"Proscriptive how-to advice ranges over a wide number of subjects (e.g., sex, band photos, etc.) and can be seen both as skewering the cultural idolatry associated with rock and as genuine counsel. Verdict: Svenonius's sociopolitical analysis of rock and roll is intellectually interesting, as when he posits that the genre was 'brought about by the industrial revolution, the harnessing of electricity, and the miscegenation of various poor, exploited, and indentured cultures in the USA.'" --Library Journal
"So much of the allure here is in watching Svenonius skirt absurdity. He's always seemed delighted by the fact that the profound and the preposterous can sound awfully alike, a realization that puts him in line with an avant-garde tradition that stretches back before rock 'n' roll crystallized this fact...Svenonius has the spirit of a long-gone punk past, but his book has more to tell us about rock's here-and-now than about its hereafter. Neither bourgeois nor prestigious, Supernatural Strategies may be the rare book by a rock musician to retain any power or threat." --Los Angeles Review of Books
"Like its author, Supernatural Strategies is part tongue-in-cheek, part deadly serious--a satire of rock's consumerist origins but also a thoughtful treatise on what it means to devote yourself to a collective...Drawing from the wisdom of rock 'n' roll's most famous ghosts, Svenonius' advice ranges from hilarious to cryptic to surprisingly useful." --Pitchfork
"Svenonius has walked the walk...Even today--as the frontman of Chain &amp; The Gang and the host of the online talk show Soft Focus--he remains cool, cryptic, and impeccably dressed, a mod magician with a trick always lurking up his tailored sleeve." --The Onion AV Club
"If 'write what you know' is one of authorship's prime dictates, then Ian F. Svenonius seems uniquely qualified...Svenonius' contrarian, anti-establishment rhetoric is his greatest gift...Strategies plays to these same strengths by allowing him to run roughshod riot over hallowed ground he's already trod--and sometimes paved--more than a few times." --Baltimore City Paper
Ian F. Svenonius's experience as an iconic underground rock musician--playing in such highly influential and revolutionary outfits as The Make-Up and The Nation of Ulysses--gives him special insight on techniques for not only starting but also surviving a rock 'n' roll group. Therefore, he's written an instructional guide, which doubles as a warning device, a philosophical text, an exercise in terror, an aerobics manual, and a coloring book.
This volume features essays (and black-and-white illustrations) on everything the would-be star should know to get started, such as Sex, Drugs, Sound, Group Photo, The Van, and Manufacturing Nostalgia. Supernatural Strategies will serve as an indispensable guide for a new generation just aching to boogie.

Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group

Svenonius, Ian F.

Reference

Akashic Books Ltd

"While putting a copy of this book on your nightstand would be a sign of good taste, who cares about good taste? Are you willing to be seen reading a book titled Censorship Now!! in public? If so, your skin might burn with funny glances from squares, scolds and looky-loos. But on the inside, you'll feel your brain throbbing as it swells to accommodate some hilarious, absurd and radical new strategies on how to live in our ridiculous world." --Washington Post
"Svenonius' new book is Censorship Now!!, and the title alone shows just how provocative the author can be. A collection of essays previously published by Vice, Jacobin, and others, it sets up numerous enemies--both real and straw--for Svenonius to knock down....It's all couched in a style that's part anarchist tirade, part postmodern critique, and part punk-rock snottiness--yet it's addictively ridiculous." --NPR
"Censor it all. Film, TV, music, politics, books, news, art--censor all of it. That's the guiding principle of local radical punk Ian Svenonius' latest essay collection, Censorship Now!!" --Washington City Paper, Critics' Pick
Named a Favorite Book of 2015 by Jason Diamond at Vol. 1 Brooklyn
"Gonzo ecstasy for those who have come to know Svenonius's self-aware political meditations....And though the essays Svenonius writes are not themselves unclear, the process of talking about what he's written involves discussions that some might find uncomfortable. His books make more sense the more you dissect them. So keep them in your back pocket and read them, one word at a time." --Los Angeles Review of Books
"A new collection of essays by everyone's favorite supercilious rock theorist...Svenonius has always been the smartest kid in the room....In print, Svenonius is like that curmudgeonly pal that you adore because, even while his insight quivers between humor, paranoia, and antisocial ire, he never dispels your fascination in how he gets there." --SF Weekly
"Ian Svenonius is best known as the frontman of bands like the Make-Up and Nation of Ulysses, but he's also a brilliant cultural critic with a talent for coming up with the hottest takes you'll ever read. In this collection, Svenonius makes compelling arguments in favor of censorship and hoarding books and records, amid polemics against Apple and Ikea, the yuppification of indie rock, and the shaving of pubic hair." --Buzzfeed
"The essays in Censorship Now!! are equally packed with modest proposals and mock-revolutionary rhetoric, but there are grains of truth in pieces like 'The Historic Role Of Sugar In Empire Building' and 'Heathers Revisited: The Nerd's Fight For Niceness'--they're just buried somewhere between tongue and cheek." --The A.V. Club
"Censorship Now!! simultaneously deals in the heated rhetoric of insurgent calls to action, the seductive broad strokes of propaganda, and the clever winking of surrealist humor. Often when I'm really convinced Svenonius has gone off a paranoid deep end, the next sentence hits back with knowingly-hilarious exaggeration or profoundly spot-on analysis, realigning my perspective and making me wonder again....It's fitting that a book whose intentions are ambiguous begins with a call to censor art and ends by letting art do the talking." --Pitchfork
Ian F. Svenonius's new collection of sixteen essays and stories, entitled Censorship Now!!, is reorganizing people's ideas about censorship, Ikea, documentary filmmaking, the Berlin Wall, the film Heathers, the twist, the frug, the mashed potato, shaving one's body, Apple, Inc., Nordic functionalism, the supposed benevolence of the Wikipedia, hoarding, college rock, the origins of the Internet, and more. It's an underground smash which has been met with a horrified gasp in all respectable quarters and gog-eyed enthusiasm in artist garrets the world over.

