books
Kill Your Friends: good on music, sub-American Psycho story
John Niven’s book, Kill Your Friends, is set in the music business at the height of Britpop. Niven knows what he’s talking about - he was an A&R man at the height of Britpop - and his protagonist’s rants about the music business, consumers and the general bovine stupidity of artists clearly come from experience. Pity the opening quote, Hunter S Thompson’s “cruel and shallow money trench” is a misquote (HST was talking about the TV business).
Here’s the book blurb:
It’s not dog-eat-dog around here…it’s dog-gang-rapes-dog-then-tortures-him-for-five-days-before-burying-him-alive-and-taking-out-every-motherfucker-the-dog-has-ever-known. Meet Steven Stelfox. London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. Twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, a world where ‘no one knows anything’ and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public - ‘Yeah, those animals’. Fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine Stelfox, blithely criss-crosses the globe (’New York, Cologne, Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn’) searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.
But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.”Kill Your Friends” is a dark, satirical and hysterically funny evisceration of the record business, a place populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers, where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved - as long as you want it badly enough.
As a satire on the music industry, Kill Your Friends is pretty much peerless. (Real) A&R stupidity is mercilessly skewered, artists of all stripes get it in the neck and one particular rant, a Trainspotting-esque monologue about bands who want record deals, should be printed in 72-point type and nailed to the wall of every rehearsal room in the world. Some of the fictional artists are clearly drawn from real ones, like the self-indulgent drum’n'bass superstar and the band producing sub-Radiohead whiney nonsense, and many of the music business characters appear to be thinly disguised versions or composites of real-life characters.
As a novel, though, it isn’t great. Niven’s going for an American Psycho thing here, but American Psycho did it much better. You can’t help but think Niven should have written a memoir rather than a novel.
If you liked NYPD Blue or Hill Street Blues, you’ll like this
…because it’s great.
Flat Earth News
As one of the cover quotes puts it, if even half of what Nick Davies writes in his expose of the news industry is true then things are truly terrifying. The stuff on Iraq, the neutering of the Sunday Times Insight team and the problems of “churnalism” have been covered elsewhere, so I won’t go into them here, but one of the things that really jumped out for me was the way in which newspaper regulation in the UK is stacked in favour of newspapers who play fast and loose with the truth, trampling people in the process.
The (newspaper-controlled) Press Complaints Commission dismisses the overwhelming majority of complaints without even investigating them, which means the only redress is via the courts. However, you can’t get legal aid for libel and newspapers’ deep pockets and expensive lawyers mean that you’ve got bugger-all chance of someone taking your case on a no-win no-fee basis. What that means in practice is that newspapers can falsely accuse you of anything, ruin your life and get away scot-free. Flat Earth News contains some horrifying examples of that.
Put it this way: this week’s apology to the McCanns by the Express and the Star was unusual not because of the scale of the apology, but because the McCanns hired Carter Ruck, the famous and famously expensive legal firm, to represent them. Most victims of newspaper falsehoods don’t have that option.
A great book, but the people who need it won’t read it
I mentioned this briefly before, but I’d like to mention it again: Suckers, by Rose Shapiro, is a wonderful demolition job of the alternative medicine racket.
Like all polemics, it sometimes crushes things that perhaps don’t deserve to be crushed - so it’s very hard on acupuncture, despite some indications that it can be useful in some circumstances - but the overwhelming majority of Shapiro’s targets deserve, and get, both barrels.
Here’s a short extract:
One American alternative practitioner and supplement salesman, Gary Null, tells us that “a solution to cancer would mean the termination of research programmes, the obsolescence of skills, the end of dreams of personal glory . . . Triumph over cancer would dry up contributions to self-perpetuating charities . . . It would mortally threaten the clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the expensive treatments in which so much money is invested . . . The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied, discouraged and disallowed at all costs”.
An imaginary researcher says: “Every year we must show you results. After all, you won’t support us if you don’t think we’re getting something done. On the other hand, we can’t be too successful — and we certainly can’t afford to come up with a cure. After all, if we did that, how could we come back to you next year and get more of your money?”
