A person’s fandom is a very personal thing. These obsessions are shared in common with others – many others, in some cases – but the individual connection someone feels with a favorite band or author is intensely unique.

That makes John Sellers’ new book, Perfect From Now On, an exhilarating and frustrating read. The book, subtitled “How Indie Rock Saved My Life,” chronicles Sellers obsessions with a handful of bands, from a teenaged fixation on Duran Duran to later love affairs with New Order, Pavement and, finally, Guided by Voices. It is exhilarating because, as a 36-year-old white guy from the Midwest (who now lives in New York), Sellers has captured much of what it felt like (and, really, feels like) to be a fan of the fringes of popular culture. It is my story, too, but also very far removed from being my story. That’s the frustrating part.

Reading through the book, I was alternately struck by an observation that could have sprung from my own lips – Yes, MTV’s “Remote Control” was the best game show ever – but several others seemed just wrong-headed. His fascination with the music of Manchester, a genre into itself that bores me to absolute tears, is maddening, and his dismissal of great bands like the Church is puzzling. And, the fact that he didn’t discover Guided by Voices – his now-favorite band and the real lynchpin of the entire book – until 2002, just two years before the band hung up a 20-year career, is simply unfathomable.

But this reaction is exactly why the book is successful. As stated at the outset, no two people like music the same way, and while there is a tremendous amount of overlap between my tastes and Sellers’ – who could argue with a top 10 favorite album list that includes The Queen is Dead, Slanted and Enchanted and Bee Thousand? – there is a significant chunk of his list of favorites that I can’t stand, and I’m sure, vice versa.

Ultimately, Sellers offers an autobiography of a music fan. There is more to the author than what he reveals in these pages – one hopes, anyway – but as one music fan to another, I really feel like I know this guy. Would we get along? Well, he writes here about seemingly frequent arguments with friends that stem from whether Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes is the better Guided by Voices album, and I can imagine having many such verbal sparring matches with him myself. That’s the beauty of being a fan: It inspires a deep passion in you that can be shared, debated and evangelized. With Perfect From Now On, vexing digressions from taste and all (read that: digressions from my taste), Sellers has captured what it means to be a fan, and reading his book sent me to the CD racks in search of some old friends. There’s no better recommendation than that.

Sellers is ramping up the promotional push for the book this week, guest-blogging at Powells.com, offering a Book Notes entry at the excellent Largehearted Boy blog and submitting to Q&As with USA Today’s Pop Candy blog on Tuesday and an AmpCamp Q&A that’s up right now.

He consented to add to the onslaught by answering a few questions here. Read on to learn why The Queen is Dead is among the best albums ever and to see how much his writing has improved over time.

TIRBD: Had you thought with such detail about your music fandom before writing the book, or was there a new process of deep self-examination as you put it together?

JS: I have been aware for quite awhile that I listen to music differently than most people. When I love something, I engage it with a geeky, absurd and often embarrassing passion, and I've been doing it that way since I was a preteen. But until I started writing the book, it wasn't clear exactly how many of my thoughts over the past two-plus decades have concerned music. If there was a pie chart depicting the topics of conversation in my brain over the years, music would take up the biggest chunk, with sports and girls a close second and third, respectively. And I think about sports and girls so often it would frighten people.

When you went back and thought about just how much you were into, say, Duran Duran when you were younger, were you surprised by just how much time and energy really went into being a fan? Does it differ as an adult obsessed with a band like GBV?

It's shocking how much of my free time over the years has been spent in service to my obsessions – whether it's been Duran Duran, the 1984 Detroit Tigers or Donkey Kong. But the intensity of my obsessions has by necessity diminished with age. Until college graduation, I had almost unlimited time and energy to spend on my favorite pastimes. I could sit in my favorite chair with the boom box blasting for hours on end, and not feel the least bit guilty about doing so. Now, various professional and personal responsibilities make that impossible. It's true that I love Guided by Voices more passionately than any of the other bands in my personal history. It's also true, sadly, that I have to cram the obsession through a smaller window. If only I had unlimited time again! If only I could win the lottery!

The other thing that's obviously different is the way most people my age (36) seem to follow their passions. When you're young, getting caught up in something like a band isn't seen as eccentric; it's what kids do. But now I'm viewed by my friends as the kind of guy who would seriously consider flying to London to see Sonic Youth perform the entire Daydream Nation album, even though that trip will surely set me back $1,000. Luckily, I don't mind being seen that way.

How did you go about pitching a book about a Midwestern thirtysomething guy's obsession with marginal rock bands to a major publisher?

It's surprising what they'll pay you to do when your bio says that you once wrote for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire!” In all seriousness, it wasn't easy, and not many publishing houses were interested. What I tried to do in the proposal, and it hopefully shows up in the finished product, is broaden the narrowly focused "GBV obsessional" idea to talk about music fandom in general. So the concept I pitched was, essentially, "What is it like to be a fan of music?" using my own personal history to back it up. My hope is that even lovers of non-indie rock artists – like Tom Waits, Pearl Jam, or Kenny G – can get something out of the book. Meanwhile, I've just found my next book idea: to find that one person in the world who is obsessed with Kenny G.

Can you back up your assertion that The Queen is Dead is the best album of the last 20 years?

My opinion has already changed since I wrote that. What's great about making lists – the kind that appear in nearly every issue of music magazines – is that the instant they've been completed, you could devise the same list again and get a different outcome. Sure, my top ten will always have to include The Queen Is Dead, Slanted and Enchanted, The Joshua Tree, Doolittle, and Bee Thousand. But where those five albums fall on the list depends on the moment. (Just now, I'm leaning toward Slanted and Enchanted.) But come on – The Queen Is Dead has everything a perfect record's supposed to have. It has the hits. It has the anthems. There are precisely zero songs on it that can be attacked as being inconsequential to the album as a whole. The quality of the lyrics is exactly equal to the quality of the music. It can make you laugh. It can make you cry. When judged against albums only from the past 20 years, a gem like The Queen Is Dead can't help but compare favorably. Unless, of course, you're the type of guy who loves Korn.

If you tweaked the band value formula that you offer at the end of Perfect From Now On and applied it to your own body of work, how would you rate?

Poorly, probably lower than the Collected Works of Carrot Top. By "body of work," I assume you'd want me to factor in the battle stories I wrote in third grade. Here's one of them, entitled "The Big Fight":

"Once there was an owl man and an octopus man. They had a fight and it would probably be good because the octopus man had eight tentacles and sharp teeth. The owl man had a razor sharp beak and very sharp claws. So they fought and they fought but all of a sudden only one came out alive. And that was the octopus man. The octopus man won for a change."

There's no defense for something like that.

Labels: books, Monday Interview, music