Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group, Paperback

Proscriptive how-to advice ranges over a wide number of subjects (e. g., sex, band photos, etc.) and can be seen both as skewering the cultural idolatry associated with rock and as genuine counsel. Verdict: Svenonius s sociopolitical analysis of rock and roll is intellectually interesting, as when he posits that the genre was brought about by the industrial revolution, the harnessing of electricity, and the miscegenation of various poor, exploited, and indentured cultures in the USA. --Library Journal "So much of the allure here is in watching Svenonius skirt absurdity. He s always seemed delighted by the fact that the profound and the preposterous can sound awfully alike, a realization that puts him in line with an avant-garde tradition that stretches back before rock n roll crystallized this fact...Svenonius has the spirit of a long-gone punk past, but his book has more to tell us about rock s here-and-now than about its hereafter. Neither bourgeois nor prestigious, Supernatural Strategies may be the rare book by a rock musician to retain any power or threat."--Los Angeles Review of Books "Like its author, Supernatural Strategies is part tongue-in-cheek, part deadly serious -- a satire of rock's consumerist origins but also a thoughtful treatise on what it means to devote yourself to a collective Drawing from the wisdom of rock'n'roll s most famous ghosts, Svenonius advice ranges from hilarious to cryptic to surprisingly useful."--Pitchfork "Svenonius has walked the walk. . . Even todayas the frontman of Chain & The Gang and the host of the online talk show Soft Focushe remains cool, cryptic, and impeccably dressed, a mod magician with a trick always lurking up his tailored sleeve. --The Onion AV Club If 'write what you know' is one of authorship s prime dictates, then Ian F. Svenonius seems uniquely qualified...Svenonius contrarian, anti-establishment rhetoric is his greatest gift...Strategies plays to these same strengths by allowing him to run roughshod riot over