Pants on fire

DAN KENNEDY is all about faking it. A contributor to McSweeneys.net, he’s the guy who landed a gig as director of creative development at Atlantic Records, then spent 18 months bearing awkward witness to the blatant excess and rapid downfall of the music business. He’s the guy who, on being given a big, new office, went out and bought a $350 picture frame and some other executive-type junk, while thinking, “I know this stuff is all a big dumb lie.”

“Rock On: An Office Power Ballad” is the story of that experience, although it’s really about Kennedy’s self-refracted inner life. “I’m starting to think half of what everyone my age does is a lie,” he writes. “But I want to try for once in my life. . . . I want to fit in here, and to be regarded as important and intelligent.”

I so get that. Because none of us thirty- to fiftysomethings feels legitimately grown up, do we? We’re a bunch of poseurs with heads full of cartoons and jingles and pop references, and if we’re lucky we can earn a living with our limited skills. Kennedy’s got the guts to reveal our collective internal monologue in a series of run-on sentences, or incomplete sentences, which, face it, is exactly how internal monologues sound.

Not only is Kennedy onto himself, but he’s also onto everyone: Jewel, Phil Collins, his boss, even the guy who sells him the picture frame. “The salesman’s posture,” he informs us, “belies the malady of the middle class; an almost obsessive-compulsive attention to body language, a studied focus on hand gestures and policing of the voice’s inflection that hints at a seminar on how to ‘carry’ one’s self.”

If he weren’t so self-deprecating, Kennedy might come off as a jerk. But he’s just as hard on himself and, besides, he’s funny. Super funny. He peppers his book with hilarious little lists, to break up the reading. One, of “Inappropriate Greetings and Salutations for Middle-Aged White Record Executives to Exchange,” includes: “Steve from accounts payable is a hater, yo.”

“Rock On” is packed with stories about the fakery and sellouts in the music biz, but although it all makes for star-spangled fun, it could have taken place in any office building in America. It’s less about rock ‘n’ roll than about being a fish in a swivel chair.

Having gotten his job, like, five minutes before the implosion of the music industry, Kennedy predictably gets canned. Afterward, there’s a poignant moment when he sees Jimmy Page getting into a limo and realizes how dead and empty rocking on really is. But just as he draws close to some kind of insight, he backs away, ending the book with a few more humorous lists that leave us wondering what it all really means.

But who cares? It’s funny, yo.