Author: Phil Hansen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143131524
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
An essential guide for artists of all levels, on how to live and work as a creative, from a popular artist and TED speaker. When we're kids, our parents tell us that being creative is fun, fun, fun. But when you decide to turn art into your career, whether that's painting, writing, drawing, or sculpting Edgar Allan Poe out of earthworms, that's when things get tough. Let's be honest. Creativity isn't always fun. It's also hard work. In this insightful and heartfelt guide, artist and speaker Phil Hansen shares his hard-won wisdom from the frontlines of life as a professional creative. Paired with his edgy art, Hansen provides advice for the difficult moments--the slumps, the creative blocks, the times when something you love doesn't resonate with the world--and gives you the pep talk you need to get through the tough times. He also shares helpful tips on how to put yourself in the prime creative mindset, how to build a support system, and how to create art that sells.
Creativity Sucks
Author: Phil Hansen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143131524
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
An essential guide for artists of all levels, on how to live and work as a creative, from a popular artist and TED speaker. When we're kids, our parents tell us that being creative is fun, fun, fun. But when you decide to turn art into your career, whether that's painting, writing, drawing, or sculpting Edgar Allan Poe out of earthworms, that's when things get tough. Let's be honest. Creativity isn't always fun. It's also hard work. In this insightful and heartfelt guide, artist and speaker Phil Hansen shares his hard-won wisdom from the frontlines of life as a professional creative. Paired with his edgy art, Hansen provides advice for the difficult moments--the slumps, the creative blocks, the times when something you love doesn't resonate with the world--and gives you the pep talk you need to get through the tough times. He also shares helpful tips on how to put yourself in the prime creative mindset, how to build a support system, and how to create art that sells.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143131524
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
An essential guide for artists of all levels, on how to live and work as a creative, from a popular artist and TED speaker. When we're kids, our parents tell us that being creative is fun, fun, fun. But when you decide to turn art into your career, whether that's painting, writing, drawing, or sculpting Edgar Allan Poe out of earthworms, that's when things get tough. Let's be honest. Creativity isn't always fun. It's also hard work. In this insightful and heartfelt guide, artist and speaker Phil Hansen shares his hard-won wisdom from the frontlines of life as a professional creative. Paired with his edgy art, Hansen provides advice for the difficult moments--the slumps, the creative blocks, the times when something you love doesn't resonate with the world--and gives you the pep talk you need to get through the tough times. He also shares helpful tips on how to put yourself in the prime creative mindset, how to build a support system, and how to create art that sells.
Creativity Sucks!
Author: Dan Lok
Publisher: Morgan James Pub
ISBN: 9781933596693
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 124
Book Description
How would you like to generate tons of usable ""killer product ideas"" every single day - even a winning idea every 60 seconds - that can pull in daily cash profits, even a full-time income? Now, you can! Over the last decade, I've spent hundreds of hours searching for the little-known secrets of how information and Internet millionaire marketers come up with SIZZLING HOT ideas for money-making info-products (books, audiocassettes, reports, videos, courses, manuals, and ebooks)...and now YOU can use their proven, closely-guarded methods to generate virtually unlimited ""fast cash"" product ideas! Inside Creativity Sucks!, you'll discover every single powerhouse tip, trick, and secret to instantly generate dozens upon dozens of powerful money-making ideas for online or offline information products! If you need a boost, a jumpstart, or a kick in the seat of the pants to help you get YOUR million-dollar idea, you need to get your hands on a copy of Creativity Sucks! now.
Publisher: Morgan James Pub
ISBN: 9781933596693
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 124
Book Description
How would you like to generate tons of usable ""killer product ideas"" every single day - even a winning idea every 60 seconds - that can pull in daily cash profits, even a full-time income? Now, you can! Over the last decade, I've spent hundreds of hours searching for the little-known secrets of how information and Internet millionaire marketers come up with SIZZLING HOT ideas for money-making info-products (books, audiocassettes, reports, videos, courses, manuals, and ebooks)...and now YOU can use their proven, closely-guarded methods to generate virtually unlimited ""fast cash"" product ideas! Inside Creativity Sucks!, you'll discover every single powerhouse tip, trick, and secret to instantly generate dozens upon dozens of powerful money-making ideas for online or offline information products! If you need a boost, a jumpstart, or a kick in the seat of the pants to help you get YOUR million-dollar idea, you need to get your hands on a copy of Creativity Sucks! now.
Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition)
Author: Ed Catmull
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644504
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644504
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.
Crossed
Author: Ally Condie
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142421715
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
The highly anticipated second book in the New York Times bestselling Matched trilogy! Perfect for fans of 1984, Brave New World, Black Mirror, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Chasing down an uncertain future, Cassia makes her way to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky--taken by Society to his certain death--only to find that he has escaped into the majestic, but treacherous, canyons. On this wild frontier are glimmers of a different life . . . and the enthralling promise of rebellion. But even as Cassia sacrifices everything to reunite with Ky, ingenious surprises from Xander may change the game. On the edge of Society, nothing is as expected, and crosses and double crosses make Cassia's path more twisted than ever. Look for the epic series finale, REACHED!
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142421715
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
The highly anticipated second book in the New York Times bestselling Matched trilogy! Perfect for fans of 1984, Brave New World, Black Mirror, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Chasing down an uncertain future, Cassia makes her way to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky--taken by Society to his certain death--only to find that he has escaped into the majestic, but treacherous, canyons. On this wild frontier are glimmers of a different life . . . and the enthralling promise of rebellion. But even as Cassia sacrifices everything to reunite with Ky, ingenious surprises from Xander may change the game. On the edge of Society, nothing is as expected, and crosses and double crosses make Cassia's path more twisted than ever. Look for the epic series finale, REACHED!
Life After the 30-Second Spot
Author: Joseph Jaffe
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471738697
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
The old media strategies advertisers used for decades no longer work. Here's what does! Traditional advertising, in the form of print, radio, and most notably, television, is far less effective than it used to be. Advertising strategies using only these mediums no longer work. Life After the 30-Second Spot explains how savvy marketers and advertisers are responding with new marketing techniques to get their message out, get noticed, engage their audiences-and increase sales! Covering topics such as viral marketing, gaming, on-demand viewing, long-form content, interactive, and more, the book explains the new avenues marketers and advertisers must use to replace traditional print, TV, and radio advertising-and which strategies are most effective. This book is every marketer's road map to "new marketing."
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471738697
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
The old media strategies advertisers used for decades no longer work. Here's what does! Traditional advertising, in the form of print, radio, and most notably, television, is far less effective than it used to be. Advertising strategies using only these mediums no longer work. Life After the 30-Second Spot explains how savvy marketers and advertisers are responding with new marketing techniques to get their message out, get noticed, engage their audiences-and increase sales! Covering topics such as viral marketing, gaming, on-demand viewing, long-form content, interactive, and more, the book explains the new avenues marketers and advertisers must use to replace traditional print, TV, and radio advertising-and which strategies are most effective. This book is every marketer's road map to "new marketing."
Ignore Everybody
Author: Hugh MacLeod
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101057726
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
When Hugh MacLeod was a struggling young copywriter, living in a YMCA, he started to doodle on the backs of business cards while sitting at a bar. Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog - gapingvoid.com - and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures. MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world? Where does inspiration come from? What does it take to make a living as a creative person? Now his first book, Ignore Everyone, expands on his sharpest insights, wittiest cartoons, and most useful advice. A sample: *Selling out is harder than it looks. Diluting your product to make it more commercial will just make people like it less. *If your plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain. *Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one. *The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. After learning MacLeod's 40 keys to creativity, you will be ready to unlock your own brilliance and unleash it on the world.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101057726
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
When Hugh MacLeod was a struggling young copywriter, living in a YMCA, he started to doodle on the backs of business cards while sitting at a bar. Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog - gapingvoid.com - and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures. MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world? Where does inspiration come from? What does it take to make a living as a creative person? Now his first book, Ignore Everyone, expands on his sharpest insights, wittiest cartoons, and most useful advice. A sample: *Selling out is harder than it looks. Diluting your product to make it more commercial will just make people like it less. *If your plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain. *Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one. *The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. After learning MacLeod's 40 keys to creativity, you will be ready to unlock your own brilliance and unleash it on the world.
