Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

A Fan's Musical Memoir Finds Shaky Ground..

John Sellers wants to tell you a story of how music 'saved' his life. I was drawn in by his love of creating lists, much like Rob of High Fidelity. However instead of a cool brooding cynic like the one Nick Hornby created we are given a portrait of a true music nerd. At first this stimulated me as I am one myself. The book goes through your average indie kids life cycle. From the music your parents tortured you with to the mysterious bands you hear about from high school crushes and college roomates. However the book slowly goes downhill as readers are basically treated to bragging tales and fan-boy antics. His writting styles boderline amatuer and to top it all off he ends the book with PAGES of other 'cool' bands that he did not mention in his book. Like some myspace kid who wants to impress his new friend requests with a lengthy list of all the 'hip' bands they enjoy. I will admit the book has its funny moments but the cringe-worthy moments outweight the good.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

if you dig tiresome rantings, here's your book!

it was wack. isn't the point of indie rock to veer away from idolatry? kind of misses the point...

Funny -- plus a whole chapter about Pavement

I bought this book mainly because it has a recommendation on the cover by my favorite author, Chuck Klosterman, but also because it talks about a lot of bands that I love, including the Smiths and Pavement. I'm glad I did. The story follows Sellers' path as a music fan, from basically his early love of Duran Duran and U2 to his later fixations on the legendary indie bands mentioned above. He concludes with a long appendix of lists -- some funny, some dead-on, and others that I completely disagreed with (he admits to not liking Sgt. Pepper's!). He does come across as a fanboy at times, and he often goes off on plenty of tangents, but I looked at it like I was having a conversation with someone about his musical past, and if you've ever had one of those, you know that they do tend to go off on tangents. Anyway, I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud on a few occasions. And I think that's the true accomplishment of this book: I feel like the author is someone who'd be fun to hang out with, and someone who is probably not that different than me (except the Sgt. Pepper's part!).

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