Rock On: An Office Power Ballad

by Dan Kennedy

How do you land a sweet six-figure marketing gig at the hallowed record label known for having signed everyone from Led Zeppelin to Stone Temple Pilots? You start with a resume like Dan Kennedy' * Dressed up as a member of Kiss every Halloween * Memorized Led Zeppelin Iv at age ten * Fronted a lip-sync band in junior high * Worked as a college Dj while he was a college drop-out In his outrageous memoir, McSweeney's contributor Kennedy chronicles his misadventures at a major record label. Whether he's directing a gangsta rapper's commercial or battling his punk roots to create an ad campaign celebrating the love songs of Phil Collins, Kennedy's in way over his head. And from the looks of those sitting around the boardroom, he's not alone. Egomaniacs, wackos, incompetents, and executive assistants who know more than their seven-figure bosses round out this power-ballad to office life and rock and roll.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Humor, Audiobook, Biography Memoir

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

The New York novelist, comedy writer, and host of The Moth, has authored only the three books of humour and fiction referenced below.

Dan Kennedy is an American writer living in New York and host of The Moth storytelling podcast. He is the author of three books: "Loser Goes First" (Random House, 2004), "Rock On" (Algonquin, 2008), and "American Spirit: A Novel" (Amazon/Houghton Mifflin, 2013). A widely anthologized humorist, Kennedy first became popular as a columnist on McSweeney's dot net and as a performer of various comedic readings in downtown New York clubs. He tours occasionally, and often performs in and hosts events for The Moth, a storytelling collective founded in 1997 by novelist George Dawes Green (The Juror, Ravens).

AUTHOR DISAMBIGUATION: There are several authors named Dan Kennedy listed on Goodreads. The author described above is a New York based writer and the author of the above referenced titles. There should be no confusion between his works and certain/any Marketing, Dot Com, Sales or Financial Advice books, by other authors of the same name, as he has authored none, is not referenced in any such works, does not in any way endorse said works, and claims no legal responsibility for the advice given therein.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A part of me is amazed this "book" even got published, but then I remind myself that books about inspecting your own excrement get published, as do little business fables involving rodents and hyperkinetic dairy products. Not only that, but people buy them in large numbers. So who's to fault Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill for choosing to roll the dice on this one?

Oh, what the hell, I'll step forward and chastise them. If there was ever a book that really had no need to be published, it's this one. Sure, Dan Kennedy's previous effort, "Loser Goes First", had a certain goofy charm. But said charm didn't really even last through his first book - by the end, one had the feeling of being trapped in a Denny's booth in the middle of the night with your former stoner buddy from high school, who is there because he's got the munchies. You're stone cold sober, and he is rattling on a mile a minute, and it was fun for the first 30 minutes, but now you just want to get away, but oh God he's ordered a frackin' Western Skillet, whatever the frack that is ...

So, Algonquin Books, here are two fundamental questions where you failed to apply the 'minimum standards to be a book' test:

Plot: does anything happen? In a 200-page book, the reader is entitle to see a little action. I would respectfully submit that "guy gets job, spends 18 nondescript months blending into the office scenery as best he can, is canned when the company is taken over", all facts which could be gleaned from the back cover, is just not enough to repay the investment of reading 220 pages.

Narrative voice: should preferably come from someone with an actual personality. One can imagine that there are interesting stories to be told about the Gotterdammerung at Time-Warner, but not by someone whose defining personality trait is blandness, and whose acknowledged survival strategy was to lie low and be as inoffensive as possible.

OK, I guess it might be possible to have the main protagonist be a total nebbish and have the secondary characters be really colorful and skillfully drawn. But nobody else in the book rises above the generic stereotype. Dialog is painful. Nothing happens. It's an embarrassment.

Dan Kennedy still seems like a mensch, albeit a pretty boring one. But that doesn't imply any obligation to support his mediocre writing habits. This book is just so completely unnecessary . A waste of time and money.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rock On: An office power ballad by Dan Kennedy is an unapologetic Gen-X book about the author's experiences inside a corporate record label that straddles the line between memoir and novel. It is wry, sarcastic, neurotic and self-referential in all the ways that we (as gen-exers and post gen-exers) have come to love in our media. There are lists and side notes on fake bands and real bands and almost-were artists and have-been artists, not to mention the casual references to real public figures and Kennedy's neurotic obsessiveness over how to interact with them.

