Early in Rock On: An Office Ballad, author Dan Kennedy makes
a confession. “There is a delusion I have apparently quietly indulged
in since, say, age 30, and it’s this: that I am still as cool as I was
when I was 17,” he tells us. When recovering slacker Kennedy gets a
high-paying job in the marketing department of a major record company,
he sees his coolness finally validated, imagining that he is “basically
going to be paid to be some sort of intense über rock ‘n’ roll
person who is marketing loud, fierce developing bands that are not yet
registering on the radar of the so-called normal, run-of-the-mill
adults in
the mainstream.”
Kennedy’s delusion is abruptly checked when his first assignment is
to write an ad campaign celebrating the career of Phil Collins. His
very un-rock ‘n’ roll office is full of overpaid executives and
acquiescent lackeys, most of whom are increasingly out of touch with
the world of “internets” and “free music downloads.” Kennedy does his
best to fit in, kissing ass and buying expensive picture frames to
decorate his office, until a wave of layoffs sweeps the company, and he
finds himself cut loose to write a snarky memoir about
his
experiences.
Kennedy writes well about things he actually cares about. When he’s
given access to the Motown photo archives, he is reverent and moving as
he describes finding an envelope that contains prints from the
What’s Going On cover shoot, or a snapshot of a young Jack
Nicholson smoking a joint at a Stevie Wonder recording session.
He can also be quite funny, usually when he is admitting to his own
unfitness for his job (“I will only say this about my new hair
situation: The highlights were supposed to look much more rock ‘n’ roll
than this.”) The book, though, is indifferently structured, fluffed up
with meant-to-be-funny asides like suggested lyrics for “any all-girl
rock band trying to win over the middle-aged white suburban male
demographic.” (“I think your hair’s still rad/You and your friends
still seem like rockers.”) One guesses that Kennedy had a little
trouble meeting his word count—which would also explain why the
book is riddled with “I mean”s and “I think to myself”s. This
flabbiness keeps the book from being as funny as it should be, and its
lazy structure dilutes what had the potential to be a pretty scathing
send-up of a bloated and out-of-touch industry.