Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life: John Sellers

Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life is Peter Sellers' combination autobiography and diatribe on music, told from the point of view of a hardcore music fan. Sellers recounts his life growing up and how certain events and situations (his father listening to Dylan constantly, purchasing his first album) initially shaped the music in his life and how he listened to it until the music in his life eventually began shaping the events and situations (traveling overseas to see a concert).

Like any die hard music fan, Sellers recounts some of the major events in his life as being turned on to a certain band or sub-genre, and spends the majority of the book discussing these events with small footnotes and asides to add additional details to stories, short, digressive anecdotes and extra details. He covers his life from early childhood to current day and provides several appendices to further expound on his musical tastes and feelings. Musical elitists in the crowd will enjoying figuring out the song titles and lyrics he references in each chapter title.

Perfect From Now On...let me put it this way: there have been three books I never finished in my life. The Hobbit and Interview with the Vampire bored me to the point I just never picked the book up again. Perfect From Now On I never finished because I got so sick and angry at the whiny, pretentious narrative that I couldn't make myself read any further. Every chapter is just basically yelling praises of one of his favorite bands, some obscure references and name-dropping for scene points and the most pointless, meandering digressions ever put to paper. A 10 (!) page footnote describing the ideal day commemorating Ian Curtis' death? Are you f****** kidding me? I might not have done anything with my life, but I've done enough to not have to blow up the sad events to 183 underwhelming pages with the extensive use of remarkably unfunny footnotes, plus 32 pages of absolutely useless appendices. Per footnote 68: "People think other people care about what they have to say. Take it from a part-time blogger: They don't. No one cares what you have to say. I'm surprised anybody's even reading this sentence." Oh, how right you are, you tool.

If you've ever known an indie rocker, a die-hard, there-before-the-scene-got-big, there-after-Kurt-Cobain-took-the-Hemingway-Train indie rocker, you know precisely what I'm saying. Utterly pretentious, self-worshiping drivel. Whoever paid this man money to write this needs to be institutionalized and sterilized so as to prevent polluting the gene pool with his chromosomes . The author himself? I can't think of any way to comment that won't sound like a threat to fight him, so I'm just going to let it drop here. I can't believe just thinking about this book still gets me this angry! Do the world a favor - instead of burning every copy of this book you can find, drop them in acid so there's not a trace left. I'd give this book negative stars if the system let me.

(Editor's Note: I apologize for our lack of a negative ratings system. Please be patient while I attempt to rectify this situation.)

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Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (March 4, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743277090
ISBN-13: 978-0743277099