Lost in Music

Giles Smith is a fan of pop music, who, like many self-respecting fans had dreams of pop stardom. This book details his obsession with pop music and his brief flirtation with the music industry as a member of the Cleaners From Venus.

The Cleaners operated at the arse-end of the music biz in the late 80's, managed by two young Scots chancers and briefly signed to RCA. In Germany. Smith recounts his trials and tribulations with the band, interspersed with anecdotes about his love of pop and the strange things it makes fans do.

Smith is a good writer, indeed it's the career he chose after the Cleaners failed to make it, and the book is broken down into bite size chapters but somehow, for me the book is less than the sum of its parts. It's amusing in places but not laugh out loud funny. The best bits are the Cleaners' story and you wish he'd gone into more detail, made the book more about that. As it is the book falls into two camps: a story about a failed pop band, and a story about one man's relationship to pop music.

So, an amusing, undemanding read. One to dip into now and again.