Supernatural Strategies For Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group

Ian F. Svenovius is a fascinating dude. Lead singer for punk band Nation Of Ulysses and later The Make Up, a band who founded their own "Gospel Yeh-Yeh" sound with a Marxist ethos and an absolutely aching cool, he's now singer for Chain And The Gang and describes himself as "Chairman of the Rock 'n' Roll Comintern". I feel that this phrase is going to be quite overused by the time I finish, but... how cool is that?!

In his spare time, Ian F. Svenovius writes books. His first offering was a collection of insightful essays under the title of The Psychic Soviet, (again, how cool is that?!) and now he's given us this handy guide for the perplexed, Supernatural Strategies For Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group, wherein he details his consultations with various dead rock stars via mediums, with a view to giving advice on the practice of rock 'n' roll bands.

He's so cool he can pull of the Boris Karloff shot.

This, however, is merely a framing device for Comrade Svenovius' philosophies and theories. He starts off by giving a political history of rock 'n' roll, linking it to street gangs and youth rebellion, before it was co-opted by the CIA for use in the Cold War as a marketable and intuitively understandable form of Capitalist propaganda, culminating with the Beatles and moving on from there. Taking this fact as re(a)d, he surveys the current state of music, by way of offering wry, amusing and insightful advice to young wannabe rock stars. Ideology, he claims, is what makes rock 'n' roll, the rest (catchy songs, a dashing look, sexy band photo shoots) will all naturally follow.

If you want to be a rock 'n' roller, then short of actually coming over to your house, sitting you down and writing songs with you, Ian F. Svenovius couldn't have done you a bigger favour. He leaves no aspect of the rock 'n' roll experience out of the dialectic, from the van you will drive, how to deal with critics, sex, drugs, manufacturing nostalgia (read it and find out) to naming your band and using a photograph of yourselves as "unveiling".

What with the references to other Leftist movements throughout history (Dada, Surrealism, Bolshevism, the IWW) and rock 'n' roll's place within that pantheon, it's clear that this pocket-sized parcel of fun is just as much Ian Svenovius' own manifesto as much as it is genuine advice for the dewy-eyed youth with dreams of rock stardom. But neither aspect diminishes the other. If it were being used as a Rock Bible by a group of skinny kids in their garage determined to thrash out their own music, there's no doubt it would produce a pretty unusual group, especially in the days of corporate popular music stardom. But perhaps that is just what's needed in this day and age. A group with the same outlook as the author of this book, who believes that rock 'n' roll may not be as big as it was, but by God it's clever. Groups who see rock 'n' roll as a unifying force, not as the divisive classist commodity that it's become. Groups who see popular music for the bourgeois crap that it is, who tire of meaningless factory-produced love songs.

Hell, if you think that sounds good, I can't recommend this book enough. If it doesn't sound good, I still can't recommend this book enough. Even if you disagree with Mr. Svenovius, (and I certainly do on a few points) his book is still erudite, charming, witty and has some truly unique insights that are well worth thinking and talking about.