I loved it. Of course, the fact that I, as a white, suburban thirty-something could trade places with Kennedy and have almost word for word identical reactions to the same situations guarantees that I should love it.

And that is the great conceit and great flaw in the book. Kennedy assumes that we are all as neurotic and cautiously hipster as himself. Some reactions in the book could use more explanation; some set pieces need more definition to be more easily understood by someone who is not in the music business.

Having said that, the book is a lot of fun. There were several laugh-out-loud moments in the story and a lot of insights into corporate culture. Kennedy seems to have taken great pains to squeeze as much story as he could into as few words as possible, making it very fast paced and fun to read.

Recommended for aging thirty-somethings who still wish they could be rock stars.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

a lovely girl in a white hat sent me a copy of this book with a note that said, this will make you wet your pants. and not only is this book hilarious but it is that perfect evocation of my generation that grew up staring at the walls in our bedrooms. i remember listening to tonight's the night by neil young on vinyl, which i slid out from my brothers collection and carried back to my room, dropped the needle, shut the door, and watched the light in a square from the window travel down the wall and disappear into dusk. or listening to some supertramp album and watching the dust particles float like tiny universes. this brought all that back. and how, now that i am older, it's not like that anymore. it's all so contrived in a way. kennedy's passage about the iggy pop and the stooges concert is a masterpiece. and for that section alone this book should be read. and reread and passed along to the kids who dont buy albums anymore. who never grew up with a record player. or knew someone with an 8-track. the lovely girl in the white hat was right. this book will make you wet your pants, but it will also make you nod your head. or sit down one night, with a cheap bottle of wine and pull the queen is dead out of the sleeve, drop the needle, sit back and get drunk thinking about bicycle rides. and streetlights. and epic concerts that made you feel on the verge of everything.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irritating. Kennedy got a job at Atlantic Records in 2001 or so, and the place was most definitely not rockin'. He works there 18 months, then gets let go when it gets bought out. Some good stories about office etiquette (great bit about how hard it is to talk to bosses' dogs with the correct marriage of friendliness and formality), but the whole attitude is really problematic: it's like he's too cool to really want to do a good job, so he has to mock the place; but of course that sort of irony is itself the kind of thing he's supposed to be outgrowing, so he has to be sincere and really, you know, care about rock, except not in some sort of dorkily sincere way, which is the problem of the blow-dried guys he works with. So, if you're keeping score at home, he's ironically ironizing his irony, or something, since he's both afraid of caring about his job and of simply being snarky. It's bit tiring to juggle that collection of attitudes, for the reader most of all. Couldn't he just, you know, stop checking the mirror for smirks?

[Tommy_again · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hipster lit types will know from his work at mcsweeneys.net that Kennedy is first and foremost an absurdist. Secondly, a sort of Morrissey-meets-Sedaris type who spins miserablism into keen observation and laughs for the shoe-gazer set. This is bliss for some and a little bit like being drugged then robbed for others. One shouldn't enter into "Rock On" expecting a top-level executive shake down of the music industry. Instead plan to feel a bit like meeting a tortured and semi-neurotic everyman whom you're glad to have a pint with in hopes he'll continue to spin his hilarious tales from the office until closing time. Not to mention a most unflinchingly heart-fueled and savage Iggy Pop yarn.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I kind of hate that all my Goodreads reviews lately are "OMG WHITE GUYS, WHY ARE YOU SUCH ... WHITE GUYS?" but, well, here we are.

Katie warned me that I might not like this book because I have severe embarrassment squick. There were a few times when I was embarrassed for Dan Kennedy, but generally my embarrassment was obscured by my blinding white hatred. Seriously. I hate Dan Kennedy after reading this book. I might not be able to listen to The Moth anymore, because the tag at the end of every episode that says "Dan Kennedy is the author of the book Rock On: An Office Power Ballad!" will send me into a RAGE COMA.

1. So, upfront, let's address that this book desperately wants to be Chuck Klosterman, particularly Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs, although the intercalary chapters reminded me more of Chuck Klosterman IV. This might have bothered me less before Chuck Klosterman's act started to become stale for me, but, ugh, this was when I was the most embarrassed for Dan Kennedy, seriously. Especially because Chuck Klosterman is a music critic and Dan Kennedy was in marketing, and he really, really doesn't seem to understand that there might be a difference.

