Review: Party Like a Rock Star Even When You're as Poor as Dirt by Camper English
San Francisco based club and nightlife writer Camper English has written the book (literally) on saving money, getting in free to sold out shows, obtaining promotional swag, and getting good service at crowded bars. Party Like a Rock Star Even When You’re Poor as Dirt (Alyson Books) provides practical, unique, and somewhat scammy ideas on living the rock star life on a garage band budget.

The Practical: Be willing to suffer endless waves of e-mail spam (in a specially set-up account) and put in a little bit of sweat equity to find the free events, hooch and food, and to get into shows and clubs for free. Opt for a basic, cheap work wardrobe. (Would you rather look fabulous at work or out at night?) Visit libraries, shop at used bookstores, and use Web sites like Project Gutenberg for free books. Clean out all those boxes of crap stored at your parents’ house and sell the spoils on eBay.

The Unique: If you want good service at a bar all night long, consider “pre-tipping” for the whole evening when you order the first round. If it’s a fat enough bill, the bartender is likely to remember your face when crowds fighting for his attention. For your next party, have a 40s theme: everyone brings their own 40oz. that will get warm and flat before they get a chance to finish it.

The Scammy: When out with friends, learn how to get out of paying for your round of drinks by disappearing to the bathroom. Host a “stock my bar” party, run out of ice and cups early, and suggest moving the party to a bar. Create your own press credentials to “review” clubs and bars. If taken out for a business lunch, order a soup/salad, huge appetizer and an entrée, and take home the leftovers for dinner.

While Party Like a Rock Star is really a book about thrifty living, it doesn’t read like a boring, dry instructional manual. English doesn’t go to cheap extremes by suggesting you dry out and reuse your coffee grounds, wash out plastic bags until they fall apart, or use empty tin cans as drink glasses. Instead, he focuses on realistic, easy, non-time consuming advice: bring your own coffee to work, hold a clothing swap with friends, check out free days at museums.

English writes with a sense of humor liberally dosed with sarcasm. (He doesn’t really advocate selling drugs for a profit or trolling the bars for a cheap lay.) Thankfully, he doesn’t come off as one of those hipper-than-thou, scenester club kids with their name-dropping gossip columns in every alternative weekly newspaper. There’s no pretentiousness: he realizes people have to work less-than-spectacular day jobs to pay for night life, and there’s no shame in this.

While you certainly won’t need or want to follow every piece of advice English offers, there’s plenty you can glean from Party Like a Rock Star. It would make a fitting college graduation gift for the newly independent wannabe scenester/hipster. It would have certainly been appreciated when I was 22 and freely dropping $5 a day on lunch, buying all my books and magazines instead of hitting the public libraries, and avoiding thrift stores because they were “smelly.”

Party Like a Rock Star Even When You’re Poor as Dirt by Camper English. Alyson Books.

See also: Camper’s RockStar Blog
- posted by Synd-e @ 4:09 PM