BOOK: Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life ~ John Sellers
I found the first half or so of this memoir quite compelling, especially since Sellers’ believes (as do I), that 1970 was an awesome year to be born: “But a subtler factor - and I suppose that this part applies to most Gen-X kids, not just those born in 1970 - is that we have been blessed with a prosperous shuttle run through pop-culture history. We have the good fortune of being too young to have any real memories of Watergate, Vietnam, and Tiny Tim, and too old to have been susceptible to Barney, New Kids on the Block, and the expression “gettin’ jiggy wit’ it”. The book lost my interest when it turned into specifically “How Guided By Voices Saved My Life”. While I completely understand falling in love with a band (more than I’d like to admit, actually), reading about someone else’s obsession with a disbanded band I have little interest in, about albums and songs I’ve never heard (outside of the Alien Lanes album), and how cool it was to get drunk with lead singer Robert Pollard at his house, aka the “Monument Club” got tired quickly. In addition, the use of mammoth footnotes should have started and ended with David Foster Wallace.
