Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be A Rock Roll Fairy Tale by Jen Trynin Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be: A Rock Roll Fairy Tale by Jen Trynin. Jen Trynin. Jen Trynin. Damn, why does that name sound so familiar…? Well, unfortunately, it’s probably because you’ve seen her debut album, Cockamamie , as you’ve flipped through the used or cut-out bins at your local record store; it pops up so often that if you concentrate really hard, you might even be able to summon in your mind’s eye the cover photo of Ms. Trynin lazing on her back, with a red chair up in the right hand corner of the shot. Plus, if you heard it, you’d most likely know her single, “Better than Nothing,” except, of course, you’d identify it as “that ‘Feeling Good’ song,” because that’s just what people do. So now you’re thinking, “Oh, okay, right, I know who you’re talking about. Whatever happened to her?” Well, here’s your chance to find out. Jen Trynin was a singer/songwriter on the Boston scene in the early ‘90s, where was inspired as much by Kurt Cobain as Aimee Mann. When her original tunes caught the ears of the right people, she found herself in the midst of a bidding war, and, the next thing she knew, she was signed to Warner Brothers. For an artist more concerned about playing live and writing her next song, she found herself somewhat mystified by the various lawyers and label folk surrounding her and talking up multi-album plans for success. Trynin was more interested in pushing her music in a grass- roots fashion than through a huge promotional explosion…which, of course, is nothing short of crazy talk to major label execs. Still, with “Better than Nothing” getting both video and radio airplay, things were looking up for Trynin…until a certain Canadian chick emerged with “You Oughta Know” and not only stole Trynin’s thunder but a fair amount of her promo push as well. (Alanis Morissette was and is on Maverick, which is Madonna’s WB subsidiary…and you know the WB wants Madge happy.) Suddenly, Trynin was made to feel as though she was on her way out before she’d had half a chance to prove herself. If you’ve already read Jacob Slichter’s bio, “So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star,” where he details his experiences as a member of Semisonic as the band worked their way through the major label system, you might think you’ve heard this story before. You’ll find, however, that Trynin’s experiences as a solo artist are decidedly different, particularly from the marketing perspective but also as a woman on tour with an all-male backing band. It’s also interesting…if somewhat disheartening…to find that a really cool female musician can be almost entirely unaware of the artists you’d swear were her inspirations. (There’s a moment in the book when someone suggests to Trynin a similarity between her and Exene Cervenka from X…and receives little more than a blank stare in response.) “Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be” is just over 350 pages, but once you get rolling, you won’t be putting it down ‘til you’re finished; it’s a fast, fascinating read that keeps you enthralled as you follow Trynin’s educational but ultimately unfortunate saga in the business. Everyone’s familiar with the tale of the struggling artist who got signed to a major label and thought they were gonna live the rock ‘n’ roll dream, but instead of grabbing hold of the brass ring, the door hit them on the ass on the way out. The thing is, you always hear the generic version of the story; with her “Rock & Roll Fairy Tale,” Jen Trynin provides you with the specifics…and they’re equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking. Roller-coaster ride. In 1994, JEN TRYNIN's first album, "Cockamamie," was the object of a huge record label bidding war. Just as she was about to break out, her fortunes changed. By the time her second record was released, she had pretty much decided to hang up her lead guitar. In excerpts from a new memoir, "Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be: A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale," she returns to the heady days that saw her leap from Cambridge dives to MTV, and back again. January 29, 2006. (ONE) Signing the Deal. Buck and I head back out to L.A., alone. It's our final round of meetings with Warner Bros. and Geffen. As we lift off and my ears begin to pop, all I can think about is the plane falling quick and straight as a pumpkin smashing to the ground. . . . When we land, we go to a few meetings with potential managers that whip past as if I'm watching them from a speeding car. We check in to the Sunset Marquis, where every room has its own veranda, and my room overlooks the pool. . . . At Geffen, Preppy Boy and EdR lead us into a spacious office with lots of open windows and the sun outside. We sit down on a long white couch as some guy comes buzzing in with a nice smile and very short hair, dressed neatly in white slacks and tan shoes, everything cuffed and tucked. ''You must be Jennifer Trynin," he says, as he's shaking my hand. ''I'm David Geffen." I pull my hand out of his, laugh, say Sorry , take his hand back, and begin shaking it again. ''You're, umm, David Geffen?" ''Last time I checked," he says. Then he takes a painting of a ship from the wall and holds it up right in front of me. He tells me it's an illustration from the Iliad and how