PERFECT FROM NOW ON – subtitled, to piss me off, HOW INDIE ROCK SAVED MY LIFE – comes from the Chuck Klosterman School of Pretentious Music Journalism, wherein author John Sellers, in an attempt to write a book about music and its impact on his life, seems to fill nearly three-fourths with anything but.
Instead, we get nonstop bullshit whining about relationships, his parents’ divorce and so on. And, as if to rub salt in an already festering wound, the thing is filled – literally filled – with supposed-to-be-funny footnotes, some of which go on for pages and only distract from an already boring story. It’s like two shitty books in one!
But then, just when you think it couldn’t get worse – even after devoting pages to pretentious alt-rockers Pavement (talentless noise, sorry Paveheads) – Sellers spends the last few chapters describing how that all important band that saved his life was … ahem … Guided by Fucking Voices.
Yep. I couldn’t believe it either. When I read that, I said out loud and quite disgusted, to no one around, “Really?”
I mean, I didn’t think people really liked Guided by Voices. I always thought they were one of those unlistenable college-rock bands that people said they liked because they wanted to fuck that really hot alt-girl who was the campus DJ. I believe this so much, that I am willing to call this tome out as a sham. That’s right: an ostentatious, Spin-magazine-infested sham that only further proves that maybe David Lee Roth’s notorious assessment of music critics ain’t that far from the truth, a skibbidy-skoobity-bop.
PERFECT FROM NOW ON? Dear sir, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Isn’t there a Dinosaur Jr. album you should be championing? Oh, wait, he does that too. Shit. –Louis Fowler
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
So he takes the title from a Built To Spill album. Then he just goes on about Pavement & Guided By Voices. (I’m a fan but I stopped picking up the never ending output after Mag Earwhig). Why no love for Neutral Milk Hotel probably before his time.
Yeah Klosterman is probably the one they all ape now, Lester Bangs must be rolling in his grave.
You gotta be kidding. Perhaps I’m misreading your hipster sarcasm. No, one actually likes GBV? I think GBV is among the most important bands – if importance is to be judged by vast quantities of great, great music, inspiring other bands, launching movements, etc – since REM. I think there’s just this reactionary revisionism going on now where it’s cooler not to like them. And there’s no doubt Pollard released so much stuff there for a while that some of it was bound to be not up to par. Even the latter day GBV records has moments that were better than much of the rest of crap being released in the world. Make no mistake, they have legions and legions of fans and were much beloved. When their bass player quit a few years before the band broke up, every indie bass player volunteered to take the spot. . .
I read about 30 pages of this book before realizing that was 30 pages too many. Incoherent writing, incoherent opinions about music (I say this as a massive GBV fan, too) and annoying devices on every page.
A much better book, if you’re looking for a combination of indie rock fandom and sincere emotion, is Rob Sheffield’s “Love is a Mix Tape.” He’s a much better writer–very charming–and you won’t want to punch him after you’re done reading the book.