When in 2003 the US Food and Drugs Administration stopped Alpha Omega Labs selling Cansema, a worthless cancer cure, one supporter suggested that this was “no doubt because their products worked. The FDA has a long history of doing this to developers of successful cancer remedies”.
Alternative cancer therapists say their plant-based “cures” are overlooked by pharmaceutical companies because naturally occurring substances — rhubarb, for example — can’t be patented, precluding profit for “Big Pharma”. But David Colquhoun, Professor of Pharmacology at University College London, told me: “The kudos that a pharmaceutical company would get for finding an effective cure would be so enormous that it’s hard to imagine that they would decline to produce it, even if it didn’t make a lot of money. In any case, even when a plant-based substance (like Taxol, from yew) provides the initial lead, it is common for synthetic derivatives to be made that have better properties than the original.”
The book’s particularly good at characterising the typical alt-med consumer - well-educated, reasonably well-off women - and detailing the ways in which the alt-med industry targets them so effectively. Some bits had me jumping around in fury, and others were just desperately sad. Well worth reading.
The rules: crime novel covers
When you’re bouncing a baby around your mind tends to wander, and today was no exception: I found myself staring at the bookcase, which contains far too many crime novels, decoding the visual grammar of the cover designs. I don’t know if there are similar rules to other genres, but there’s definitely a set of rules that apply to crime novels.
Here’s how they work.
The colour scheme
The background must be black or white, and feature a photograph of something normal - some trees, a tenement window, a back street. The photograph should then be treated to make the normal look spooky, so for example if it’s a picture of Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium (the Armadillo) then it should be enhanced so the sky is in shades of blood-red with the venue in silhouette; if it’s a picture of some trees it should be shot on a really misty morning and desaturated to make it look spooky; if it’s a city street it should be taken with a ridiculously long exposure so car brake lights become a river of red neon; and so on. If you’re a crime novelist and your cover features a bloody knife, bullet holes or the chalk outline of a corpse then your publisher doesn’t see you as a class-A writer; if the cover is largely neon, your publisher sees you as a writer of crime capers rather than serious crime fiction.
The author’s name and title
There’s a simple equation here: if the title is bigger than the writer’s name, you’re a newbie. The more successful you get, the bigger your name becomes and the smaller the title gets. The goal for crime writers is for your name to take up 7/8ths of the cover and for the title to be so small it’s only visible through an electron scanning microscope.
The author’s name
This is another gauge of success. The more you sell, the bigger and bolder your surname becomes. So if you’re just starting out, your name will be printed (in teeny-weeny text) like this:
Gary Marshall
As you sell more books, the surname gets promoted and the text size gets bigger:
Gary MARSHALL
And when you’re doing brilliantly, the surname gets promoted further still while the first name gets demoted:
gary MARSHALL
Ideally the font will be Helvetica or something similar, with your first name using the lightest possible variant and the surname in the heaviest possible variant. If you have that and your surname is printed in a font size ten times bigger than your first name, the next royalty cheque should be a good ‘un.
Special text effects
If your name is printed in shiny foil or with a clear gloss laminate, or you get a gritty typeface, your publisher hopes you’ll be the next Ian Rankin but the sales figures aren’t vaguely close.
“A Chief Inspector Spanky novel”
Your publisher reckons that nobody who reads your stuff can remember who you are, and he or she hopes that putting the main character’s name on the cover will persuade the Tesco shoppers to buy your latest book. This is rarely a sign of confidence.
Are there any rules I’ve missed?
Eels book in “brilliant” shocker
Things The Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett (E from Eels) is one of the best things I’ve read in ages. Some of it’s very, very sad. And some of it is like this:
During the ‘with strings’ tour one night in Germany, a concertgoer calls out “YOU ARE BORING!” between songs. He’s German and wants to rock. We play him a Scorpions riff, but it isn’t enough.
E from Eels has a book out
It’s called Things The Grandchildren Should Know, it’s an autobiography, it’s under E’s real name (Mark Oliver Everett), it’s out on the 17th and it’s getting excellent reviews from the critics. In best Amazon.com reviewer style, I haven’t read it but it’s the best book ever.