strongly he feels that in life, it's the journey that's the real reward, more valuable than the actual arriving -- how life's about the doing, not the getting. And I'm thinking, Yeah , I totally understand. Me and David Geffen, we get it. And even though Neil's told me that Geffen Records has been sold and that Geffen himself is moving on to other things, I convince myself that he still has his finger on the pulse over here, that if I come here he'll have his finger on me. And at the same time, his Iliad story is ringing that unfortunate bell in my chest, the one that's telling me that maybe I've already done what I'd set out to do, that I'm afraid I don't have the energy or wherewithal -- no less the talent -- to maneuver my way through this new land of major-label artist. I wish I could ask David Geffen if there's a way for me to quit while I'm ahead, to take the money and run. (TWO) Shooting the Video. I'm drinking a Diet Coke and smoking a cigarette when a woman approaches in red sweat pants, an oversized baseball shirt, and two long ponytails sprouting from each side of her head like big dog ears. She introduces herself as Patty, Makeup Momma. ''Ready to be transformed?" she says. ''So, I hear you're not really into the whole image thing," she says. ''Not really," I say, which of course couldn't be farther from the truth. It's just that the image thing I'm into is the anti-image thing. . . . Patty unfastens her many-tiered makeup kit, which opens not unlike the mouth of that monster in Alien, with tiers of makeup advancing like rows of teeth. ''Safe to say we don't wear much makeup?" ''I guess I've never really gotten too into the whole thing," I say. ''Good," she says, slapping me on the knee. ''Good for you. That's very brave. I really think that. Especially with your coloring." I decide to take this as an insult. ''You mean my paleness," I say. ''No," says Patty. ''We don't use words like 'pale.' The washed-out look can be very sexy if you do it right," implying that clearly, I'm not doing it right. ''So what're we going for here?" she says, eyeing her makeup kit, picking stuff up, rubbing colors onto the back of her hand and holding her hand next to my cheek. ''Should we stick with the wan, washed-out kinda sexy thing, leaning into a tomboyish I-don't-wear-dresses-because-I- don't-have-to look? Or do we want to skew more into a druggy indie-rock chick thing?" ''Have you heard my record?" I say. ''You know, I haven't had the chance," she says, ''but word is it's way cool, like a cross between The Pretenders and X or something. And that you play guitar like Keith Richards." I can hear these exact words coming out of Randy's mouth, like he's memorized them to say to people like Patty. ''So, let's get down to business," she says, coming toward me with a skin-colored sponge, and though I try not to, I can feel myself grimace. . . . When she's finally finished, Patty spins my chair toward the big mirror on the wall. The most surprising thing is that I don't look all that different, just like a better version of what I already look like, with my ''features" (as Patty refers to them) perhaps a little more enunciated. ''You likee?" says Patty. ''Yeah, I do," I say. ''This is only the beginning, you know. A few more videos and you're gonna look like me," she says, which totally harshes my post-makeup buzz. (THREE) Hitting the Road. Where am I where am I where am I? A phone is ringing, right there on that night table beside this bed where I am. Today is today is today is . . . Thursday. I'm being picked up at 7:45 for the photo shoot. . . . Did I oversleep? -- I grab my teeny-weeny travel clock radio: 6:56 a.m. Okay. I'm okay. I sit up, rubbing my face in my hands, shaking my head. I pick up the phone. ''Oh my god, I got you." My mother never says hello. ''You must have a trail of messages from me," she says. For nights on end, there've been slips of paper clipped to our reservation cards at check-in. Jen's mom says call her. I've managed to forget to do this every day for the past four days. ''What is it there, eight?" ''Oh," she says. ''It's just that I've been calling and calling and I keep missing you and you never call me back. Are you all right? Did I wake you?" ''I'm sorry. Do you want to hang up?" ''I have to get up anyway. I have a photo shoot." ''Well, that sounds good. You must be happy about that." As usual, I can tell my mother's not impressed. Never mind that Cockamamie is going to be Rolling Stone 's summer Hot Issue's ''Hot Debut Album." Except for the day she heard me on NPR, her general attitude is rock star, shmock star . A few weeks ago she described this ''whole music thing" as a ''good experience," as if it were nothing more than an elaborate preparation for some other life she pictures me leading, the one where I work at Goldman Sachs or write for The New York Times or teach at Harvard. . . . ''I can't believe they make you get up so early to do these sorts of things," she says. ''Are you going to be on the cover?" ''No, Ma, not the cover." ''Well, if they're not going to put you on the cover, you should tell them to take your picture later in the day." (FOUR) Meeting t he Fans. After soundcheck, we head downstairs for a meet-and-greet in The Wreck Room, which is just a cinderblock basement with the walls painted black. Cockamamie is blaring out of some two-bit ghetto blaster and there's a disco ball spinning fast in the