about half way through it and am pleased to report that it the usual brilliant mix of pretention and unique insights that make Morley such a compulsive read. The basic idea of the book is to examine the parallels between Kylie Minogue's "Can't get you out of my head" and a piece of avant-garde minimalist music by Alvin Lucier - this is pretty typical ground for Morley.

As someone who has Kylie Minogue's "Fever" LP alongside Stockhausen, Ligeti, Varese etc and Sophie Ellis Bextor alongside Messaien, Berio, John Cage etc in my music collection I am greatly reassured by this. If it wasn't for kindred spirits like Morley a guy could get discouraged by the constant critical comments of friends and family.

Not too much stuff yet about Joy Division/New Order, however, I am currently enjoying a brilliant chapter on the singular merits of Kraftwerk. There is also a lot of brilliant observations about the nature of how we enjoy music. For anyone who is obsessed with music as me this book is a real treat. The book contains lots of lists of fine music - everything from Erik Satie to Throbbing Gristle.

The book has made me wonder about how successful Joy Division would have been without the support of the British weekly music papers and great writers like Morley. Paul makes the observation that in the 70s and 80s people used to obsessively read the weekly music papers. Clearly the writers on the music papers had a big role in shaping the readers tastes in music by promoting stuff they liked. Today with the internet people who are into music spend more time reading sites like this online and the music papers have diminished in importance. The last time I bought a music paper was at the end of the Madchester period in the early 90s. The fact that there is no concentrated source of music information today means that the music scene gets fragmented. There is more information available today but I tend to think that in this case less is more. A band like Joy Division would not succeed today -if Ian Curtis did an audition for Pop Idol what chance would you give him ?

A lot of people have slagged off Paul Morley over the years, however, I am very grateful to him. It's sad but I still have the yellowing cuttings of the Paul Morley article that first introduced me to the music of Joy Division in 1979.

Saw this in WATERSTONES last week and was tempted to buy it.But then i remembered i have still two NEW ORDER/JOY DIVISION books to complete.I must admit i enjoyed his writing,some tongue in cheek and other bullshit,but nevertheless it was true that a lot of people did buy the mags every week without fail.I now buy very few mags for music,the odd RECORD COLLECTOR or Q but early 90's i bought loads.But as you point out the INTERNET and vastness of information makes this seem obselete. Sounds like i am harking back to the GOOD OLD DAYS but l love ALL this info and picture/music now readily available.The one exception is that i still prefer to buy from SHOPS rather than the INTERNET if possible.Althogh i aquired some great reords and CDS via MAILORDER the best excitement was going to the RECORD PEDDLER in MANCHESTER! Cheers ROCKET MICK PS Thanks again for RECYCLE ...a classic BOXSET and via the post.

Have yet to read this Morley book but have read his previous one Nothing which was pretty good.Goes into Ian and JD in some depth.When i was first getting into New Order around 83/84 the NME was almost the only place where i could find out the latest news and stuff on them so sometimes it was weeks or months between info bytes!.These days obviously with masses of info overload internet etc. i sometimes can`t keep up!.Times change eh

Doubt that it's gonna be published over here, I did buy Nothing on your recommendation, through Amazon, so I'll look for it on there as well.

Morley also used some parts of an interview that he did with the singer for Iron Maiden as the basis on a Magazine compilation, After The Fact, so he does know how connect things that seemingly shouldn't.

I used to read those rags fairly religiously as well, never had a problem with Morley's style, it was the writing of Barney Hoskyns about people like, say, Green from Scritti Politti, that made me realize not to take the whole thing too seriously, this was, and is, at the end of the day, pop music after all.

It's a great book: the stuff on Kraftwerk makes you want to buy all the albums.

Again.