2. Early in the book Kennedy mentions a type of focus only seen in "meth addicts and people who decided to become over-achievers in their mid-thirties." This is the crux of what I hated, and possibly it's not all the book's fault. There is a certain type of dude of a certain late twenties to mid-thirties age who has been sort of bumming around with his life and then says "Okay! Yeah! Time to be an adult now!" and then he just, like, MANIFESTS a career and five years later there's no evidence that he had an eight-year whole in his professional career or that he had no previous experience in the field he catapulted himself into. Kennedy even seems to be aware that this is his deal, because he mentions how his friends have told him he can't use the lovable loser schtick now that he has this job and he's aware that he must seem like a dick to the product managers who worked their way up from assist level at the record company. But self-awareness does not make you any less of a dick, oh my gooooooooood.

3. More importantly, this book was not really ABOUT anything. Theoretically it is about Dan Kennedy's experience getting a job at a record label 18 months before that industry completely collapsed, and it sort of gives you the impression that it is going to tell you why Dan Kennedy thinks this industry pancaked, but the two reasons seem to be 1) "One time I had an idea about doing something that would have been just like iTunes" and 2) "WAH WAH ALL THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENTS MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY." And yeah, their salaries were ridiculous. (One other thing that might be Dan Kennedy's fault: at this point the mortgage and banking industries have completely burned out my "outrageous salary in a tanking industry" outrageometer.) But I have no sympathy for Dan Kennedy's outrage because of this horrible passage at the beginning of the book where he embarrassingly freaks out about not having anything to put in his office and buys a three hundred dollar picture frame. A THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR PICTURE FRAME. I don't know, man. You can tell me that someone makes $5M a year and I will obscurely understand that this is an absurd amount of money, but a THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR PICTURE FRAME just feels more ... tangible. The combination of panic and oblivious frivolity in that scene actually made me feel kind of nauseous.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected something different from Dan Kennedy, the guy who introduces the weekly Moth podcast. The book is a compilation of his flitting thoughts while working a desk job at a corporate record label. It's a quick, hyper-witty read, but the author's lack of critical personal insight makes it fall flat. What I really mean is: he used 'gay' in a derogatory way, referred to people as ' midgets' & was trying for racial humor in a chapter. ulgh. It's brain spew from someone who appears to have never looked at his privilege. he also thinks the donnas are a decent band. are you kidding me?! Rock On, you're one for the thrift store, not the bookshelf.

[Mixter Mank · Rating 4 out of 5]

A HILARIOUS account of the dying record industry. An absolute must for music nerds, especially those who grew up buying vinyl. Part music love story, part scathing criticism. Kennedy is a very funny writer -- I laughed aloud -- but he's also well-informed about music. His passion shows. Knowledge of pop/rock music history is helpful, but not really necessary. Kennedy's heightened self-awareness, self-loathing, and general misanthropia is enough to keep the musically ignorant amused.

[melydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a whole lot funnier than I'd expected. Kennedy gets a job in advertising at a major record label just as the glory days of working at major music labels have waned. Everything's much less "rock'n'roll" and much more "bland corporate," but Kennedy's take on the whole thing is hilarious. The humor is deadpan and brilliant. And it's a reasonably telling peek into the music business during the clumsy transition from physical media to online.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Funny and forgettable.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments in this book, especially those depicting the culture of marketing meetings and the you-wanna-be-a-winner-don't-ya attitudes so rife in corporate America. Mr. Kennedy's at his best when he's writing bits that could describe *any* corporation. Why? Because we already know that the music industry is more interested in money than talent and that it's out of touch. I wonder just how many people Dan Kennedy's age really are naive enough to think that there are cool rock-n-roll types running any big record (ahem) company.

Mr. Kennedy skewers Jewel for selling out to sell razors (rightfully, IMO; I wish the sell-outs would just admit that they're selling out), but in his otherwise fabulous description of an Iggy Pop concert, he fails even to mention the connection between Iggy Pop and Royal Caribbean. Well, maybe it's easier to criticize a young woman than it is a middle aged man. Or maybe one can't criticize an icon.

