Learn a lesson from
Dan Kennedy, if you ever get canned by the middle-aged grandson of a gazillionaire, who thinks he can set the music industry on fire: Write a tell-all book about it. In
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, the thirtysomething New York humorist dishes the dirt on his 2004 firing as a marketing guru at Atlantic Records. "I'm not the most score-setting kinda guy, but I didn't want to take the easy shots," says Kennedy, who's at Legacy Village tonight for a book-signing. "I wanted to make a point without being the man in the basement, angrily shaking his tiny fist toward the heavens."The company-wide pink slip came after Time Warner sold its Warner Music arm to an investment group for $2.6 billion. Suddenly, Kennedy and many of his officemates found themselves in the unemployment line because of a massive corporate restructuring. Four years later, he exposes the "egomaniacs, wackos, and incompetents" who ran the company. "It sounds corny to get sentimental about a business based on rich white men getting richer, usually on the backs of artists. On the other level, this is a signpost of pop culture that's fading away every day," says Kennedy. "I was spun out after the whole experience. It was the weirdest thing I ever had a front seat to." He'll autograph copies of the book at 7 tonight at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 24519 Cedar Road in Lyndhurst. Admission is free. Call 216-691-7000 or visit
www.josephbeth.com.
Mon., Feb. 18, 7 p.m., 2008
