Svenonius - Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock n Roll Group

Thanks to those who helped channel, particularly Diane, Lars, Katie, Jesse, Alanah, and Johnny.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by Akashic Books
2012 by I.F. Svenonius

ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-130-1
eISBN: 9781617751493
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939270

Edited by Jesse Pearson
Cover design by Dan Osborn
Illustrations by I.F. Svenonius
Author photograph by Eva Moolchan
Clothing by Doyle & Mueser

Chapters 19 and 20 were previously published in an earlier form.

All Rights Reserved.

Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
info@akashicbooks.com
www.akashicbooks.com

WARNING: CONTAINED WITHIN THIS BOOK ARE THE OPINIONS OF THE AUTHOR EXCLUSIVELY. NO ONE ELSE SHARES THESE OPINIONS. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT ANYONE ELSES OPINIONSYET! EVENTUALLY THESE OPINIONS MIGHT BE SHARED, SPREAD, AND HELD BY OTHERS. BUT NOT YET.

I. INTRODUCTION

This book is an indispensable guide for anyone attempting to create a rock n roll group. Even if the reader has created one already or has a history of such endeavors, this volume will still be required reading.

This book was inspired by the cooking shows that are in such great abundance nowadays. Such shows serve to demonstrate to an audience, often comprised of culinary novices, how to make a particular meal, sometimes a quite refined one, using raw materials (vegetables, grains, spices, and so on).

These cooking programs serve to demystify the production of food, inviting the ordinary eater to take the reins of his or her destiny in preparing their own meals, which were once imagined to spring up miraculously from a particular person, people, or culturenot unlike the egg from a hen.

When a rock n roll group attains success, there is typically a fascination with its origins. How did such a phenomenon come to pass? everyone asks, simply because making a group is so difficult, and finding persons with the correct creative chemistry and sense of mutual commitment so unusual. The origin stories of rock n roll groups have therefore taken their place alongside the historical and religious myths of time immemorial.

Indeed, the creation of a group is looked at as a bit of magic, like an act of God, or a bolt of lightning. This is similar to the way in which primitive man saw the continuance of the species or the cathedral of nature. Like the prescientifics, would-be group members still engage in hocus-pocusactivities akin to rain dances and midsummer maypole fertility riteswhen attempting to create their group. Ritualistic drug consumption, shamanistic induction ceremonies, and the reliance on industry hustlers, confidence men, and magical documents (otherwise known as contracts) are strategies that are as typical as they are wasteful. But the lesson which we can glean from the aforementioned cooking shows is that creating a rock n roll group, like making a fancy meal, hasnt anything to do with superstitions. Its just a matter of applying scientific know-how in a systematic and controlled manner.

The people in charge dont want you to know this, though they learned it themselves long ago.

As opposed to being the outcome of chance meetings, drug visions, or divine ordination, most of the successful groupssuch as Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Hot Chocolate, Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Flirts, J.J. Fad, Indeep, and Boney Mwere actually constructed quite calculatedly out of raw materials by savvy managers who understood exactly how to concoct what an audience of music enthusiasts would respond to.

Meanwhile, the mystification of the process is perpetuated via legend-weaving institutions such as rock fanzines, fawning hagiographies, and VH1s Behind the Music, all of which are specifically designed to obfuscate the path and confuse the aspiring group member from achieving his or her goal. They conspire to trick the ingenue into believing that forming a successful rock n roll aggregate is akin to winning the lottery or being born rich. But no longer!

With the information revealed in this book, you too will be empowered to create a rock n roll group, tour the world, and record (or otherwise construct) a body of work, so as to create a myth which might define a generation, inspire a movement, or earn the other various earmarks of rock n roll success. You might even perform at the All Tomorrows Parties festival if you play your cards right.

Of course, the secrets of creating a group are, unlike ethnic recipes from faraway places, guarded as strictly as the most shadowy Masonic esoterica. After all, does anyone in the camp of rock n roll groups desire more competition? The answer is, No! Most certainly not!

There are already six hundred thousand registered rock n roll groups on Internet sites such as Bandcamp and Myspace, with more being added hourly. Though many of these are placeholders, nothing more than Mittyesque fantasies, each one of them still represents either a potential or a real threat to the privileged club of working rockers.

Therefore, no living member of the industry would agree to share the secrets to making a group. In fact, the only qualified people we could find to reveal the TRUE SECRETS OF MAKING A ROCK N ROLL GROUP were deceased rock n roll stars, who our team contacted in a top-secret sance.

The voices of ghosts are unrecordable, so we hurriedly transcribed their words directly onto the pages of this book.

II. THE SANCE

Allow us to make clear once more that a sancea sit-in with specters from the realm beyond, conducted by candlelightwas our last resort. When we were researching this book, our team gruelingly interrogated some of the most successful rock n roll stars, hoping they would reveal their secrets to eager and frustrated would-be rockers. Surely these characters, having already attained the adulation of fans, the respect of their peers, and financial security, would deign to share a few of their insights with the little people. It could keep things interesting for them, we thought, and maybe even provide a little spark to resuscitate their own moribund careers. Theres room at the top, is what wed always heard. But it was not to be.

These bitter creatures, barricaded into their Manhattan penthouses and Los Angeles Xanadus, imagine themselves to be illuminated Chosen Ones whose intrinsic superiority has allowed them to scale the fabled heights of renown. They cant recognize that their place at the pinnacle is the result of circumstance and strategy. And even to the small minority who do recognize this, it matters not. They dont want us at their party. We were therefore compelled to seek the advice of the deadrock n roll stars no longer contaminated by the stultifying climate of competitive capitalism.

Of course, it seemed a mad idea at first. But desperation sometimes breeds madness, and madness can lead one from the brambles and onto the path to ones destination.

The sance was conducted, as most of them are, in the dining room of an old house. An elegant place, its curtains were cobwebbed and the furnishings were old and stately. There were large framed oil paintings of former inhabitants on the walls and baroque candlesticks on the mantle. This type of place is like a superconductor of spirit energy.