It's been a slow week in these parts... and it's come at a good time. There's a lot of stuff coming up, from recording to shows to weddings... nice to get a little break.
The down-time gave me a chance to read So You Wanna Be a Rock Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer's Life by Jacob "Jake" Slichter. Jake was the drummer for the band Semisonic.
I was never a huge fan of Semisonic. I thought Closing Time was a good song, but it got beaten to death. I actually liked the song "All About Chemistry" (off of the album Chemistry) better.
The book is a memoir of the rise and fall of Semisonic, from being courted by major labels, through going platinum (1 million albums sold), through having their third album bomb and going on hiatus.
Along the way, there are great (read: horrifying) stories about the excesses of the music industry, about dealing with newfound fame, and about reconciling the idealism of rock and roll with the realities of business.
All of it is written in a great conversational style and should be required reading for anyone busting their ass as a musician as well as anybone who wants to understand that it's usually the musician who gets the "business" part of the "music business."
jbg
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