So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star by Jacob Slichter

1998 is a big blur for me. Actually, 1998 and several years after it are a big blur. The summer of 1998 was when my twins were born. I pretty much withdrew from popular culture in 1998 and still have not fully recovered. That's okay, though. It's one of those easy choices a daddy makes. Every so often I come across things that happened during "The Baby Years" that completely passed me by. One of those things was Semisonic and their song Closing Time. Apparently it was a big hit. Apparently it was a huge hit. I had not heard the song until this evening. I had not even heard of the song until I read So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star by Jacob Slichter, the drummer for Semisonic. Heck, whenever I saw the word Semisonic I experienced some sort of dyslexic thing because I kept seeing it as Seismonic. Weird. Anyway, Slichter has written a very interesting book about his experience with the nuts and bolts of the music business during Semisonic's roller coaster ride into and out of the spotlight. It is a memoir rather than a guide to making it big in showbiz, though if you want to read about drugs and groupies, look elsewhere. If you want to read about what is really involved in making a hit, how record companies help and hurt their artists, the power of radio stations, the things artists have to go through to promote their music, the rush of being on stage, and how quickly stardom can slip away, then I recommend this book. Slichter doesn't go into his relationships with his bandmates much and for someone who goes on and on about the band's escalating recoupable costs, he doesn't write at all about his income (surely he made some money from Semisonic). Minor quibbles, though. Good book.