Christgau Swallows Trynin's Spunk "Lickety-Split"

The Doddering Dean reviews Jennifer's new book/pseudo-memoir - says it's one of the best "biz book[s]" and ranks with Azzerad's "unneccesarily male" focused book. I'll say he's a still the same old PC twat for that especially as he follows it up with a throw-away "sort of" slag on The Donnas - at any rate, he genuinely made me interested in a book I didn't know existed, so we'll give him a pass today:

Trynin's Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be did for me what Cockamamie never did until I read her book—grabbed and held. Scanning a page before filing it away, I kept going for 15, then went back to the beginning and swallowed the thing lickety-split. Just as it helped that I once heard "My Boyfriend's Back" in a Bronx garage, it helped that I recognized some of Trynin's dramatis personae—especially "Lola," a&r goddess Karin Berg. But I've read enough biz books to be certain this is one of the best. It describes the evil mystery of recoupability more clearly than Steve Albini himself, and makes an ideal companion to Michael Azerrad's unnecessarily male Our Band Could Be Your Life. Trynin's story is no less painful than Azerrad's, but it's less embittered. The dizzying blizzard of the courtship period deflates into the dehumanizing meet-and-greet grind of the promo tour with surreal suddenness, and soon you feel how, in that grrrl-crazy post–Liz Phair time, pressures that had always been hard on guys were even worse for women. Maybe the Donnas screw their male groupies (and maybe not). Trynin thinks about her boyfriend and becomes embroiled in a tortured, sporadic flirtation with her needy bass player—which beats the phone calls where "Head Honcho" tells her to smile more.