Paul Morley shows off

April 26, 2010 7:18 AM

Showing Off is a series of videos, audio clips and articles in which noted music journalist and Frankie Goes to Hollywood mastermind Paul Morley explores various facets of music. Each month has a theme, [warning: most links have autoplaying video] Michael Jackson, Kraftwerk, classical music, disco, The Beatles, folk music, The X Factor, the Noughties, the next big thing, UK hip hop, jazz, and dance. Here is some of what's on offer: MeFi faves Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip on hip hop, These New Puritans' Jack Barnett, Johnny Marr on folk (parts 1, 2), but isn't all just interviews, there are also a lot of performances, e.g. Michael Nyman and David McAlmont, Badly Drawn Boy, Susanna Wallumrød covers Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, and Cornershop cover Norwegian Wood.
posted by Kattullus (8 comments total)

These New Puritans are my favorite recent thing in pop music. There's an interesting double feature on them as well as The xx by Paul Morley in the most recent Arena Homme +. And the Kraftwerk episode was posted previously.
posted by Kattullus at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2010

Paul Morley's prose, chock full of dependent clauses, crammed with self-consciously and increasingly overblown references, surging, splurging, even urging its way onto the written page, crammed as it is with sesquipedalian words filled with the pretentious overwrought imagery of a J-school hack, forcing its ever-overreaching metaphorically excessively indulgent flabby pustulant writhing nodules of mind-grape juice into our mind through our visual orbs in their orifices, is a bit much for my taste.
posted by kcds at 9:14 AM on April 26, 2010 [6 favorites]

Oh, he must've been that tosser who wrote Lipstick Traces.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:46 AM on April 26, 2010

Thanks for this! Very interesting.

> [warning: most links have autoplaying video]

Thank you, NoScript.
posted by jfuller at 9:54 AM on April 26, 2010

> sesquipedalian

Too bad funny Double Dactyls were so much harder to write than funny limericks. I miss 'em.
posted by jfuller at 9:57 AM on April 26, 2010

If you liked the Cornershop version of "Norwegian Wood," the studio version that appears on their album When I was Born for the Seventh Time is worth checking out. It's really beautiful.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:05 AM on April 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

i logged in to favourite kcds's comment. absolutely spot on.
posted by marienbad at 10:52 AM on April 26, 2010

i logged in to favourite kcds's comment. absolutely spot on.

I second the motion (and kcds's). For one thing, Morley's bit on jazz was one of the most pretentious pieces of crap I've heard in a while.
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 11:21 AM on April 26, 2010