middle of the ceiling, shooting specks of light around the room like swarming bugs. There are Cockamamie posters all over the walls and streamers hanging every which way and beer and Doritos and tons of pizza and a trillion people. Okay, maybe thirty people -- DJs and reporters and people from KCRK and plenty of Warner reps, including Peg, who's arranged the whole thing and is flitting about as if this were her Sweet Sixteen. . . . ''Isn't this great? Aren't you just psyched? I mean, this is only my second meet-and-greet and not nearly this many people came out to the first one! Don't you feel special? Don't you just love it?" She pinches my skin at the elbow. Then she leans into me. ''I told you you're gonna be a friggin' star," she says, her breath reeking of Doritos. . . . The hotter the fever-pitch of the party, the more suspicious I'm becoming, as people touch me and breathe on me and grab my arms, offer me pizza, napkins, beers, advice ( You shoulda STARTED the record with that song ), and then there's some guy, kinda cute, just looking at me and saying, 'You know, I mean, Spin, what do they know, right?" And I'm like, ''What are you talking about?" And he's like, ''The five, you know, the review." And I'm like, ''What? What review?" And he goes, ''You know. The review." And I go, ''Spin gave me a five?" And he says, ''Yeah, but I mean don't worry about it cuz everybody knows that that writer hates chicks" -- but all I can think is: -- and then this little dude with yellow hair is coming at me with crazy eyes and a big black Sharpie, which he pushes into my hand. ''Do you know Juliana Hatfield?" he says. . . . (FIVE) Spinning. I sleep for a few hours and then throw on my jeans and walk down a curving stretch of highway until I reach a small town center and find myself a copy of . . . Spin . There it is. Five out of a possible ten stars. The accompanying review describes me and my music with the following words in the following order: arm's-length deadpan sparing with her passion slapdash workmanlike paralyzed emotionally exhausted grovel . . . bitter sarcastic smart . . . It ends: In theory, Trynin's chilly personality is alluring, but in reality, the record can leave you cold. Cockamamie veers between Boston new wave, generic advertising-jingle rock, and watered-down PJ Harvey. . . . Wherever You Go, There You Are: An Interview with Jen Trynin. “The first words of the first song are the head of a snake. As long as I can remember them, I can remember everything.” f a snake. As long as I can remember them, I can remember everything.” — Jen Trynin. Describing the band photo that accompanied her Cockamamie album, Jen Trynin writes, “Everyone tells me what a great picture it is, how it really looks like me, but I know that’s not true. It’s just one of those pictures of you at your best, a best that doesn’t really exist.” She’s not trying on humility here, her self-consciousness is the real deal, and a similar current underwrites the entire story she tells in Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be . The book’s subtitle is A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale and what at first seemed to be tongue-in-cheek at best and hopelessly corny at worst has since become more than poignant. Her story tracks the roughly 18 months between deciding she was ready to break out of the feedback loop of the Boston music scene to the multi- million dollar blood in the water feeding frenzy that greeted the completion of the Cockamamie album through to her dropping out of music almost altogether. “What I came to after the whole experience,” she says, “and what the result was in me, was that I missed music but what I missed most was, when you’re young you can have this wonderful dream of yourself that exists in the future and it’s your fantasy vision of yourself. Because I’d gotten to live a little bit of my own fantasy and realized that I wasn’t up to it and realized that it was never going to be who I really was, there was a big hole in my life.” She gets close to a fame and success that most people could only imagine, but the feeling that resonates is more of losing as opposed to gaining ground … at least in the short run. She keeps her writing crisp, though, and she steers away from melodrama. “I love books by people who have done extreme things,” she says, “by people who have done things I would never do. People who have criticized the book are people who are like, ‘Well, she’s not a real artist. All she talks about is how she made it and that’s not real art.’ The fact is … nobody cares about what motivates me to make music. But what people are interested in are extreme situations. And that’s what my book was about. That was my version of climbing a mountain.” Unless you were really paying attention in 1995 you may not remember Trynin at all, and you certainly won’t understand just how hotly the music industry pursued her. Her biggest single, “Better Than Nothing”, was a modest hit but chances are that if you heard it back then, should you hear it again, you’ll remember it. She was a smart songwriter and a powerful guitar player who was probably just a bit too over most people’s heads. By the time it became painfully clear that a label bidding war was no promise of radio success, the dance was over. But her book isn’t a cautionary tale and she recalls her “glory” days with no remorse or nostalgia. “I hate the word ‘catharsis’, but [writing this book] really sort of was,” she says. “And I just started writing really to get it out of my own head because it was bugging me.” A huge number of musicians have gone through the same music industry ringer, most with considerably more harrowing results. Trynin came out of it all with her relationship, her health, and her finances largely in tact and she was able to put the whole thing on paper and make a compelling read out of it. Like the great pop songs that her band and her boyfriend had to introduce her to, her writing gets by on small movements and perfectly chosen words that add up to much more. And like every great pop songwriter, she never makes it look practically impossible. “Some interviews that I did right when the book came out, so many people would ask me about that time and they’d look at me and ask, ‘Well since you’ve left music, what have you been doing?’ I pick up the book and I’m like, ‘Well, I wrote this book,’ which I just found so confusing because they’re seeing me like I just stepped out of a movie … like I’m Pinocchio. Like I’m just the star of this book but I didn’t sit and write this book,” she says. Whether it was intended or not, she should be taking this as a compliment. Her understated approach puts you in the center of whatever’s going on and carries you through the story. Trynin can recreate the feel of clubs, of waiting impatiently for your set to start or for an opening act to hurry up and finish already, of losing yourself on a tour (“I remember being in those rooms and how different each one felt and how I took pictures of them all so I could remember where I’d been. It never dawned on me that later on, they’d all look exactly the same”), that few musicians could and in a way that non-musicians can relate to. “Had I been someone who couldn’t put this stuff into words, I might have been a lot better at music,” she says. And she ponies up to things few artists would; of bitter feelings of rivalry and competition and careerism (Her four page explanation of the mind twisting math behind a major label contract, even if it reads like a Monty Python skit, is as clear and plainly stated an explanation as you’re likely to find on why so few bands seem able to make any money). Throughout, she drops you into scenes from her life with the good and the bad and the hurtful and the discouraging and the invigorating parts all intact. It’s a gutsy move because she leaves room for interpretation, for you to make your own judgments, about the decisions she made during that time and, ultimately, about her. “The truth is,” she says, “that real rock stars, and I don’t say this outright in the book — real rock stars are people who are so self-involved and self-obsessed that if they wrote this book, they would do it very differently and they would probably try to portray themselves as somebody who is not that way. Because they’re really self-conscious about it or they would never dream to be honest about that or they’re so used to lying about that but those people are the ones who usually break through and really are rock stars because they are so singular of mind that they just cut through everything else around them.” That she never betrays a vested interest in making you like her or side with her, makes her even more reliable. And through her arrangement of the narrative, she allows us to stay three steps ahead of her in the book. We cringe when a woman at Maverick records mentions that a new musician that the label has signed is the reason they’re not actively pursuing Trynin. We know, even though she didn’t at the time, that the musician the woman from Maverick is talking about is Alanis Morissette and that her eventual success was what every other label had imagined for Trynin. Her writing also shows off an eye for picking out snappy, telling details. Her drummer’s drums are “dirty and his cymbals are cracked.” Crystal Bernard, who she sees on the set of Late Night with Conan O’Brien , looks “bloodless and Lilliputian.” A makeup artist “smells like crayons.” Drew Barrymore, who she sees backstage at a Hole concert, is so short that she imagines putting a drink on her head. Even while storming out of a room, fuming at her bass player, she takes note of how lovely her assistant smells (“Lemony, yellowy”). The appearance of Morphine’s Mark Sandman (“…the coolest guy in the world. Scary cool, not chill cool”) is one of the book’s most memorable moments: “I’ve been talking to your old manager,” I say, trying to speak slowly, like he does, but it’s coming out fast anyway. “Really,” says Mark. “Randy Sway,” I say. Mark looks at me with his I’m-seeing-right-through-you eyes. “Ah, my good friend Mr. Sway,” he says and takes a drag from his cigarette. “Yeah,” I say nonchalantly, as if Mark’s the one who brought it up. “I’m talking to a bunch of different people,” I can’t help but continue, just in case Mark doesn’t know about my newfound rock-star-to-be status. “So I was just wondering what you think about him, you know, as a manager.” Mark grins. “So you’re talkin’ to Randy,” he says, raising his eyebrows. My heart is pounding. Finally. “I have six words for you,” says Mark. He ticks them off on the fingers of his nonsmoking hand. “Hard. To. Get. On. The.” He puts the cigarette in his mouth and sticks out his thumb. “Phone,” he says. Then he takes the cigarette out of his mouth. I return to my table and