I found myself wishing for more details, more substance. Clearly, Mr. Kennedy had much to say about the music industry specifically and corporate America more generally; it didn't get said, though. Commentary on the American working life is lurking below the surface, as if the author is afraid to say it aloud.

This is an easy read; it'll take you all of a single afternoon. But it's thin (as many easy reads are), and, therefore, forgettable. It's kind of like a blog--something interesting to look at during your lunch hour that you forget as soon as 1:00 rolls around.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rock On
by Dan Kennedy

Does life in corporate America baffle you? Do you catch yourself theorizing regularly about how executives make 7 digits a YEAR? What is it they DO? Rock On doesn't explain any of this satisfactorily, but it does allow its reader a reprieve from the seriousness of it all.

When I picked up this book I approached it cautiously. I don't normally get excited about pop culture memoirs and I didn't expect this to be any different. I was very interested in reading a memoir by Dan Kennedy, a regular contributor to McSweeneys. If you haven't heard of this publisher, introduce yourself, you'll like it.

As I read I realized I was laughing a lot. I couldn't put it down because my seratonin was kicking in often, and that meant I had a good one in my hands. I love that feeling when you realize you've found a book you do not want to stop reading.

It reminded me of my past life in a cubicle. I thought about the corporate environment and how it kills pieces of you. This amazingly human story about working in one of the biggest "sellout" industries in our popular culture was bright, smart, introspective but most of all it was funny. We all need to laugh. Its good for us.
This book is very very good for you.

[Byron · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has terrible reviews here, and I think a lot of it is reaction to the guy himself. Dan Kennedy comes off as a terrible person. He has so much bad to say about people who don't seem to have done much to deserve. He somehow ended up in a cushy middle management position in the music biz despite not seeming to be particularly talented. And once he got there, he seemed to be too weak of an individual to distinguish himself in any way. There's a lot of scenes here that revolve around him being afraid to talk to women - not to try to score with them, mind you, but other people in his company he felt inferior to, for whatever reason: his boss, female co-workers, Jewel, The Donnas (remember them?). You want to go back in time, slap him and order him to have some balls, fer chrissakes. If you can get past all that, this is not such a bad read. It's frequently amusing, in an NPR/old white people comedy sort of way, and it offers some insight into the early '00s music biz, right when the bottom was about to fall out.

[Christy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wasn't really liking this one anyway, but I had to put it away after this gem: "I've only ever met one woman who understand that you [bassists:] aren't playing the guitar solo in the middle eight bars of the song. And the only reason she understood the difference between the lead guitarist and the bass guitarist is because she was a brilliant bassist."
Thanks, Dan Kennedy, I really needed you to explain to me the difference between a guitar and a bass. I will continue to listen to your Moth podcasts, but I will not be reading any of your books after you have insulted my intelligence.

[susanb79 Busch · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first it was blowing my mind that this guy was suprised by what a bunch of douchebags 95% of his coworkers were but then it occurred to me that some people that haven't worked in this business for years might still harbor some sort of romantic feeling that it really might still be about the music at major labels. No dice my friend.
What was even more fun was guessing who he was talking about in some of these instances and putting faces to names.

[Alvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some people - through wit and grit - manage to turn the most pedestrian of experiences into epic dramas. Kennedy was mid-level management at a record company (or whatever you call such entities these days) for a year and a half, and he both gets and makes more out of it than your average world-shaking titan. This is both a hilariously brilliant tour through the Culture Industry and one man's descent into the heart of corporate darkness.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I always love love love books about music, but I really loved the writing in this one. Along the same lines as a Chuck Klosterman book, this was the true story of a man who worked for Atlantic Records and was a little put off by the day to day. His stories were great and the way he split up the chapters had me flying through the book. If you like music, memoirs, and quick-witted writing, read this book.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really freakin' funny. A great illustration on how the music industry is getting more and more ridiculous. It's thoughtful, self-effacing, and sometimes even inspiring in a way that goes beyond nostalgia--The chapter about going to see Iggy and the Stooges in concert is especially amazing. Kennedy is pure gold here.

