Take a photo of a barcode or cover
48 reviews for:
Rock on: How I Tried to Stop Caring about Music and Learn to Love Corporate Rock
Dan Kennedy
3.22 AVERAGE
48 reviews for:
Rock on: How I Tried to Stop Caring about Music and Learn to Love Corporate Rock
Dan Kennedy
3.22 AVERAGE
You will laugh out loud as you read, and then everyone around you will secretly suspect you are crazy. They will be wrong.
Did you know the average American reads 1-4 books a year?*
Given that I probably read 0-1 books last year (but probably 20,000 blog posts), one of my resolutions for 2008 was to read more books. In my quest to defeat mediocrity, I’ve conquered a few books in the past few weeks, most recently Dan Kennedy’s new music industry bio, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad.
The book is not so much a biography of Kennedy’s life as a whole, but a snapshot into the 18 months of his life as a creative video marketer for Atlantic Records circa 2002. Having never worked in the industry before, Kennedy’s perspective as an outsider depicts an industry of excess, complacency, and hilarity. In fact, many of his initial encounters mirrored my own initial impressions when I started working in music. The internal monologue of “Oh shit I am standing next to (insert big name music star here)! Pleaseletmesaysomethingnaturalbecoolbecool” that he writes is spot on with how I reacted when I was a wide-eyed initiate in the music industry. A lot of the humor comes from Kennedy’s written “thoughts” and they had me lol’ing in my chair quite a few times.
There’s not much of a coherent plot, but that’s fine. Rock On is basically a collection of anecdotes from Kennedy’s tenure at Atlantic. If you’ve never worked in the business before, it’s an eye opening tale about just how ridiculous the inner workings of the industry are. You have executives in corner offices who don’t even show up to work because the whole reason they have their jobs is because they signed a big artist 25 years ago and have been riding the coattails ever since. $50,000 office desks, fat expense accounts, cluelessness, artist hypocrisy, two and a half hour lunches, corporate sycophants, high employment turnover are all things you’ll read about. All that glamor, glitz, coolness that you’ve attributed to the music industry in your mind is brought crashing down to earth in what amounts to an episode of The Office.
The funny thing is, everything Kennedy writes about working at a major label seemed natural to me at the time. In fact, I probably had less of a jaw-dropping reaction to a lot of the anecdotes than most people will when reading the book. If you’ve worked in music before, you’ll know what I mean. Nevertheless, Rock On was a very entertaining book that I read in two sittings one day. Recommended if you like music and/or office humor.
*statistics are from googling “the average american reads how many books a year” and checking out what the first page gave me
Given that I probably read 0-1 books last year (but probably 20,000 blog posts), one of my resolutions for 2008 was to read more books. In my quest to defeat mediocrity, I’ve conquered a few books in the past few weeks, most recently Dan Kennedy’s new music industry bio, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad.
The book is not so much a biography of Kennedy’s life as a whole, but a snapshot into the 18 months of his life as a creative video marketer for Atlantic Records circa 2002. Having never worked in the industry before, Kennedy’s perspective as an outsider depicts an industry of excess, complacency, and hilarity. In fact, many of his initial encounters mirrored my own initial impressions when I started working in music. The internal monologue of “Oh shit I am standing next to (insert big name music star here)! Pleaseletmesaysomethingnaturalbecoolbecool” that he writes is spot on with how I reacted when I was a wide-eyed initiate in the music industry. A lot of the humor comes from Kennedy’s written “thoughts” and they had me lol’ing in my chair quite a few times.
There’s not much of a coherent plot, but that’s fine. Rock On is basically a collection of anecdotes from Kennedy’s tenure at Atlantic. If you’ve never worked in the business before, it’s an eye opening tale about just how ridiculous the inner workings of the industry are. You have executives in corner offices who don’t even show up to work because the whole reason they have their jobs is because they signed a big artist 25 years ago and have been riding the coattails ever since. $50,000 office desks, fat expense accounts, cluelessness, artist hypocrisy, two and a half hour lunches, corporate sycophants, high employment turnover are all things you’ll read about. All that glamor, glitz, coolness that you’ve attributed to the music industry in your mind is brought crashing down to earth in what amounts to an episode of The Office.
The funny thing is, everything Kennedy writes about working at a major label seemed natural to me at the time. In fact, I probably had less of a jaw-dropping reaction to a lot of the anecdotes than most people will when reading the book. If you’ve worked in music before, you’ll know what I mean. Nevertheless, Rock On was a very entertaining book that I read in two sittings one day. Recommended if you like music and/or office humor.
*statistics are from googling “the average american reads how many books a year” and checking out what the first page gave me
Entertaining take on the music business from a guy who worked marketing on the inside. Ok, but not fabulous.
It's like if your coworker wrote a book about his everyday cubicle life. Sound boring? Exactly.
Dear Dan Kennedy,
Thanks for making me laugh out loud at work. Those are the best times in my little beige cubicle. I have a built in affection for Rock On and actually reading this book has only helped that grow. (My former coworker and I, at our former job, made a power ballad about bookselling in a cheesy bookselling competition that we won.)