sit down again, staring at Mark’s back. The music industry stories that she includes are related straight, with all of the weirdness still palpable. David Geffen calls her at home and tells her that she reminds him of Linda Ronstadt (though he’s referring to how they both share the same insecurities). Danny Goldberg tells her that he hopes his relationship with her can be like the one he had with Kurt Cobain. The president of Geffen offers to buy her a pair of boobs just like Courtney Love’s. And though Trynin never gets comfortable in the music industry fast lane, she doesn’t try and portray herself as somehow above it all. She’s as hard on and unforgiving of herself as she is of everyone else; the book wouldn’t have worked as well had she approached it any other way. “That’s the only way I could get away with portraying the other people like I did,” she says. “You could just as easily hate me as hate them.” Her memoir doesn’t look away or cringe and, to her credit, makes no moves to sell herself to the reader, to soften the self-centeredness of egos on the line. “It was one of the reasons I stumbled around while I was trying to write the book for the first couple years,” she says. “I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I make it fiction or non-fiction? Just because of my fear of revealing other people, not just myself. In the end, 95 per cent of the people in the book are based on themselves and they know who they are, if they’re them, and the 20 people who were around during that time in the music business know who each other are. But I think that I represented them and their place in my life, which is all I knew, pretty fairly. And, anytime there was a problem between me and someone else in the book I hope, and I believe, that I showed my fault in the fight as well as them.” That she’s willing to not back off makes the character she creates even more engaging. But what pulls hardest in the book is both how ably she can retell her run through the music industry and how she applies the same lacerating eye to her personal life and her own conflicting motivations for pursuing music and different relationships; from the live-in boyfriend she eventually marries, to the bass player that she engages in an on-the-road fling with, to her parents, to her music business handlers, to the tax accountant that she has to let go when her finances start to get complicated. After coming home again after being away on tour for several weeks, she describes talking with her boyfriend as being like, “I’m talking to him through a spacesuit, where all you can hear is your own breathing.” It’s the line in the book that hits the hardest and stays with you more than all of the others. It has nothing at all to do with music. Interview with Jen Trynin, author of "Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be" Jen Trynin’s "Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be" is a must-read for anyone in a band that is on its way up, or has ever been on the way to stardom or semi-stardom. For that matter, it should be a must-read for anyone interested in the music business on any level. But even more than that, Trynin’s first book is an entertaining read and she is an even more entertaining person to speak to. Bullz-Eye recently caught up with Trynin about her book, her life as a rock star, and what she’s up to today. Bullz-Eye: So how has your book been received so far? Jen Trynin: It’s doing great. I’m very pleased. Lots of great reviews, and that’s always good. It’s just been really fun. I did a book tour and lots of people came out, and it’s just been kind of a blast. BE: That’s awesome. I saw a review in our paper, The Tennessean, a couple weeks ago, but I think it was a syndicated review. JT: It might have been the Associated Press review. BE: Yeah, I think it was. That was pretty cool. JT: Yeah, whoever that guy was I want to kiss him because he gave me a fantastic review. It got printed a million times. So I was really psyched. BE: Good. So what do you think has been more successful to date, your music career or the book? JT: Umm, I’m going to say the book just because it’s the beginning of it. ( laughs ) I’m hoping it will be the book part. I also really enjoyed my experience in music even though it didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted. It was a great and intense experience. I met billions of people. I just feel lucky that I was able to experience it at all. Otherwise life really can get, as I know now, tedious and boring and the same thing every day. There’s some relief in that but it’s also really fun just to do different stuff, be different places. Like this past weekend I went to Los Angeles to be part of the L.A. Times Book Festival. It was SO MUCH fun. I was really shocked. I thought it was just going to be some stupid little book fair, but there was like 100 panels. It was incredibly well organized. It was held on the campus of UCLA and in two days, like 150,000 people came through there. It was incredible. BE: Did you get to speak? JT: Yeah, I was part of the music panel on Saturday and I did a radio thing on Sunday. And then I went to lots of panels and listened to people talk. It was fantastic. BE: Cool. So has writing the book had an impact on your music at all? JT: Um yeah. It has, but you know, my record came out now ten years ago. And they’re also not in print anymore, so it’s not like