The Pessimal Refrain

About

Genre: Absurdist Comedy, Rockumentary
Themes: Pop Culture, Media Saturation, The Price of Fame
Pages: 75
Words: 20,475

Just to change things up in 2021, my BFF, Ben Cannon, and I decided to do a collaborative novel, wherein we tell the humorous story of a fictional band from the tourist trap town of Weaver Bay, with multiple authors writing the story of one of the band members. The idea is akin to a Chuck Klosterman book meets the Beatles’ Anthology.

Sadly, life got in the way, and we both fell a bit short of our 50K goals, though he got closer than I did. I was pleased with what I did get, however, so since it looks like the collaboration idea fell through, I changed some last names, slapped the “Pessimal” moniker on it, and finished it up solo.

Back Cover Blurb

Few people will remember the legacy of “Maanthaung,” the “Fakabilly Swing” revolution, or the tiny tourist trap town of Weaver Bay. Few people will remember the exciting tale of adventures on the high seas, the significance of the abandoned Foto-Mat on the east side of town, or the massive importance that ski-ball hustling played in musical history. They won’t remember because the all-powerful entertainment industry, and their minions, the music journalists, have trained them not to.

In the early 1980’s an unlikely conglomerate of former “yacht pirates” shunned a respectable life of robbing tourists of their cassette collections and decided to become musical artists. In the process, they not only founded a rock subgenre out of a hodgepodge of 50’s do-wop, 70’s disco, smooth jazz, and Tuvaluan folk music, but also, through a series of unlikely coincidences, cracked the secret code of pop culture and nearly brought about the collapse of entertainment as we know it within a few short years. Now, decades later, one of the band’s founders breaks his silence and tells the tale at last — a story that will tear away the fabric of the Mandella Effect-style hold the music industry has on your memory, and, hopefully, finally set history right again.