SONGS FROM NOWHERE NEAR THE HEART

Coy, smugly assured satire in which Boston rock musicians mismanage their images in order to vie for a fat recording contract.

What’s next for the quartet Seventeen after a riot at Providence, Rhode Island, club fails to generate sufficient publicity to attract major label interest? DeeDee Vanian, the executive with XOFF Records who rigged the riot, tells band members Neil, Chavez, Don, and Ross that they must wait six months before XOFF can decide whether it wants to extend of their contract. Neil, the handsome, charismatic guitarist, who lost his $3,000 microphone in the melee, quits the band and finds himself lured into a side project called Limna, managed by Annika, a sexually ambiguous former drug-company marketing director whom DeeDee met and hired at the Providence riot. DeeDee agrees to put both bands on the road, claiming the one that gets the biggest following, and the most media attention, will get a contract. Right off the bat, Limna gets more attention, especially when Neil publicizes the fact that he is “straight-edge,” that is, he—along with Annika and his bandmates—forgoes sex, meat and drugs, or so they say. Don and Ross, putting their faith in their songs, find themselves left behind, even when they discover that Limna’s music is incoherent and unlistenable. Veering between sit-com silliness, as when Annika uses her albino brother to out-witch a Haitian maid whom DeeDee consults on all executive decisions, and the beautifully sad moments when Don recalls his pathetic father, first-novelist Baird (Day Job, a nonfiction business book, not reviewed), who is also a graphic designer, augments his text with grungy illustrations, ironic sidebars, and comic asides.

A convincing premise collapses in a farce that celebrates the excess, hedonism, and craven stupidity in a business where music is the last thing anyone cares about.