Rock On blog 
July 3rd, 2008
Hey ok. The internet is on tonight. I was out west to read and sign at ALA annual which was really fun. Kinda started out nervous heading out there, but I think now ALL I wanna do is trade shows. The circuit! Most importantly though, I keep, keep, keep forgetting to post this picture here (see below). It is the floor at sound city in studio A where Cheap Trick recorded Heaven Tonight in January 1978. The same floor where Nirvana recorded Nevermind in May and June 1991. Anyway, I had the huge pleasure of visiting my friend Jill who was there (See chapter in Rock On called “The Darkness and Autoflash”). Kim and Kelly Deal were there doing Breeders stuff and Kim Deal was kind to read stuff aloud from Rock On and crack up. And later when I was leaving and thinking of how many records have been made in that room I had to take a quick snap of the floor in there. It hasn’t been changed since it opened, not one thing, not the tile, not the ceilings, not the anything b/c of not wanting to change one ounce of the sound in the big room.
All right — doing the last Ireland interviews this Friday and, you know, alter your summer travel and catch the reading/talking/laughing/hemming/hawing show in Galway if you can. This one will kick ass just short of pyro and dwarves. I’m gonna BRING. IT.
–DSK
June 26th, 2008
Author Dan Kennedy talks all things “Rock On” this week on Ireland’s RTE Radio 1 with Eoin Sweeney. LISTEN to show here.
June 19th, 2008
**Dan Kennedy will read from ROCK ON at one summer 2008 date! details here (U.K.)**
May 28th, 2008
All the papers are signed and ROCK ON is officially navigating the land of HBO, which is pretty damn sweet considering just about every show I’ve fallen in love with over the last four or five years is over there.
And so now what on the next book front, as many of you have been kind and cool and emailed to ask. Over the last handful of months here at headquarters there have been small beginnings on the new book. You can look forward to a lot of the staples of American humor and wit from the next undertaking. The story I am working on now is pretty firmly rooted in the classic cornerstones of comedy: A refreshingly polite and pleasant run with Satan and Satanism; prison culture’s influence on upper middle class suburban men and women; B-List drugs easily made at home by crushing up two or three kinds of over-the-counter stuff; being mistaken as highly sexually deviant based on a few simple situations gone terribly awry that, frankly, anyone could find themselves in at the office; a small cluster of secondary characters who are normal and harmless save for the fact that they become oddly aroused by setting small fires in wastepaper baskets; threat of falling satellites; regularly scheduled fist fights with the mediation guy; sex workers who turn out to be just as lonely and proactive and diligent about personal growth and change; obsessive compulsive disorder as it applies to scouring the lyrics of easy listening soft rock songs as if they’re Tarot cards holding cautionary hints or clues to better fortune; Class C fireworks aimed at Christians in harmless jest and its unfortunate effect; sex that borders on a syndrome; bloodlust in the somewhat unlikely setting of a home and garden convention; an inventive tendency toward manslaughter that borders on simply possessing a wit top-heavy with enthusiasm; having to tramp around your own community for all practical purposes living in a rented car that has been reported by fucking Hertz as stolen; finally doing the right thing and procuring a gun to get yourself out of a career slump; and, lastly, stumbling into writing an accidental national best seller about How to Unwrap Your Spiritual Gift and Get Your Life In Order. The main character has a nasty Sudafed-NoDoz-Nasanex-and-Heineken habit. And he is between jobs, as you may have guessed. And in the middle of a divorce, fine, fuck, yes.
Thank you/I apologize, viva easy listening adult contemporary rock, and hail Satan —
Dan Kennedy
May 24th, 2008
Rock On by Dan Kennedy. Press continues in U.K. after April release…
The Independent in Dublin calls Rock On “Hilariously tragic” and puts it on their Best In Show list for 2008.
Maxim Magazine U.K. calls Rock On “Hilarious [and] life affirming” and names it Book of The Month in May’s issue.
AU Magazine in Belfast calls Rock On “Thought provoking and frequently hilarious” in the June 2008 issue.
Dazed and Confused Magazine (U.K.) says Rock On is, “a series of exquisitely self-deprecating anecdotes.” Interview HERE.