I want the book even more than I want the Official Girls Aloud 2008 Calendar. Yeah. That much.
This month also brings two double-disc Eels compilations: Meet The Eels, a kind of greatest hits (although the stunning Electro-Shock Blues is under-represented), and Useless Trinkets, a collection of B-sides and other odds and sods. The latter also comes with a DVD. Both go on sale on the 21st, and I’d imagine they’ll be on iTunes then too.
Blimey, another year’s nearly gone
As ever, magazines are doing their review of the year thing and I feel inspired to follow suit. Rather than a “what a year that was, eh?” thing, though, here’s a quick list of things I’ve really liked or been let down by this year.
Books: Mr Biffo, David Quantick and Charlie Brooker made me laugh so hard I probably damaged internal organs, and judging by the way Mrs Bigmouth has been laughing like a drain “Mommies Who Drink” is a hoot too. As always I read about 200,000 crime novels, of which the latest Ian Rankin was the most reliably entertaining, and I loved Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace. Although by “loved” I really mean “was utterly freaked out by”. Which also applies to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Music: Obligatory Radiohead joy aside (Reckoner is jaw-dropping), the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration was wonderful despite my hatred of Robert Plant’s voice and my loathing of music that sounds vaguely country. I bought all the Talk Talk records I’d already bought several times already, rediscovered the joys of The Big Dish, was let down by a rather anodyne Sugababes album (what a great first single, though!), discovered Regina Spector about a decade after everybody else and danced very badly to pretty much everything Timbaland has had a hand in this year.
Springsteen’s Magic was an unexpected old-school delight, Mark Ronson’s version of Valerie is one of the most joyous things I’ve heard for ages, Girls Aloud’s Tangled Up was worth buying for Call The Shots alone, and the reissued Joshua Tree reminded me why I used to really love U2.
Tech: Both Vista and Leopard fell into the “glad I have ‘em, could live without ‘em” category, DRM didn’t quite die - although the signs are encouraging - and I had to eat my words about the iPhone, which I thought would be a pile of crap but which I - rather shame-facedly - love dearly despite the lack of 3G. I was also wrong about the Apple TV, which I was very excited about pre-release: it seems as if Apple lost interest in it by the time it actually came out, and it’s become a technological footnote rather than anything more exciting.
FARK, Flickr and PopJustice remained brilliant, Facebook walks the line between fun and being really, really annoying, Newsgator/NetNewsWire/iPhone Integration is better than sliced bread and Logic Pro is God’s own music software. Of the big stuff, the scariest stuff happened (and will continue to happen) in the world of privacy.
Games: Halo 3, too short. Timeshift, predictable but fun enough. Bioshock, flawed but great. Still sod-all decent stuff for the Wii. Orange Box is great value for money, but Half-Life 2 Episode 2 frequently feels like Space Invaders (the antlions in the tunnels, the striders attacking). And not in a good way. Crackdown was a hoot and is well worth tracking down second-hand on eBay. On the PC I loved the Minerva mods for Half-Life 2, but the much-hyped STALKER bored me to tears when it wasn’t crashing.
A major annoyance for me was the increasing focus on online gaming, which means the single player bit of any console game can be completed in about six hours by an inept gamer like me. That probably translates as three seconds for anybody that’s any good. At 40-odd-quid per game, that’s hardly value for money.
The interesting/depressing thing about gaming this year was its increasing resemblance to the film industry: blockbuster-driven with months and months of hype and overly excited previews, with reviewers being outflanked so their words don’t appear in print or online until a terrible game’s hit the top of the charts. Never mind the quality, just look at the first-week sales. A lot of very bad games made a great deal of money this year.
Also depressing was the repeat of last year’s Wii bundle bastardy, where retailers took advantage of Nintendo’s inability to make enough consoles by forcing desperate punters to buy big bundles of crap. They’re doing it again this year.
On a happier note, Eurogamer’s featuring some excellent games writing and the new Rock, Paper, Shotgun blog has quickly become a favourite bookmark.
