Jesse's review
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
by Dan Kennedy
Jesse's review
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy
Jesse's review
rating:
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 k...more
