In a similar vein to America’s freebie-seeking Napster enthusiasts, this novel dismisses the music business as a place so corrupted by the almighty dollar that good tunes have become secondary. “A & R” (that’s industry lingo for “artists and repertoire”) skewers both the business and its money-hungry execs.
Flanagan is an insider if there ever was one. As a former rock critic, editorial director at VH1, and the brains behind the network’s popular Storytellers and Legends, he is not only armed with industry savvy but is a gifted satirist too. Characters range from J.B. Booth, the lupine, greedy second-in-command and Wild Bill DeGaul, the spliff-smoking and likable but lazy company founder, to Zoey Pavlov, the amped-up and sarcastic ladder-climbing female. On the surface, they may seem like caricatures, but Flanagan’s frank and funny dialogue digs deeper to expose complexities.
His cynical New Yorker’s grip on the cruelties of the music scene is unrelenting: One drummer is replaced because “he got drunk and snorted Ajax” while “Lower East Side girlfriends” are shown “mentally counting the rooms of their honeymoon mansions, ignorant of the sad inevitability that by the time those mansions were bought, their places would be taken by fashion models and actresses.” But Flanagan is also able to capture the ultra-jaded, trash-talking ennui of the music biz without blasting all of his characters. The book’s protagonist, Jim Cantone, is a simple guy from Maine who loves music and is as likable as any fictional character in recent memory. Flanagan traces Cantone’s career trajectory from small independent label Feast Records, where the atmosphere was “as comfortable as an after-school job at the soda shop,” to the big time. When Booth, the nefarious bean counter who runs daily operations at WorldWide, successfully recruits Cantone away from Feast, it’s no surprise that our hero walks into a snake pit of lies and betrayal.
While the tale itself is no more than a slightly cartoonish coup d’etat, the predictable plot is almost beside the point. What makes the book special are Flanagan’s nimble words and some wicked lampooning that may not be too far from the evil truth. It’s a place of knowing familiarity, where publicity stunts geared to produce flavor-of-the-month sensations take precedent over good old-fashioned rock and roll bands. Flanagan has invented people we love to hate while writing a rollicking good time of a novel.
