I didn't enjoy this one as much as his other book, Loser Goes First. And I ended up missing the book signing here in Atlanta which is what prompted me to read the book in the first place. ( )

This was a whole lot funnier than I'd expected. Kennedy gets a job in advertising at a major record label just as the glory days of working at major music labels have waned. Everything's much less "rock'n'roll" and much more "bland corporate," but Kennedy's take on the whole thing is hilarious. The humor is deadpan and brilliant. And it's a reasonably telling peek into the music business during the clumsy transition from physical media to online. ( )

Dan Kennedy is a McSweeneys' staple. In extreme-short form, he's often laugh-out-loud funny. As a personality to spend some time with, bookwise, he's more often annoyingly snarky than funny. I read DK's first (and snarky) memoir, let's call it a "snarkoir", I read it a few years ago and I'm happy to report that "Rock On" is indeed funnier. So there's at least that progress.

DK's latest snarkoir, which is about his life in the last financially-viable days of the music industry, a kind of Rock Goetterdaemerung (i.e., with lots of Wagnerian bombast and Valkyrie-like predatory shrieks from above, all shot against a really beautiful but dying sun) really takes off in the last few chapters, when DK's humanity comes more to the surface, in terms of honestly-expressed vulnerability.

And then I just listened to DK's B&N Podcast interview, which I'm very sad to report is twenty minutes of painfully unfunny snark. Someone needs to stage a snark intervention on Mr. DK (a snarktervention, if you will), the goal of which should be to get DK to express some kind of honestly-felt emotion in front of an audience of at least 23 strangers and for at least five contiguous minutes. If successful, I predict that DK could go on to become David Sedaris popular. He's that funny and wise.

(And who the hell am I to make such predictions? I'm just a fan, and a stranger to Dan.) ( )

There is one transcendent passage in this book, where the author attends an Iggy Pop concert. Pick it up for that, the rest is dross. Self-consciously arch and constantly reaching for a postmodern hip ironic remove, it succeeds instead in painting a too-accurate picture of what reality TV has given us in lieu of interesting books. ( )

This book was funny, although not quite as funny his second book Loser Goes First. Dan Kennedy tells us what his brief stint at a recording label was like. He works in a corporate office on music that he isn't really that interested in. His job is creating commercials for the albums the label is producing. The funniest parts deal with his attempts to fit into the corporate culture of the label. Don't let the bizarre cover of this book throw you off. If you into American rock music, you'll enjoy all the references he throws in. ( )