Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be (2006)

ISN'T IT IRONIC? Trynin is a hit when she describes her fleeting moment as rock's Next Big Thing -- until Alanis got Bigger

Recalling the heady mid-'90s days of a bullish music industry obsessed with bidding wars, not survival tactics, ex-singer/songwriter Jen Trynin wryly recounts her too-brief tenure as rock's next big thing in Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be. I still haven't forgiven her for quitting the biz right after I named her sophomore Warner Bros. release as 1997's second-best CD in these pages, but she makes amends with her dead-on account of being assiduously courted by the likes of David Geffen, only to be yesterday's news a year later when the Alanis phenom steals her thunder. (On her humiliating last tour, she opens for a certain hairy-armpitted labelmate, who forces Trynin to switch from electric to acoustic guitar.) Trynin's terse, hilarious, you-are-there prose is as strong as her songwriting was, and this will remain an excellent primer for any rockers considering signing with a major label...for however many months said labels continue to exist.