I Play The Drums in a Band Called Okay by Toby Litt

Clap is the drummer in a big-selling rock band called okay — imagine a cross between REM and Green Day. They play stadiums. They live the clichés — the hotels, the drugs, the groupies, the mystical religions. But this is not at all clichéd because you'll never read anything quite like it. Clap is a fictional character with nothing to lose, so he can have a crack at telling the real truth; it's a wonderful idea, and Clap is very sharp. He theorises about his brand of rock music — for instance, why gay guys don't like it.

"Our melancholic euphoria just doesn't suit these lives of euphoric melancholy," he says. Isn't that good? We watch, fascinated, as the band is threatened — by middle age, marriage, boredom, and Clap's burgeoning love of Mozart.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Okay are a Canadian indie/rock band who sound a little like the Velvet Underground on quarter-speed. This is their story. Narrated by the drummer, Clap, it follows twenty years of life on and off the road with the band: the gigs and groupies, the tunes and tours, the fall outs and fuck ups, the overdoses and the sweet, sweet soul-damage of it all. For anyone who's ever wondered what it's like to be in a rock band, "I Play the n class="highlight">Drumsn> in a Band Called Okay" is a dream of a book that delivers everything it promises - but it's more than that too, and behind the glitz of celebrity shimmers a mature and nuanced novel about pains and joys as fundamental as those of loving and losing, growing up and moving on.