Jen Trynin's book "Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be"

If you haven't picked up this book yet, don't hesitate. It's a really interesting take on the music business by Jennifer Trynin. A first hand account of recording the Cockamamie album, being in the center of a bidding war, about 14 minutes of alt-rock fame, and eventually getting tossed aside by the record company. Essential reading.

 

Cool! I'll check it out. I still listen to that second album quite a bit.

 

I've been meaning to start a thread on this book, which I read a few months ago (around the same time as the similarly-themed and short-lived "Love Monkey" series). The book is an often hilarious (though cynical) chronicle of the bidding war to sign Ms. Trynin, and the Kafkaesque tales described within helped me to understand why it's so hard to keep your head on straight when you're a touring rock musician. Incidentally, fans of Aimee Mann might be interested to know that the singer occasionally pops up throughout the book, as she was working with Trynin's boyfriend at the time.

The identities of most of the industry insiders in the book are cloaked behind pseudonyms, but I'd guess that anyone who's worked in the record industry for a while would recognize many of them. Anyone know who's who? I'm especially curious about Lola, who's one of the few industry people who came off reasonably well in the book.

 

Sounds interesting. A companion read is Jake Schlicter's (sp?) 'So You Want to Be a Rock'n'Roll Star?," which recounts Semisonic's brief rise and fall. If you read it and still answer the title question with a yes, you're either admirably tenacious or hopelessly naive.