Maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival. Travel in the entertaining company of a man made of equal parts bullshit and inspiration, in what is ultimately a twisted panegyric to the power of strange music to change people from the inside out. At turns funny and strangely sobering, this "found memoir" is a picaresque tale of inspired, heroic deceit, incompetence, and - just possibly - triumph. Follow the flailing escapades of maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette at the Calgary Folk Festival, as he leaves a trail of empty liquor bottles, cigarette butts, bruised egos, and obliterated relationships behind him. His top headlining act has abandoned him for the Big Time. In a fit of self-delusion or pure genius (or perhaps a bit of both), Ouiniette devises an intricate scam, a last hurrah in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of his girlfriend, the music industry, and the rest of the world. He reveals his path of destruction in his own transparently self-justifying, explosive, profane words, with digressions into the Edmonton hardcore punk rock scene, the Yugoslavian Civil War, and other epicentres of chaos.
"A searing, side-splitting book with charm and character, painting a vivid picture of the Canadian music landscape in all its grand bamboozlery."
Vancouver Sun
"You should read this ... it's short, fun and hilarious."
ivereadthis.com
"...our friends are here too, in the underground Alberta that Berner has inexplicably nailed, despite not being of the Prairies himself. That is one of his many gifts. Another is his third act: near-imagist in its precision, making up for functionally concluding what feels like a long night of talking with long-missed and beloved friends by relating something that feels like it's true."