Censorship Now!!

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

A second edition of the definitive photo book of one of the most influential rock bands of the past forty years, including brand-new, exclusive material.
"Friedman also wrote the recently rereleased photo book on the crucial straight-edge punk band Fugazi, Keep Your Eyes Open, featuring a new interview with frontman Ian MacKaye." --Los Angeles Times
"Photographer Glen E. Friedman has taken some of the most iconic photos in skateboarding, punk rock and hip hop. Known for capturing the raw energy of a counterculture generation in its prime, his photography helped shape the way people view punk music and redefined the sport of skateboarding." --q (CBC Radio)
"Friedman...marvelously captures [Fugazi's] non-hierarchical structure and spirit...These images bristle with the manic yet controlled energy that characterized all of Fugazi's performances. Sweat sparkles, bodies contort themselves, microphone stands fly off the stage." --Bookforum
"This new and expanded edition features an additional interview with MacKaye and Friedman, and, much to the relief of Fugazi and photography fans, is far easier to get hold of. With almost 200 photos to gawk at, it's an absolute treat for the senses...If it were possible for pictures to trigger your senses, you would smell the stale sweat, feel the dry mouth from a lack of hydration, hear every line being belted out in full force." --Punktastic
"It is...a testament to Friedman that his live stage shots express the intimacy of the moment but don't insert themselves nor distract from the band...Keep Your Eyes Open is its most successful when Friedman lets the photographs bloom in their richness with full page presentations." --New York Journal of Books
"But the main focus in this photo book, is--of course--the photos. Almost 200 color and b/w images captured by Friedman onstage and off between 1986 and Fugazi's last US concert in 2002." --Trust (Germany)
Fugazi, one of music's most revolutionary and gloriously indefinable bands, played their first concert on September 3, 1987. The first edition of Keep Your Eyes Open: The Fugazi Photographs of Glen E. Friedman was released by Burning Flags Press exactly twenty years later. This revised edition features brand-new photos and an interview with Friedman and Fugazi singer/guitarist Ian MacKaye.
Keep Your Eyes Open presents the best of Friedman's unparalleled photographic documentation of Fugazi's members in almost 200 color and black-and-white images captured by Friedman onstage and off between 1986 and Fugazi's last US concert in 2002.
Fugazi evolved from Washington, DC's, hardcore punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. While it would be impossible to fully capture Fugazi in any one medium, Friedman's book effectively complements the band's Dischord Records catalog, which includes seven studio albums, one soundtrack, three EPs, and hundreds of live concert CDs produced from Fugazi's own soundboard recordings.
Fugazi--a band dedicated to democratic self-management, highlighted by complete artistic and financial control--booked its own tours worldwide, and was often the first band to perform in unconventional venues around the world in order to maintain ticket prices that averaged just five dollars, a practice that opened many new venue doors to other touring artists. In addition, Fugazi has never marketed or licensed its name or likeness for posters, T-shirts, pins, or other ancillary merchandise items. Fugazi's unwavering respect for its audience is one of the band's most indelible marks on modern music. The band went on indefinite hiatus in late 2002.