The Creativity Challenge
Author: Tanner Christensen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440588341
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
As seen on Inc.com Discover your "Aha" moment--right now! What's the best way to become more creative? Just change how you think! This book challenges you to go against your default ways of thinking in order to write, design, and build something extraordinary. Featuring more than 100 challenges, exercises, and prompts, each page guides you as you push past the way you normally see the world and uncover all-new possibilities and ideas. The Creativity Challenge teaches you that you already have immense creative potential in you--you just need to tap into it. Whether you're feeling stumped or uninspired, these creativity prompts will help you ditch typical thinking patterns and finally unleash the possibilities hidden within your mind.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440588341
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
As seen on Inc.com Discover your "Aha" moment--right now! What's the best way to become more creative? Just change how you think! This book challenges you to go against your default ways of thinking in order to write, design, and build something extraordinary. Featuring more than 100 challenges, exercises, and prompts, each page guides you as you push past the way you normally see the world and uncover all-new possibilities and ideas. The Creativity Challenge teaches you that you already have immense creative potential in you--you just need to tap into it. Whether you're feeling stumped or uninspired, these creativity prompts will help you ditch typical thinking patterns and finally unleash the possibilities hidden within your mind.
Your Company Sucks
Author: Mark Stevens
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
ISBN: 193561889X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
It's every businessperson's nightmare: his or her company is failing, dysfunctional, stuck in neutral, and is disappointing overall, from the finances to the customer feedback. Put bluntly—but candidly—the company sucks. That's the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. Every business can rebound from its lows, regain its momentum, thrill its customers, and be the source of pride and profits its owners and shareholders seek. This U-turn must begin with you, the owner or senior manager, declaring war on yourself. By facing the fact that the malaise is the business suffers from ultimately is your responsibility and your doing, and even more important, will not be rectified unless you take the lead. Face the hard truth. Take the difficult actions. Demonstrate determination, creativity and resolve. Your Company Sucks pulls back the curtain on business performance. To reveal the four real-world reasons businesses decline, to identify them as red flags, and to provide a powerful and innovative methodology to transition from failure to flourish. Mark Stevens reveals that there are not thousands of reasons businesses fail. The reasons fall under four major categories: 1. rudderless leadership 2. the lust-to-lax syndrome 3. incompetence 4. conventional thinking Identifying and addressing the reasons for your company's failure is the focus of the war. This insightful book shows that the key to long-term business success is for the leader to declare war on him/herself so that the company never rests on its laurels. It also demonstrates how customer satisfaction is a curse in disguise. You don't want to satisfy your customers—you want to thrill them.
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
ISBN: 193561889X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
It's every businessperson's nightmare: his or her company is failing, dysfunctional, stuck in neutral, and is disappointing overall, from the finances to the customer feedback. Put bluntly—but candidly—the company sucks. That's the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. Every business can rebound from its lows, regain its momentum, thrill its customers, and be the source of pride and profits its owners and shareholders seek. This U-turn must begin with you, the owner or senior manager, declaring war on yourself. By facing the fact that the malaise is the business suffers from ultimately is your responsibility and your doing, and even more important, will not be rectified unless you take the lead. Face the hard truth. Take the difficult actions. Demonstrate determination, creativity and resolve. Your Company Sucks pulls back the curtain on business performance. To reveal the four real-world reasons businesses decline, to identify them as red flags, and to provide a powerful and innovative methodology to transition from failure to flourish. Mark Stevens reveals that there are not thousands of reasons businesses fail. The reasons fall under four major categories: 1. rudderless leadership 2. the lust-to-lax syndrome 3. incompetence 4. conventional thinking Identifying and addressing the reasons for your company's failure is the focus of the war. This insightful book shows that the key to long-term business success is for the leader to declare war on him/herself so that the company never rests on its laurels. It also demonstrates how customer satisfaction is a curse in disguise. You don't want to satisfy your customers—you want to thrill them.
