MOG

I was going through my bookshelf the other day and found this gem I read about a year ago. It's called So You Wanna Be A Rock'n'Roll Star:How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives, and Other True Tales From a Drummer’s Life by Jacob Slichter.Jacob is the drummer for Semisonic...remember Closing Time? It was a really great read but when I made my list of Fav books about music this got missed, even though I knew I was forgetting something. Luckily I found it. Neil Peart from Rush recommended it on his website and he sums it up best.

"How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives, and Other True Tales From a Drummer’s Life. Like the old joke about what you call fifty lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, “a good start.” I happened to see the book at the same Malibu bookstore (Diesel) where I saw Paul Theroux speak about Blinding Light and bought a copy. It is great. Slichter’s story is funny, it is sad, and it is true. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that his experience as a drummer and songwriter during the meteoric rise and fall of a fairly successful band (Semisonic, best known for their temporarily-ubiquitous hit, “Closing Time”) shows me that the path to success has not become any easier for new bands in the past 30 years. In fact, his whole cast of characters, from company presidents to local reps to radio station programmers to other musicians, was completely recognizable to me — only the names have changed. Unfortunately, Jacob Slichter’s band didn’t survive the stupidity, ineptitude, and short-sightedness of it all, but if his book helps one young musician avoid some of those pitfalls, they did not die in vain."NP

This book doesn't deserve to be forgotten (shame on me) So, I have put it on my MOG and will highly recommend it to anyone.

Enough said.