Magazines that I don’t write for: EDGE and The Word were ace as ever, although the latter is teetering on the very edge of the abyss where Uncut and Mojo live. Empire seems to have found its mojo again, Q’s better than before - less list-y, with proper writing again - although I’m now old enough not to care about 99% of the music it covers, and Car magazine remains a work of art with superb writing to boot.
What about you, ladies and gentlemen?
Books’n'telly’n'tunes
More odds and sods:
Charlie Brooker has a new book out, called Dawn of the Dumb. It includes the column Face at the Window, which may be the funniest thing I’ve ever read. I’m not exaggerating.
The BBC4 documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives is a little gem. It follows E from Eels as he tries to find out more about his late father, a physics genius. I cried like a baby. If it’s repeated or turns up on a torrent it’s well worth your time.
Things you don’t hear very often these days, but should: I bought a Gerry Rafferty best-of today, and it’s brilliant.
Things you do hear too often these days, but shouldn’t: Christmas songs in pubs. I wouldn’t mind - well, I wouldn’t mind as much - if 99% of Christmas music wasn’t so bloody awful.
Quick book review: It’s not news, it’s Fark.com
Drew Curtis, overlord of Fark.com - probably my favourite site on the entire internet - has written a book about “how the mass media tries to pass off crap as news”. He’s right, it does, and the book does a superb (and superbly funny) job of identifying and skewering the various ways in which they do it.
Bravely, Curtis also tries to offer advice to mass media - and for me, that’s where things come unstuck. As Curtis rightly points out, not-news (such as stories about people doing stupid things with their penises, or Paris Hilton doing things with penises, or what Michael Jackson allegedly did with his penis) draws audiences. Curtis’s suggestion is that mass media splits the news and not-news into two different sections, so those of us who want proper news can get it, while those of us who want skateboarding dogs can get that too. And never the twain shall meet.
It’s a nice idea, but I really don’t see it - and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the one outlet he commends for resisting consultants’ suggestion that they redesign their site as a MySpace-a-like to court bored teens, a move guaranteed to alienate the grown-ups, is the BBC. Unlike pretty much every other media outlet on the planet, of course, the BBC isn’t funded by advertising.
For Curtis’s prescription to work, mass media outlets would need more than just a news and not-news section; they’d need publishers to keep the unprofitable news bit alive instead of dumping it and concentrating on the lucrative skateboarding dogs and penis accident stuff. And that’s the bit I have a hard time imagining. Just look at your local paper: if it’s anything like mine (and thanks to consolidation in the local news industry, it almost certainly is) they dumped expensive things like journalists a long time ago.
That said, Curtis makes some superb points throughout the book (particularly on the relationship between blogs and local newspapers, or YouTube and local TV), and probably the best one is about internet advertising. We’re told again and again that internet advertising doesn’t work - but what if it’s not internet advertising, but *all* advertising?
What if it’s not that internet advertising is any different, but that the whole advertising business is built on a giant pile of bullshit, and that it’s only since we stuck it on the internet that we’ve been able to see just how much bullshit the creatives and ad salespeople have been shovelling?
And that’s the interesting thing, because of course pretty much the entire internet seems to be pinning its hopes on advertising revenue. If Curtis’s own experience is correct (he was promised 4% conversion rates from display ads; the reality seems to be 0.2%, on a good day, if the planetary alignment is favourable and you’ve got a lucky rabbit’s foot) then an awful lot of people are fighting for shares of an advertising pie that’s 20 times smaller than they thought it was.
That’s good news for Google; not so good for the sites depending on ad income.
If I’m making it sound as if the book’s a dull “whither media?” treatise, I’m doing it a disservice. While there’s serious stuff in there if you want it, the book itself is more of a romp through media scaremongering, stupidity and other things beginning with S. It’s a hoot, and well worth buying.
Disclaimer 1: I’m still operating on sod-all sleep, so the above may not make any sense at all.
Disclaimer 2: Drew Curtis is a friend of .net magazine; I write for .net, so therefore there’s a mild conflict of interest here. That said, as far as I’m aware Drew would set the dogs on me if I turned up at his house demanding beer.