The book is a funny paranoid look at office life. It's like the inside of my head, but better sense I can laugh at it. Office life is the same everywhere, even in a record company. It's also a great look at how working in an area you have always loved might end in sadness and disillusionment.
He talks about Jewel's remake/selling out campaign that perhaps started with irony and ended with none. It was a fun, fast listen. (3.5 stars)
Thanks for making me laugh out loud at work. Those are the best times in my little beige cubicle. I have a built in affection for Rock On and actually reading this book has only helped that grow. (My former coworker and I, at our former job, made a power ballad about bookselling in a cheesy bookselling competition that we won.)
The book is a funny paranoid look at office life. It's like the inside of my head, but better sense I can laugh at it. Office life is the same everywhere, even in a record company. It's also a great look at how working in an area you have always loved might end in sadness and disillusionment.
He talks about Jewel's remake/selling out campaign that perhaps started with irony and ended with none. It was a fun, fast listen. (3.5 stars)
an entertaining read and funny but not life-changing or anything, it's still weird to read about an industry dying from the inside like this.
side note- this is probably the ugliest cover on a book i've read in a while.
side note- this is probably the ugliest cover on a book i've read in a while.
Rock On: An office power ballad by Dan Kennedy is an unapologetic Gen-X book about the author's experiences inside a corporate record label that straddles the line between memoir and novel. It is wry, sarcastic, neurotic and self-referential in all the ways that we (as gen-exers and post gen-exers) have come to love in our media. There are lists and side notes on fake bands and real bands and almost-were artists and have-been artists, not to mention the casual references to real public figures and Kennedy's neurotic obsessiveness over how to interact with them.
I loved it. Of course, the fact that I, as a white, suburban thirty-something could trade places with Kennedy and have almost word for word identical reactions to the same situations guarantees that I should love it.
And that is the great conceit and great flaw in the book. Kennedy assumes that we are all as neurotic and cautiously hipster as himself. Some reactions in the book could use more explanation; some set pieces need more definition to be more easily understood by someone who is not in the music business.
Having said that, the book is a lot of fun. There were several laugh-out-loud moments in the story and a lot of insights into corporate culture. Kennedy seems to have taken great pains to squeeze as much story as he could into as few words as possible, making it very fast paced and fun to read.
Recommended for aging thirty-somethings who still wish they could be rock stars.
I loved it. Of course, the fact that I, as a white, suburban thirty-something could trade places with Kennedy and have almost word for word identical reactions to the same situations guarantees that I should love it.
And that is the great conceit and great flaw in the book. Kennedy assumes that we are all as neurotic and cautiously hipster as himself. Some reactions in the book could use more explanation; some set pieces need more definition to be more easily understood by someone who is not in the music business.
Having said that, the book is a lot of fun. There were several laugh-out-loud moments in the story and a lot of insights into corporate culture. Kennedy seems to have taken great pains to squeeze as much story as he could into as few words as possible, making it very fast paced and fun to read.
Recommended for aging thirty-somethings who still wish they could be rock stars.
Funny, not terribly memorable. A memoir of his brief stint working at a major record label during the beginnings of the shift to large-scale music downloading. He seems baffled as to why he was hired and I could relate to his confusion over what exactly he was supposed to *do* at his job.
Covering the same ground, I would recommend Everything I'm Cracked up to Be by Jennifer Trynin as a better perspective on major label record companies, told from the point of view of an artist supposed to be the next big thing.
Covering the same ground, I would recommend Everything I'm Cracked up to Be by Jennifer Trynin as a better perspective on major label record companies, told from the point of view of an artist supposed to be the next big thing.
I've got a music-related hypothetical question for you:
You record an album. At the beginning of the album, you add in the distinct hiss/pop of a needle touching a record and playing a few second before the music kicks in.
This album is successful enough that six months later, you're approached by the record company regarding the release of this album on vinyl.
You are given the option to remove the hiss/pop from the album's opening, however, if you choose to remove it, it will be removed from ALL versions of the album that are subsequently available. It will no longer be available on digital/streaming versions or any CD's that might be made.
Which of these options would strike you as more artificial:
1. Leaving in the original hiss/pop on the first track, even though you know this is unnecessary because that hiss/pop will be present when the listener plays the vinyl version, however there will be far fewer listeners of this version, anyway?
2. Removing the hiss/pop, which does slightly change the song, and which forces you to acknowledge the artificiality of adding a digital version of an analog sound to a digital recording for the sake of creating "realness"?
You record an album. At the beginning of the album, you add in the distinct hiss/pop of a needle touching a record and playing a few second before the music kicks in.
This album is successful enough that six months later, you're approached by the record company regarding the release of this album on vinyl.
You are given the option to remove the hiss/pop from the album's opening, however, if you choose to remove it, it will be removed from ALL versions of the album that are subsequently available. It will no longer be available on digital/streaming versions or any CD's that might be made.
Which of these options would strike you as more artificial:
1. Leaving in the original hiss/pop on the first track, even though you know this is unnecessary because that hiss/pop will be present when the listener plays the vinyl version, however there will be far fewer listeners of this version, anyway?
2. Removing the hiss/pop, which does slightly change the song, and which forces you to acknowledge the artificiality of adding a digital version of an analog sound to a digital recording for the sake of creating "realness"?