Neal Pollack, aspiring rock star. - By Neal Pollack

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Posted Monday, Jan. 27, 2003, at 2:39 PM ET

Neal Pollack's first novel, a history of rock-n-roll called Never Mind the Pollacks, will be published this fall with an accompanying album of original songs, which isn't as pretentious as it sounds. He lives in Austin, Texas.

More photos from Neal Pollack.

Saturday morning, I got an e-mail from a rock critic friend who'd been to Friday night's show. He said he liked my literary shtick, but that I had to get rid of the songs immediately, because they suck and I can't sing. Well, I see your point, pal. But the songs are getting better, I swear. And Friday night's show was so much fun that I want to take it on the road. Allow me to narrate.

Julianne and Elana

I got to the bookstore at about quarter to 8. In case, when I say "bookstore," you all are imagining something like the Tattered Cover, let me dispel that image. The Escapist is owned by two young women, Elana Koff and Julianne Sherrod. Their storefront has three shelves of books, mostly fetish-related. They also sell vintage clothing and put on art shows. Recently they started a dating and sartorial-advice business for nerdy guys who want to meet fabulous women like them. For $175, you can get a complete makeover, tips on how to score, and a fabulous dinner. When I walked into the store to unload our van, Elana said to me, "Is that what you're WEARING tonight?"

I was annoyed. But the sweater was pretty dumpy. So I took it off.

By 8 p.m., there were about 30 people in the store.

"Holy shit," I said to Ben. "I don't know anyone here!"

By 8:15, the crowd had topped 50, still mostly strangers, and I started the show. Ben read first, from his novel TV, TV, which he says he'll publish it as soon as it's finished, which he now says will be in March. He used to say August, but I guess he's getting excited. His reading was good, except that he forgot to print out the final page of the second excerpt. Dude. That is so punk rock.

There were more than 100 people by the time Jim Roll played a short set from his excellent folk-rock album Inhabiting the Ball. I think Jim's appearance was a great relief to some of the old-school Austinites who'd come to the event only to be confronted with a firewall of hipster propaganda. Jim's songs are beautiful, sincere, and adult. Ben said to me, "How the hell did you convince THAT guy to be in your band?" It's a good question that only Jim can answer.

A rip-roaring good time

The next reader was Claire Zulkey, from Chicago. Claire is 23 and mostly writes humor for her own Web site. She gave her reading and was very funny, and Ben, who "discovers" previously unknown Internet writers, will put out some kind of collection of her work later this year. Then I read from my new book of political satire Beneath the Axis of Evil, and that went fine, too.

But this wasn't just a reading. This was Bookhouse Rock. After a short break, the Yuppie Pricks took the stage. Ty, the lead singer, wore a white leisure suit and uncomfortable-looking sandals. He sang into a microphone attached to a tennis racket. The Yuppie Pricks cannot be done justice in this space, but onstage they play a bunch of obnoxious rich preppies that ridicule the modest, shabbily dressed slackers who come see them play. Ty's singing voice owes more than a little to Jello Biafra. My favorite song of theirs begins: "COKE PARTY COKE PARTY COKE PARTY COKE PARTY!"

I got so excited that I smashed an empty bottle of Wild Turkey on the floor. Elana quickly brought me a broom.

"That was a great punk rock thing you did," she said. "Now clean it up."

Soon enough, The Neal Pollack Invasion played. There were about 40 people left in the crowd by this point. Our opening song was good. Then I realized I'd forgotten to write out set lists for everyone. So I had to bark out the songs just before we played them, which confused Daniel especially, because he'd been drinking a lot of malt liquor. Our second song wasn't so good. The set kind of crawled until we hit "Jenny in the Car," our Springsteen parody, and then the energy picked up a bit.

I produced a copy of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and began reading aloud. Two paragraphs in, I began to yawn. I tore the book jacket. Then I tore the cover. I began tearing the pages in large bunches.

Tossing the book into the crowd, I told them to finish destroying it. A young woman got the book when it was halfway destroyed. She refused to let anyone else touch it, and said, "I don't think you should tear up books."

Elana handed me a copy of Infinite Jest.

"I've always wanted to destroy this one," she said.

More litterati than literati

So I did. And then we performed a rock version of my poem "I Wipe My Ass on Your Novel." Soon, as the band wailed behind me, I was laying on a beer-soaked floor among hundreds of discarded pages of Franzen and Foster Wallace.

Rock 'n' roll!

Afterward, we all went over to Ben's house. Daniel and his friends sat in Ben's hot tub and drank malt liquor. When they were done, the adults got their turn. I went in naked. Yes, my aching joints needed naked hot tub. Then Ben drove me and Dakota and Dakota's girlfriend, Josie, home. Claire came along for the ride. I live around the corner from a 24-hour place called Mrs. Johnson's Doughnuts. These days, Mrs. Johnson is a middle-aged Pakistani, and I'm one of his more frequent 2 a.m. customers. We ordered a dozen doughnuts, but he gave us something like 20. We pulled into my driveway and ate doughnuts and laughed for what seemed like hours.

And then it was over.

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Entry 5

Posted Monday, Jan. 27, 2003, at 2:39 PM ET

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Neal Pollack is the author of Alternadad. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Remark From The Fray:

Sorry, but Neal Pollack's diary is just too much. This whole South Austin slacker band thing is so unfair to so many Austin musicians who work their butts off to write and play quality music.

What we have with Pollack is music as some kind of bizairre performance art.....and for a real small audience. The Austin (especially South Austin) music scene is in grave danger of making itself more irrelavent than it already is by making a fetish out of self-parody.

Music thrives on quality and accessibility and not presenting itself as one big in-joke. If Pollack and friends want to play at being musicians fine, but don't present that in Slate as the face of Austin music.

-- little_ourkie

(To reply, click here.)

Neal Pollack Responds:

All right. I'm not above admitting I read the comments on my diary. But I feel like I should reply to this one.

I've only lived in Austin since last August, so in no way would I ever claim to represent this town, musically or otherwise. It's just a place I moved because I liked the people, the weather, and the attitude.

The audience isn't as small as the poster would like to think. One of the big Austin drawing cards for me was the fact that despite the relatively small size of the town, and my relatively obscure status as a writer, I got very large crowds whenever I read here. And the crowds were cool. And I made good friends with many of the people who came to my readings. This was a place, I figured, where you could get away with anything.

And I still find that to be the case. My literature as punk rock as literature act fits in just fine down here, and it in no way detracts from the hard work of other Austin musicians. This shouldn't be viewed as a competition. Independent literature and independent music all works toward the same goal: Independence. Attitude and aesthetic, sincere and mellow or ironic and loud, shouldn't be factored in.

Also, everyone in the band lives in North Austin, not South Austin. And we all work hard. I've been called many things, but never a slacker.

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