‘Very, very funny . . . Giles Smith is a wonderful writer.’ Nick Hornby
‘One of the best books about music that you will ever read . . . It is impossible to read Lost in Music without laughing out loud.’ Daily Telegraph
‘In the Spring of 1989, shortly after my twenty-seventh birthday, as I stood in the sleet at a bus stop in Colchester, it dawned on me that I had probably, all things considered, failed in my mission to become Sting. At least, for the time being.’
Lost in Music is about growing up with pop music – about hearing it, buying it, loving it, and attempting to play it in public for money. A brilliant combination of the confessional and the unapologetic, this is a book for anyone who has ever treasured vinyl, or sung into a roll-on deodorant in front of the bedroom mirror and dreamed of playing Wembley.
Reviewed by Donald Winchester in Slightly Foxed Issue 24.
Stars in His Eyes
Donald Winchester
Giles Smith is probably best known for his always-amusing sporting column in The Times. Lost in Music is not about sport but it is similarly suffused with his trademark self-deprecation and humour. There are many music books, most for the specialist or the enthusiast: Lost in Music succeeds because it is for everyone. It taps that familiar male obsessiveness that makes Nick Hornby’s books so successful. It has the same humanity as that of a good novel.
Lost in Music will ring bells with anyone who has fallen for a catchy melody. While some of Smith’s tics seem inexplicable even to me – searching music shops for records that don’t exist, for example – most of what he says is so recognizable that it’s like watching my own reflection in a slanted mirror. He lies to his friends about his first record purchase (the long-forgotten A Windmill in Amsterdam and not, as he will tell you, the Beatles), buys an album because he liked the single, thinks he’s a ‘pretty nifty’ dancer in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Music, away from the gigs and the lights and the television cameras, is intensely personal. Writing a whole book about it is to expose the inside of one’s brain to public examination, which is why I always think of Giles Smith simply as Giles . . .
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 24, Winter 2009
Stars in His Eyes
A lot of rubbish has been written about music over the years, which is not surprising – it is a very difficult thing to write well about. Conveying the emotions that music can produce is a task...
Read more