there’s activity on my whole music thing. But they’re still being sold. I still have some, so you can go to my website and buy my records. And they’re being sold on eBay and stuff…you know, for like a dollar or ten cents or two cents. I think it went from they were being sold for like a dime and now they’re being sold for like a dollar AND ten cents. BE: ( laughs ) Right on. JT: Right! So there’s been a real spike in that way. You can say they are selling for ten times the price now. ( laughs ) BE: Well I bought a couple of your songs from iTunes. JT: Well that’s good! That’s right, you can buy anything you want from iTunes. BE: Right. JT: Well, thank you for doing that. BE: I really like title track from the second album. JT: “Getaway?” BE: Yeah. What a great song. JT: Thank you. I like that song too. BE: What inspired you to write the book about your experiences? JT: It was a very intense experience. I did stop playing music as I say at the end of the book. And just the whole thing was really haunting me. I had done creative writing things, just as much as I had done music, since I was a little kid. I wasn’t using the creative energy to play music, so I found myself writing in journals and stuff like that. And I just started writing about all my memories of what had happened, and it just was…. I can’t stand it when writers are, like, “Oh, it was so cathartic.” But the fact is, it felt really good to get the memories out of me and onto a piece of paper and I found I wasn’t as obsessed by all the memories. And that’s where it started. I just started writing about it and I took some workshops here in Boston where I live. Some of my teachers were like, “Have you ever considered writing a book about this?” And I was like, “Wow.” No, I never really had. And that’s how I wrote the book. BE: So when did you start writing it? JT: Embarrassingly, I kind of started without realizing what I was doing back in ’99, which was about a year after I had stopped playing music. But in earnest, it took about two years to write. Have you ever tried writing a book? BE: No! ( laughs ) JT: It’s not for the faint of heart, I can tell you. BE: And where the names changed in your book at all? JT: Yes, almost all of them were. The only ones that weren’t are common domain names like David Geffen or Courtney Love or something. Everybody else’s names have been changed. BE: Well, it was funny because my wife read it too and said something about, “you know, her husband’s pretty well known.” I’m like, “Her husband’s name is Guy.” And she’s like, “No, it’s not!” ( laughs ) JT: (laughs). That’s right. BE: So who is your husband? JT: His name is Mike Denneen. BE: Is he working on anything now? JT: Yeah, he does lots of stuff all the time, but his main project right now is this young rock boy band called The Click Five. BE: Oh, yeah! I love those guys! JT: I love those guys, too! Do you really? Because I really do. BE: Yeah! I know a radio guy from Atlantic Records and he was down here about a month ago, and he gave me a bunch of new releases. Well, I guess it’s not so new, but their record from last year. I put it in, and it was kind of boy band-ish, but listening to it, you can’t get the songs out of your head. Some really cool stuff. And then they did that really cool cover of the Thompson Twins song. JT: Yup! They do great cuts. They’re really an amazing band. To call them a boy band is a little bit unfair because the fact is they’re all incredible musicians and they were all kind of together before the manager and my husband got involved. But the only difference between them being a regular band and on what they’re doing is that they allow my husband and their manager to have a lot of influence on what they do. BE: Really cool. JT: Yeah, I love it too. And they’re really nice guys. So that’s Mike’s main focus right now. They’re doing another record now. BE: Very cool. Do you think the music business has changed at all in the last ten years? JT: Oh, well, it’s changed tremendously. It’s changed tremendously and it hasn’t changed at all. A lot of the avenues by which people acquire music, obviously that’s changed a lot. But what makes it, and what doesn’t make it, goes in the same circular patterns as it always has. Oh you know, “female pop singers are really popular.” “No, now we hate female pop singers. Now we want to hear boy bands!” “Oh now we hate boy bands.” It’s all the same. The trends are the same, but obviously how people are buying the music has changed a lot. And the old-school record companies are folding. There are fewer and fewer of them and another twenty-five years from now, I can only assume they’re going to look very different then what they look like right now. What do you think? BE: I think so too. They’re just been so much merging and so many little labels popping up all over the place, not to mention any Joe Blow now can release their own CD. JT: That’s right. There’s just too much music out there again so there will be new kinds of guards at the gate, but it might not be the old-school record labels unless they start being run by much, much younger people who know how things are actually moving now. BE: Exactly. JT: You know what I’m talking about. ( laughs ) BE: So do you still write music? JT: You know, I don’t, really. I spend so much time writing prose stuff. But I don’t rule it out at all, because I miss it. I played guitar in somebody else’s