Thursday 7 February 2008

Kill Your Friends - John Niven

Book Details:

Country: England
Language: English
Genre: Crime/Humour
Publisher: Heinemann
Publication Date: 2000



Fictional Artist:

Bands: The Lazies, Rage, Songbirds
Genre: Britpop (The Lazies), Drum and Bass (Rage), Pop (Songbirds)
Country: UK
Real World Analogue: Rage is pretty obviously moulded after Goldie (Goldie himself thinks so). Songbirds, in the book, are put together as a Spice Girls rip-off. The Lazies are described as female-fronted, Swedish punk rock. One cannot help but think of a Cardigans/ Hives crossover.

Jacket Blurb

Meet Steven Stelfox.

London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. Twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, a world where 'no one knows anything' and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public - 'Yeah, those animals'.

Fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine Stelfox blithely criss-crosses the globe ('New York, Cologne, Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn') searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.

But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.

Kill Your Friends is a dark, satirical and hysterically funny evisceration of the record business, a place populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers, where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved - as long as you want it badly enough.

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