The problem with this book is that Jennifer Trynin is just as big a weasel as the businesspeople she writes about.
The problem with the book business is it's just as clueless as to what the public wants as the music business. A book by a fortysomething never made it rock chick whose heyday was TEN YEARS AGO? Yeah, that seems like a good investment.
I wouldn't be so incredulous if "Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be" wasn't published by Harcourt, a "major" in the parlance of the record business. I know, I know. Some chick in editorial was a fan of "Cockamamie". More likely, Jen's writing instructor KNEW somebody at the house, and made an introduction, and a deal was forged. There was a lawyer, and a contract, and an advance larger than the Arcade Fire got from Merge, but that's what Ms. Trynin is good at. Deal-making, not success.
In case you missed the memo, Jen/Jennifer Trynin was the object of a bidding war back in 1994. Ultimately signed to Warner Brothers, her records flopped, and she floated back into obscurity, a never made it MUCH richer in the pocketbook.
What did Harcourt think the market for this book was? There's not enough emotion for it to work if one isn't music business-savvy, or at least not interested. And the house did SUCH a poor job infiltrating the record ranks, it's almost as if the book never came out.
But you should read it.
Because this book is real. It shows how the business worked. In the nineties. Just before the fall. Just before the labels took completely over. Signing acts and making them over, hoping for that one big hit single that would result in raining coin and dropping quickly anyone who didn't succeed with that paradigm.
Hell, you've got to give Jennifer props. She HUNG IN THERE! When no one was interested she made an indie album. Which caught fire.
And then it was a feeding frenzy. Oh you know how it works/worked. When you opened the pages of "Hits" to read "Wheels & Deals", back when people still read that magazine, when it still WAS a magazine.
The herd mentality is utterly frightening. The image of Donnie Ienner chasing this middle class Jewish suburbanite (and as Jen says in the book, I'm Jewish, so I can say this) making alternative music is utterly LAUGHABLE! The man who helped make Mariah Carey cares about THIS?
But you can't count on Jen's Grubman attorney to winnow the candidates properly. He's a whirling dervish not interested in his client, but just trying to run up the numbers so he can get a larger slice of the pie.
And even David Geffen makes an appearance. Wooing Jen. It's creepy. For, even in 1994, he was already DAVID GEFFEN! Isn't this like Bill Gates calling your son who's made a good YouTube video to come work at Microsoft? Isn't this OVERKILL?
Oh, there are showcases. And the obligatory first class trips to the coast, to interview managers and labels.
And there's ALMOST sex between Jen and her bandmate. You almost wonder if it all happened, or if her editor told her to play it up. Hell, a girl this determined in a committed relationship doesn't give it up THIS EASILY! And she didn't. He just got a few kisses.
But really, you've got to catch the weasel behavior. As the people who USED to run this business try to sign Jen. Saying the most obsequious, cloying things. Stuff that would make me spit out my beer, if I still drank beer.
And then she signs with Warner Brothers. Even though she says the label is in turmoil. Didn't her fucked up attorney tell her NO? Oh, she was wowed by Danny Goldberg's desire to make her the next Kurt Cobain. The label had been through how many heads in how short a time, but she throws in with HIM? Rather than someone like Eddie Rosenblatt, who'd been running Geffen from the INCEPTION??
And rather than committing to Cliff and Peter she goes with a second rate manager who ultimately jumps ship to be number two at Donnie's label? Oh, you know who it is. But JEN NEVER MENTIONS HIS NAME!
Oh, this is what really pissed me off. It's like Jennifer Trynin wants BACK IN! She doesn't want to offend anybody who might help her in the future. So, she only reveals the names of those who FUCKED HER!
It's obscene. Dis Irving Azoff for being short, yet don't even mention Jeff Gold's name? Even though Irving was just bidding on you, and you worked with Jeff day after day after day?
The aforementioned Cliff Burnstein has the best scene in the book. Wherein he essentially hangs up on Jen for being wishy-washy, not committing to Q Prime. Jen mentions HIS name, because he pissed her off, did her wrong, but the manager who's inept and ineffective and jumps ship in the middle she's PROTECTING??
Then again, that's one of JEN'S best lines. Whereupon hearing her manager's going inside, she tells her attorney she wants some of her MONEY BACK! A real lawyer, one not entangled in the web of the business, would have made the call for her, maybe even threatened to sue. But not her Grubman guy. Hell, that old manager is now at the MAJOR!
Howard Thompson looks the best of the A&R people. But she can't even mention his name. I ASSUME it's him. Hell, how many A&R people did Almo HAVE on the east coast? Then again, she's got plausible deniability.
God, she couldn't even mention the name of her HUSBAND! Who was her PRODUCER! Whose name you can read in the credits, which still live on, and probably will FOREVER, on the Web.
So Jen pissed me off. And the book pissed me off. Because it was all build up and almost no denouement. How about the wrenching train-wreck of realizing you're not going to make it. The heartache. The PROCESS! That's given short-shrift, even though we go to endless audition gigs.
This is a fucked up business. If you want to know how fucked up, read "Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be'. You'll be hooked.
Hell, I'll help Jen out, I'll hype her book. It's a good read. But after finishing it, I got the sneaking sensation Jen has a NEED to be famous. And maybe that's why she never made it. Because just like her writing, her musical talent was GOOD, but not GOOD ENOUGH! It was her sheer will that got her to the starting line. But she could never make it to number one. Maybe because her nemesis, Alanis Morissette, put it all on the line, and Jen is too cerebral, pulling punches, not delivering the essence. I mean if you can't name names, what makes you any different from the junior high school GOSSIP?
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