Overview

IAN SVENONIUS'S EXPERIENCE AS AN ICONIC UNDERGROUND ROCK MUSICIAN-playing in such highly influential and revolutionary outfits as the Make-Up and Nation of Ulysses-gives him special insight on techniques for not only starting but also surviving a rock 'n' roll group. Therefore, he's written an instructional guide, which doubles as a warning device, a philosophical text, an exercise in terror, an aerobics manual, and a colouring book. This volume features essays on everything the would-be star should know to get started, such as Sex, Drugs, Sound, Group Photo, The Van, and Manufacturing Nostalgia. The book also has black-and-white illustrations. Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group will serve as an indispensable guide for a new generation just aching to boogie.

Full Product Details

9781636143101

Table of Contents

Reviews

[Svenonius's] how-to guide for forming a band is plenty tongue-in-cheek--the advice is presented through the words of dead rock stars contacted via seance--but he hits on some significant truths. -- ""Washington Post"" Because living musicians fear competition too much to share secrets of success, this manual, we're told, was transcribed during a séance where dead rock stars lectured on profound rock & roll truths. Mary Wells, spelling in spaghetti, and Buddy Holly, scrawling in salt, warned of cruel, social-engineering overlords that both control and fear rock revolutionaries. But the greatest prank the book pulls is camouflaging, beneath astrological and geopolitical inanity, the author's passionately conveyed truths about integrity, artistry, repression, perseverance, and the cruelties and joys of the music industry. It seems that even when utilizing a stone-faced, pummeling, punch line-free tone, truths are still best told in jest. And it also seems rock & roll will never die, or if it does, it will still be accessible through spiritualism. -- ""Time Out Chicago"" 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 . . . 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"" Svenonius has been interrogating and unpacking the meaning of rock 'n' roll for as long as he's been making it. -- ""American Songwriter"" Svenonius has walked the walk . . . Even today--as the frontman of Chain & the Gang and the host of the online talk show Soft Focus--he remains cool, cryptic, and impeccably dressed, a mod magician with a trick always lurking up his tailored sleeve. -- ""A.V. Club""

[Svenonius's] how-to guide for forming a band is plenty tongue-in-cheek--the advice is presented through the words of dead rock stars contacted via seance--but he hits on some significant truths.-- ""Washington Post"" Because living musicians fear competition too much to share secrets of success, this manual, we're told, was transcribed during a séance where dead rock stars lectured on profound rock & roll truths. Mary Wells, spelling in spaghetti, and Buddy Holly, scrawling in salt, warned of cruel, social-engineering overlords that both control and fear rock revolutionaries. But the greatest prank the book pulls is camouflaging, beneath astrological and geopolitical inanity, the author's passionately conveyed truths about integrity, artistry, repression, perseverance, and the cruelties and joys of the music industry. It seems that even when utilizing a stone-faced, pummeling, punch line-free tone, truths are still best told in jest. And it also seems rock & roll will never die, or if it does, it will still be accessible through spiritualism.-- ""Time Out Chicago"" Svenonius has been interrogating and unpacking the meaning of rock 'n' roll for as long as he's been making it.-- ""American Songwriter"" 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 . . . 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"" Svenonius has walked the walk . . . Even today--as the frontman of Chain & the Gang and the host of the online talk show Soft Focus--he remains cool, cryptic, and impeccably dressed, a mod magician with a trick always lurking up his tailored sleeve.-- ""A.V. Club""

Author Information

IAN F. SVENONIUS is the author of the underground bestsellers Against the Written Word, The Psychic Soviet, Censorship Now!!, and Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group. He was also the host of VBS.tv's Soft Focus, where he interviewed Mark E. Smith, Genesis P. Orridge, Chan Marshall, Ian MacKaye, and others. As a musician he has created more than twenty albums and countless singles in various rock 'n' roll combos (Escape-ism, Chain & the Gang, the Make-Up, the Nation of Ulysses, etc.). He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

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