Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

An enjoyable read for a very limited audience. That's how I would describe Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life by John Sellers. The audience may indeed be as limited as Sellers himself from a harsh critic's eyes.

I stumbled upon this read in a browse through one of my favorite sections of Powell's, on of my favorite places in Portland. Thus, it looked like a winner. It had just from reading the teaser about it. I made an impulse purchase. I'm not sure that I regret it, but it's not exactly my proudest accomplishment to date either.

It took me quite a while to figure out exactly what the book was about. Specifically, it took me about 211 pages. That's the length of the entire book. But I just lied because I'm still not exactly sure what it was about.

This review is going rather poorly because it is untrue that I have only negative things to say about this book. I actually rather enjoyed it, but that's just because I very much like music and talking about music and reading about music. This Sellers dude seems to be a kindred spirit in this regard. He has actually gone on several musical "pilgrimages" to places important to his favorite music, something I've long wanted to do (I've even considered visiting certain places in Europe that revolve around the music I listen to such as venturing to Amsterdam to sing the Guster song or to Valencia, Spain to enjoy the Decemberists' "Oh, Valencia!" in its origin. Needless to say, a trip to England will have a stop at Abbey Road).

But I must return to the fact that Sellers never answered the question. How did indi rock save his life? He described how his listening tastes changed from Duran Duran to obscure acts in his forty-or-so years, but he fails to tie in the saving of the life. Perhaps Perfect From Now On: Indie Rock Saved My Life, simply omitting the "how" would be a more apt title.

It also must be mentioned that he has this terribly annoying (more often than not) habit of using footnotes to go on extreme tangents from the main point. These spanned as many as ten pages for a single footnote, which was quite difficult to read.

Sellers most likely had a blast writing this book. I would love to write a similar book describing my own musical tastes and tying them into certain periods and events in my life, but few would care about it. Similarly, I think that's what happens here. It's something that Sellers cares about, but not many others. He's incredibly obsessed with this band called Guided By Voices, which is great as I've been told way too often how obsessed with certain bands I am. However, I understand that no one cares about that except for me. Well, sometimes I feel the need to share, but I try to restrain.

But the book isn't awful! Sellers does know how to write, and this was a worthy read for a music obsessee. But I'm not sure how large of an audience that is. Good luck selling, Sellers.

LB

Currently listening to: "God Is Bigger" from Veggie Tales (on my Never Played playlist. I'm down to only 642 songs. Whew, quite the accomplishment!)

Swak, I had to wake up and go to work eighteen hours ago. Time for bed.