[Bob Redmond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memoir of a rock-industry mid-level manager. Funny for people who have an idea of the biz. In the end his experience, about 18 months, seems a little thin to merit a whole 200-page book, but Dan is laugh-out-loud funny. Just wish there was more meat to it.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A frequently funny memoir about working in the marketing department of Atlantic Records by a thirtysomething McSweeney's contributor.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes this has an incredibly stupid title, but it made me laugh out loud - in public - on multiple occaisions. Definitely worth reading.

[Scoats · Rating 5 out of 5]

After slogging through two back to back joyless reads, what a joy to read an author who has fun writing.

This in an inside look at Atlantic Records as its glory days were ending. Kennedy does not just a great job of describing the very interesting then present, but also the storied past of Atlantic Records. He was a true fan boy who got his dream job just as it as all ending.

Actually it was amazing the gravy train lasted for as long as it did. A lot of people got paid a crazy amount of money for a long time. And no expenses were spared on their workplaces. Then the vultures came in, laid off the fat cats as well as the real workers, and picked whatever meat was left on the bones. An all too common story in the USA of the 1990s & 2000s.

It's a fun read. And the author keeps it tight. This book could have a lot more words in it. I guess to make it seem more substantial, but that would not have made for a better book. We learn all we need to know and we learn it in a breezy way. More would not have been more.

[Scoats · Rating 5 out of 5]

After slogging through two back to back joyless reads, what a joy to read an author who has fun writing.

This in an inside look at Atlantic Records as its glory days were ending. Kennedy does not just a great job of describing the very interesting then present, but also the storied past of Atlantic Records. He was a true fan boy who got his dream job just as it as all ending.

Actually it was amazing the gravy train lasted for as long as it did. A lot of people got paid a crazy amount of money for a long time. And no expenses were spared on their workplaces. Then the vultures came in, laid off the fat cats as well as the real workers, and picked whatever meat was left on the bones. An all too common story in the USA of the 1990s & 2000s.

It's a fun read. And the author keeps it tight. This book could have a lot more words in it. I guess to make it seem more substantial, but that would not have made for a better book. We learn all we need to know and we learn it in a breezy way. More would not have been more.

[Natalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. I got this book from the library because Dan Kennedy is a panelist on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I don't think they picked him on the strength of this book.

I generally enjoy memoirs of turbulent times - but he didn't actually do anything interesting. It's all stories about being an insecure manager who doesn't actually do much.

I did give it an extra star for two things:
- He was briefly self-aware enough to recognize that rock and roll artists do what they do without irony, that they are sincere when they are on stage and he is mired in ironic posturing.
- His description of going to see Iggy Pop reminded me of when I saw Iggy Pop in concert and it was really electrifying.

[Joe Colorado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny and interesting book on the music industry circa 2002, "Rock On" by Dan Kennedy.
It's a good counterpart to Jacob Slichter's book, from the perspective of a mid-level record company employee fulfilling a dream job. From overpaid executives, industry myopia to the shift to digital downloads in the wake of Limewire and Napster, to mass layoffs after an acquisition, a lot of hilarious anecdotes. The ending felt a bit flat, but given the context, that maybe was inevitable.

I do have one burning question for Dan Kennedy: Who was Rush Hair??

[Lisa Guerard-Cugini · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was amusing. I laughed out loud a couple of times. And I identified with the character and his inner monologue vs. his actions: What he wanted to do/say vs. what he actually did do/say. I do this all the time: "I should have said this . . ." The book says a lot about office politics (and not just in the music industry).

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Put it down halfway through. I was interested in an account of a major record label struggling to adapt to the 21st century, but the story is polluted with unfunny asides. Maybe I'd fare better skipping over the fluff, but I fear nothing would be left.

[Mel Flowers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly interesting take on the cynical side of the music industry. While a little boring at times, it was still interesting enough to hold my attention until the end. And the parts about Jewel and the Darkness cracked me up.

[Jay Clement · Rating 4 out of 5]

44-2022. This was a darkly funny book about the last days of the big record-selling music business. The author is snarky about the big executives who didn’t see the changes coming, and about the stars who probably didn’t, either.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun. Kennedy has a good sense of humor and writes a clean line. I had a decent time reading.

[Billdorsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silly at times, sarcastic, cynical. Probably a lot of truth to it too!
Written like it was from a stand-up comedy routine [it probably was]