Like its author, Supernatural Strategies is part tongue-in-cheek, part deadly serious-a satire of rock's consumerist origins but also a thoughtful treatise on what it means to devote yourself to a collective.Drawing from the wisdom of rock 'n' roll's most famous ghosts, Svenonius' advice ranges from hilarious to cryptic to surprisingly useful. Neither bourgeois nor prestigious, Supernatural Strategies may be the rare book by a rock musician to retain any power or threat. He's always seemed delighted by the fact that the profound and the preposterous can sound awfully alike, a realization that puts him in line with an avant-garde tradition that stretches back before rock 'n' roll crystallized this fact.Svenonius has the spirit of a long-gone punk past, but his book has more to tell us about rock's here-and-now than about its hereafter. So much of the allure here is in watching Svenonius skirt absurdity. Verdict: Svenonius's sociopolitical analysis of rock and roll is intellectually interesting, as when he posits that the genre was 'brought about by the industrial revolution, the harnessing of electricity, and the miscegenation of various poor, exploited, and indentured cultures in the USA.' Proscriptive how-to advice ranges over a wide number of subjects (e.g., sex, band photos, etc.) and can be seen both as skewering the cultural idolatry associated with rock and as genuine counsel.
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