band for five years after I stopped doing my own thing. And I loved that and I hope to do that again too. BE: What band is that? Was it anybody I know? JT: It was just called Loveless. It was a band based here in Boston, and it was really my friend’s band. I just played guitar for him, and I loved that band. But it ended, unfortunately. BE: Do you still talk to the guys from your band? JT: Yeah. I’m still friendly with pretty much everybody. BE: And do you still talk to Aimee Mann at all? JT: Not only do I still talk to Aimee, I just saw her on Saturday night in L.A. BE: Very cool. JT: Yeah, she’s doing very well. She’s playing here in Boston with the Boston Pops in June. I can’t wait, I’m sure it’s going to be beautiful. BE: I just saw her in an episode of “Love Monkey.” JT: Oh I haven’t seen that! Was it good? BE: ( laughs ). Yeah, it was really cool. So I think the best quality of your book is that you had no regrets and that you accepted everything for what it was and were kind of relieved to get back to a normal life. Do you still feel that way, or do you think that things could have been different if you were marketed better? JT: You know, most of the time I don’t regret or think about it in any way other than what you just said, and that’s just what happened. I don’t delude myself into thinking if I had been marketed better that would have done the trick. That’s too simple. But would it have been really exciting had the general public responded to my music and to me and everything and I could have done it professionally for 10 or 15 years? I think it would have been really interesting. But I don’t know. It didn’t happen, so I don’t think about it a whole lot. You know, I like my life now. BE: That’s the most important thing. JT: Yeah. I really love writing. So I’m just kind of hoping the writing thing’s going to work out for me. BE: That’s good. Are you already thinking about another book? JT: Yeah, I’m kind of working on a book and kind of working on a screenplay. You know, just writing as much as I can, pretty much. BE: Sweet. Are you listening to anything now in particular? JT: I like that Click Five record. My daughter adores that Click Five record, so we listen to it all the time. What else have I listened to lately? I’m a big Fountains of Wayne fan, as everybody knows. ( Note: Deneen, Trynin’s husband, has also produced them ) BE: Okay. JT: What else? What else am I listening to lately that I really loved? I know I’m forgetting something really obvious and I can’t think of it right now. BE: Have you heard the Fray yet? JT: I haven’t. BE: Oh they’re really cool. They’re from Denver. I think they’re on Epic. JT: Oh cool, I’ll check it out. BE: Yeah, their album was released last fall and they have a single now that’s like number 14 or something. But the record is just really great. JT: Oh I will keep it in mind, for sure. BE: Was the process of getting your book published anything like the music business? JT: You know, for better and worse, it wasn’t – just because the music business, for all its bad points, is very exciting. The people who work in the music business are very excitable. And that’s cool. You know, it can be really annoying because sometimes they’re really stupid and they smell bad and all they’re doing is drugs and they’re not actually excited. So that’s a drag, but on the other hand, everyone’s really excited and passionate and energetic and weird, and that’s why they’re in the music business. And there is a lot of excitement when a record comes out. Even when nobody cares, there’s still a level of excitement you get to go on the road. They’re just some excitement happening. In the book business, at least the way I experienced it, it’s just very quiet and everything moves very slowly. BE: Like a library? JT: A little bit. Everyone’s very polite. Everyone’s very bright, so I kind of like that. It’s just very staid. And the enthusiasm never reaches the same level of, like, “YAY!” I mean, except for between me and my editor, who is a real character. But for the most part, the whole vibe of the entire machine is very different. BE: That’s interesting. Was it difficult to find a publisher? Was it a lot of work to do that? JT: I was pretty lucky in that way. I had no problems getting an agent or a publisher because my book kind of had a little bit of a hook to it. It wasn’t like I wrote some long novel about my grandmother traveling though a time space continuum machine and how much I love her. It wasn’t a book like that. It’s like a book about rock and roll. So there’s some audience for it, they figured. It wasn’t too tough. Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be: A Rock Roll Fairy Tale by Jen Trynin. Writing a Book Is �Better Than Nothing�: A One-Hit Wonder�s Second Act. review by matthew webber. Here�s a real-life rock �n� roll fairy tale: A girl releases an indie-rock album. The local press declares it a classic. Men in suits say, Babe, we need you. Lawyers, managers, record execs. Morning DJs, bassists, drummers. Directors, producers, snarky critics. The big advance. The video debut. The Billboard cover. The national tour. Conan O�Brien. Spin. Rolling Stone. Your local alt-weekly. Beavis And Butt-Head . Comparisons to Belly and Alanis Morissette. (Note: This story is totally �90s.) The Warner Bros. recording artist, the Next Big Thing of 1995, singer/songwriter Jennifer Trynin! If you�re like me, you�re saying, Who? You�ve never heard of Jennifer Trynin. A decade after her music made the cover (or rather, the size of her record advance), an excerpt of her writing appeared in Billboard . This was my first exposure to the artist. I cringed at her description of a clueless music industry; I laughed at her depiction of her clueless younger self. Everything I�d thought about the industry was true, at least in the chapter I read online. (The biz, like, sucks , man. Commerce wins.) Her voice was witty, vivid, and real , the voice of someone whose jokes reveal truths. As someone who devours music blogs and liner notes, I knew I had to read this book. Plus, I wondered who the writer really was, considering her claims of major-label servitude. Her name, Jen Trynin, rang no bells. Her supposed hit single, �Better Than Nothing,� meant absolutely nothing to me. Her debut album, Cockamamie , might as well have been left unreleased. (Which is sad, �cause it rocks, but I�ll get to that later.) I knew her as a writer, instead of a musician, which is probably more than most people knew her. (And now it�s like I�m dissing Trynin, twelve years after everyone else, which is silly and wrong and totally unintentional, �cause how many people know who I am? I�m trying to tell you you ought to know Trynin.) It�s clear why I�d want to read such a story, and even more clear why she�d want to write it down: Not to avenge her bargain-bin status, but rather to reclaim her voice. In Everything I�m Cracked Up To Be: A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale , Trynin speaks with candor and humor, spiting both Warhol and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her fifteen minutes begin anew. Her writing debut gives her life a second act. The book is available at fine booksellers everywhere. The album�s on Amazon for less than a dollar. You totally know how the book�s gonna end: Jennifer Trynin will not become famous. Everyone�s promises will fade away and die. Perhaps her band will fight and break up. Perhaps she�ll sleep with people she shouldn�t. (Perhaps the latter will lead to the former.) And then she�ll write a tell-all book and thus live happily ever after, once again becoming better than nothing � or better than a washed-up, coulda-been obscurity � and thereby promoting that same debut album. Except for that hopeful, uplifting twist, the story is something you�ve seen on VH1. ( Behind The Music or I Love The 90s ?) But something in the telling is fresher than Snow. The first-person, present-tense point of view helps, imbuing the tale with a you-are-there immediacy and letting us feel the buzz as it happens. It also helps that the structure is classical. For the first two hundred pages or so, the book reads like a rock geek tragedy. Her voice is a chorus that gives away the ending. Like a Hitchcock film, the book leaves clues, providing us readers with important information and leaving poor Jennifer searching for the truth. For example, she meets with a Maverick exec who tells her, Sorry, we�ve found our token chick. There�s no way Trynin could know the implications, but attentive readers will find it ironic. (A little too ironic? Yeah, I really do think.) We know this chick is Alanis Morissette, the angsty-female alt-rock juggernaut, the multiplatinum fly in Trynin�s Chardonnay. And just like that, you know Trynin�s done. You wonder when she�ll figure it out. The gap between reader and character is huge � and even more thrilling than the mid-�90s music scene, with cameo appearances by Morphine�s Mark Sandman, Aimee Mann, and (allegedly) Paula Cole! (Her name has been changed to protect her unshaven armpits.) From rock �n� roll fairy tale to cautionary tale, Trynin�s debut memoir rocks. Everything I�m Cracked Up To Be fascinates and educates, from industry schmoozing to the artist�s sellout guilt, from valuable music-business advice to even, you know, the actual music , which Trynin, strangely, often skips, probably because she knows it�s not important, at least to the people who make their living selling it. And yet, you need to read this book, not quite speed-reading but racing nonetheless, at least if you�re a fan of music and literature, and even more so if you�re Trynin�s target audience: someone who missed her album the first time, and now you miss songs that sound like your youth. You see, I came of age in the �90s, my middle school, high school, and college years. As such, I�m a walking �90s cliche, loving stuff that sounds exactly like Trynin: Juliana Hatfield, Letters To Cleo, Belly (and even Tanya Donelly solo), Veruca Salt, The Breeders, Hole. And yes, Ms. Morissette herself, a bigger, shinier version of Trynin. This is the stuff I like to put on mixtapes. These are the women who influenced my tastes. So I, of all people, should�ve heard of Trynin. The fact that I hadn�t proves Trynin�s point: the music industry is kind of fucked up. Trynin never flat-out says so, but yeah, it�s there, and it�s kind of, um, obvious. Read this book if you need further proof. In 1995, I would�ve liked Trynin. I know, because I like her now. Thanks to her book, her website, and her MySpace page, I finally was able to hear her debut album. Twelve years after her huge advance, I finally bought a copy of Cockamamie . �Better Than Nothing� is lodged in my head. Her music deserved a much bigger audience. I hope her book finds greater success.