Marketing in the Round
Author: Gini Dietrich
Publisher: Que Publishing
ISBN: 0132939541
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Drive more value from all your marketing and communications channels--together! Demolish your silos and sync all your messaging, strategies, and tactics (really!). Optimize every medium and platform, from iPad and Facebook to TV and direct. This book is a must-read for every senior marketing, communications, and PR decision-maker. It’s not about social media. Or new (or old) media. It’s about results—and there’s only one way to get results. You must finally bite the bullet, tear down your silos, and integrate all your marketing and communications. That’s how you choose the best platforms and messages for each customer. That’s how you make research and metrics work. That’s how you overcome today’s insane levels of complexity and clutter. You’re thinking: Oh, that’s all I need to do? “Just” integrate my whole organization? Are you nuts? No. We’re not. It can be done. This book’s authors have done it. They’ve shown others how to do it. And now they’re going to show you. Step by step. Strategy. Tactics. Research. Metrics. Culture. Social. Mobile. Direct. Broadcast. Print. All of it. With you, the marketing/communications decision-maker, right at the center...right where you belong! Even now, organizational silos prevent most companies from conversing coherently with customers, delivering the right targeted messages, and building real synergies across all their marketing and communications programs. Now, Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston show how to finally break down those silos, bridging traditional and newer disciplines to drive more value from all of them. You’ll learn how to create a flexible marketing hub with integrated spokes including sales, PR, advertising, customer service, HR, social media, and the executive team. Then, you’ll learn how to use your hub to speak cohesively with each customer through the tools and platforms that deliver the best results at the lowest cost. Dietrich and Livingston guide you through hands-on strategic planning, illustrating key points with real case studies and offering practical exercises for applying their principles. You’ll learn how to perform baseline analyses of media from iPad apps to radio, optimize resource allocation, change culture to overcome siloed behavior, use measurement to clear away obstacles, and gain more value from every marketing investment you make. Pull it all together--finally! How to successfully integrate your tactics, tools, messages, and teams Better goals, better results: beyond “SMART” to “SMARTER” Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound, evaluate, and reevaluate Better listening: stakeholders, customers, and research that works How to make sure you hear what really matters Four powerful ways to market in the round When to go direct, come from above, use the groundswell, or execute flanking maneuvers
Publisher: Que Publishing
ISBN: 0132939541
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Drive more value from all your marketing and communications channels--together! Demolish your silos and sync all your messaging, strategies, and tactics (really!). Optimize every medium and platform, from iPad and Facebook to TV and direct. This book is a must-read for every senior marketing, communications, and PR decision-maker. It’s not about social media. Or new (or old) media. It’s about results—and there’s only one way to get results. You must finally bite the bullet, tear down your silos, and integrate all your marketing and communications. That’s how you choose the best platforms and messages for each customer. That’s how you make research and metrics work. That’s how you overcome today’s insane levels of complexity and clutter. You’re thinking: Oh, that’s all I need to do? “Just” integrate my whole organization? Are you nuts? No. We’re not. It can be done. This book’s authors have done it. They’ve shown others how to do it. And now they’re going to show you. Step by step. Strategy. Tactics. Research. Metrics. Culture. Social. Mobile. Direct. Broadcast. Print. All of it. With you, the marketing/communications decision-maker, right at the center...right where you belong! Even now, organizational silos prevent most companies from conversing coherently with customers, delivering the right targeted messages, and building real synergies across all their marketing and communications programs. Now, Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston show how to finally break down those silos, bridging traditional and newer disciplines to drive more value from all of them. You’ll learn how to create a flexible marketing hub with integrated spokes including sales, PR, advertising, customer service, HR, social media, and the executive team. Then, you’ll learn how to use your hub to speak cohesively with each customer through the tools and platforms that deliver the best results at the lowest cost. Dietrich and Livingston guide you through hands-on strategic planning, illustrating key points with real case studies and offering practical exercises for applying their principles. You’ll learn how to perform baseline analyses of media from iPad apps to radio, optimize resource allocation, change culture to overcome siloed behavior, use measurement to clear away obstacles, and gain more value from every marketing investment you make. Pull it all together--finally! How to successfully integrate your tactics, tools, messages, and teams Better goals, better results: beyond “SMART” to “SMARTER” Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound, evaluate, and reevaluate Better listening: stakeholders, customers, and research that works How to make sure you hear what really matters Four powerful ways to market in the round When to go direct, come from above, use the groundswell, or execute flanking maneuvers
Your Band Sucks
Author: Jon Fine
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698170318
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698170318
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.