Rock On

Throughout the pages of Rock On, a memoir about being a suit at an ailing major record label, Dan Kennedy inserts the kind of droll lists (“Uncool Merch Ideas for Bands,” “Office Supplies for the Unemployed”) he also frequently contributes to McSweeney’s. In honor of this, we offer a list of our own: Signs That Kennedy Is One of Today’s Best Humor Writers: (1) He’s prodigiously self-deprecating, mining his foibles and fears to joyous effect. (2) He understands that humor must also have heart—as a sensitive portrait of the institutionalization of music, Rock On is occasionally snarky but never snide. (3) And finally, he’s effing hilarious. The book is not just laugh-out-loud funny; it’s snort-audibly-on-the-subway funny.

At the start, Kennedy takes a marketing job under the Warner umbrella, bringing with him the romantic rock & roll ideals of his youth. Those ideals are quickly buried under a corporate patina—ornate ballpoint pens, personalized notepads, overpriced picture frames. He compares the experience of purchasing the latter, in a desperate attempt to blend in, to that of a “paranoid high school math teacher visiting a strip club too near to where he lives and works.”

Kennedy is surrounded by people—whether poseur rockers or out-of-touch execs—who talk about action rather than taking it, a sure sign that the ship is sinking. After massive layoffs, though, Kennedy wrenches from his desk-job ennui a Zen-like acceptance of the inevitability of selling out. Rock On is a compellingly adult coming-of-age story. He spins his misgivings into hilarious gold, and in the process illustrates how to use your disillusion.

—Jane Borden

Kennedy reads Tue 5.