thePULSEAmy Sciarretto and Rick Florino‘s Do The Devil’s Work For Him
How To Make It In The Music Industry (And Stay In It!)
By Jillian Locke
The book opens up with a bold, yet pretty universally accurate statement: “Everybody wants to be a rock star.” Or, in the reader’s case, everyone wants to meet and hang with and pick the brain of their favorite rock stars. Aspiring writers, musicians, publicists, and anyone who wants a piece of the music industry’s rocky road pie ~ READ UP! Industry connoisseurs Amy Sciarretto and Rick Florino open the flood gates to their genius industry minds in this no bullsh*t, balls-to-the-wall guide on how to break into the shrinking business of the music industry, and stake your claim in it.
Sciarretto’s experience includes being Loud Rock Editor for CMJ New Music Report and Hit Parader, and she has dipped her pen into such publications as Kerrang!, Spin.com, Guitar World, TeenPeople.com, Urban Ink, and VHI.com, to name just a few. For the past eight years, Miss Sciarretto has solidified her talents in the promotions and publicity departments at Roadrunner Records, where she makes miracles happen on the daily. Sciarretto is also no stranger to Worcester, as she’s graced every New England Metal and Hardcore Festival with her enigmatic presence, with the exception of one year (“…when we had our annual Roadrunner int’l convention – I think it was 2007 that I missed!”). Her favorite things to do in Woo-Town include “…eating at Irish Times or Dunkin Donuts and having fun with the local metal crew!!”
Florino created the publication Ruin Magazine back in 2006 and currently serves as an editor for ARTISTdirect.com, and as the entertainment editor for LAX Magazine. He’s written pieces for Hit Parader, Inked, Revolver, BPM, and Shockhound.com, amongst others.
With a combined 20 years of industry experience between the two of them, Sciarretto and Florino’s debut book takes you through their first internships, the necessary work they did for free, their first paying gigs, and ultimately, how, step by step and brick by passion-driven brick, they laid the foundation for a solid and unbreakable place for themselves within the upper echelon of the ever-changing music industry, or as Rick loving refers to it, the “…fickle beast.”
Fifteen chapters highlight the essentials to ascending the metal ladder, including networking, being the perfect intern, taking matters into your own hands, one of my favorites, “Close Encounters of the Metal Kind,” and the perfect clincher to close the book: an appendix entitled “A Little Help From Our Friends,” which includes interviews and insights from some of the friends they’ve made along the way, including Mastodon’s Troy Sanders, The Deftones’ Chino Moreno, and GnR/The Cult/Velvet Revolver’s Matt Sorum, and many more.
Working in the music industry isn’t just a 9-5 job – it’s a 24/7 way of life. So go for what you love. It’s only a dream if you let it be. As Sciarretto and Florino end the book, “PUT THIS BOOK DOWN AND MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN!”
www.mccarrenpublishing.com/devilswork.htm, www.twitter.com/dothedevilswork
www.myspace.com/dothedevilsworkforhim
Hair, Heels and Everything In Between
By Annette Cinelli
It’s our annual beauty issue and if you are looking for some advice and tips, who better to turn to than a woman who for years was known as Posh Spice. She may be better known now as Victoria Beckham, wife of soccer superstar David Beckham and rising fashion designer, but she is still as posh as ever.
In her book That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything In Between, Beckham gives advice, shares stories, and tells you wear to shop. In this special U.S edition, she even lists some American stores she likes to shop in (Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, even Abercrombie & Fitch and the Gap).
The book is broken up into 11 chapters ~ 3 on types of clothing (Jeans & Trousers, Tops, Skirts & Day Dresses), 4 on occasions (Parties, Vacations, Winter, Special Occasions), and 4 miscellaneous (Accessories, Pregnancy & Post Pregnancy, Lingerie, Hair & Makeup). There is a lot of great, useful advice in these pages, tips that you don’t have to be a rich fashionista to appreciate. This book is simply for anyone who loves fashion.
Beckham offers a range of advice from witty (“Be careful with platforms as they can make you look like you’ve got cement blocks around your ankles and have been captured by the Mafia and are begin sent to sleep with the fishes.”) to practical (“Don’t worry about size, you can always cut out the label at home, and you’ll pretty soon forget whatever that number was because you’ll be too busy admiring how fantastic you look.”). Other pearls of wisdom include owning at least one classic style LBD (little black dress) and not being afraid to spend more on accessories since you’ll carry a bag more often then you’ll wear a dress.
She highly recommends some of her favorite designers including Azzedine Alaia (for dresses), Marc Jacobs (for boots), and Calvin Klein (for underwear). But she also often refers to fashion that can also be found on “High Street,” the lovely British equivalent of Main Street U.S.A.; basically it consists of fashion trends that have become mainstream enough that you can get versions of them in the less expensive stores.
Each section in That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels, and Everything in Between includes top-tips, style no-nos, and where to buy, and you also get chic photographs and amusing anecdotes about Beckham’s fashion and style history. If you are at all into fashion, this book is an absolute must-have.