Keep Your Eyes Open: The Fugazi Photographs of Glen E. Friedman

Arts & Photography

Friedman, Glen E.

Individual Artists

A reissue of Ian F. Svenonius's cult-classic debut essay collection, including brand-new writing in this expanded edition. 
"Everything author-slash-punk-icon Ian Svenonius says is interesting, and this book of satirical essays--originally published in 2006, now back in print--proves it...You'll laugh until you cry." 
--Washington Post 
"Ian F. Svenonius's The Psychic Soviet was first published before the iPhone, before the cronut, and long before our culture thought to ask the Svenonius-like question of whether it was the CIA who actually wrote the Scorpions' 'Wind of Change.' Akashic Books just reissued...this short, offbeat, and very funny collection of essays." 
--Washingtonian 
"As entertaining as books come." 
--Exclusive Magazine 
"In a sense the book is Mr. Svenonius's love letter to the good old days of do-it-yourself punk concerts, though it's cleverly disguised as a series of Marxian essays." 
--New York Times 
"The pocket-sized book--given Svenonius's communism infatuation, the parallel to Mao's Little Red Book is no mistake--contains well-thought-out arguments on a variety of subjects, from vampires to the origins of punk rock. It's often funny, but never in a self-consciously ironic way." 
--Washington Post 
"Ian Svenonius has come a long way since Sassy Magazine first dubbed him the 'Sassiest Boy in America' in 1991. The DC singer has never been anything less than political to the extreme." 
--Village Voice 
A new, expanded collection of essays and articles from one of the mainstays of the Washington, DC, underground rock and roll scene, The Psychic Soviet is Ian F. Svenonius's groundbreaking first book of writings. The selections are written in a lettered yet engaging style, filled with parody and biting humor that subvert capitalist culture, and cover such topics as the ascent of the DJ as a star, the "cosmic depression" that followed the defeat of the USSR, how Seinfeld caused the bankruptcy of modern pop culture, and the status of rock and roll as a religion. The pocket-sized book is bound with a durable bright-pink plastic cover, recalling the aesthetics of Mao's Little Red Book, and perfect for carrying into the fray of street battle, classroom, or lunch-counter argument.

The Psychic Soviet

About the Author\nIan F. Svenonius is the author of the underground best sellers Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ’n’ Roll Group, The Psychic Soviet, and Censorship Now!! He was also the host of VBS.tv’s Soft Focus, where he interviewed Mark E. Smith, Genesis P. Orridge, Chan Marshall, Ian MacKaye, and others. As a musician he has created more than twenty albums and countless singles in various rock and roll combos (Escape-ism, Chain & the Gang, The Make-Up, The Nation of Ulysses, etc.). He lives in Los Angeles, CA.\nIf the Gutenberg Bible is the alpha, Against the Written Word is the omega 
Against the Written Word is the most important, most revolutionary book produced since the advent of the printing press; the book that will liberate readers from reading, writers from writing, and booksellers from peddling their despicable wares. This book ushers in a new era of freedom from reading and all its attendant bedfellows such as Enlightenment thinking and the mass alienation wrought by the phonetic alphabet. Against the Written Word will be a tremendous best seller and simultaneously the last book that anyone will read. 
With nineteen essays ripping, shredding, tearing apart all the bugaboos that haunt humanity nowadays, Against the Written Word is a must-read for any aspiring radical or would-be gnostic who has a penchant for words, thought, clothes, intoxicants, music, art, expression, etc. The work is presented in a range of writing: essays, screenplays, lectures, sci-fi stories, and manifestos, with topics that include “the rise of incorporated man,” “tourism as the neoliberal mode of military occupation,” a workshop on songwriting for the purpose of suggestion and mind control, and many more. 
This handsome, illustrated book will correct the paucity of thought that characterizes the modern bookstore, and will practically sell itself. It will call out from the shelf to ingratiate itself to the unsuspecting everyday book browser, who will be hooked and then hungrily consume it. Infected with a wild-eyed evangelism, they will then proliferate it amongst their friends and acquaintances. These new readers will disseminate it, and so on; soon this slim, innocuous volume will define an epoch and steer thought from here on out. 
The bookseller will be surprised and pleased to find that it will be the only book they need to stock. Against the Written Word will be dominant in a manner the market has not seen since the Bible tore up best-seller lists in the Middle Ages or Mao’s Little Red Book wowed the critics in Red China.

Against the Written Word: Toward a Universal Illiteracy