Nice job, but where's the South? | Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground...

Good for Bands you are not that familiar with. | Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 | Michael Azerrad

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	• Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 Michael Azerrad Back Bay Books, 2002 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 76 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Anybody Can

Terrific detail, an interesting mix of bands profiled, and one big common theme: get out there and do your thing, write some songs, find your audience, and keep playing. The chapter on Beat Happening underscores this more than any other. An acquired taste to be sure, but once I saw their name on the back cover I knew I had to own a copy of the book, to remind of the time when start-up bands and start-up labels took the music back and blew fresh life into rock. The chapters on The Minutemen and Replacements are excellent. Yes, I do remember where I was when I heard D. Boon died. Readers who enjoy this should check out the DVD about The Minutemen, "We Jam Econo." Nice job, Michael Azerrad. Thanks for putting this together.

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Nice job, but where's the South?

I really enjoyed this book a lot; I had already been a fan of all the bands at some point in my life and was definitely moved to pull out lots of old tapes I hadn't listened to in years. That stuff holds up.

Still, there's one very weird thing about Azerrad's take on '80s DIY rock: he acts as if the South didn't exist. Anyone who was actually listening to indie music back then would beg to differ. Sure, he explains that he didn't include REM because IRS wasn't really an indie label (a technical distinction, but OK) -- but still, Pylon were at least as influential as, say, Mission of Burma; Mitch Easter was a major force in shaping what rock sounded like in college-town scenes all over the country. Bands like the Connells, the dBs, and Let's Active were way more influential at the time than people remember now. Kids in Boston and Minneapolis wanted to jangle like that. More importantly, even if you're going to exclude REM and the B-52s, you have to look at Athens as the prototype of the DIY scene: people making music with their friends, where they are, with very little concern for the music industry in LA and NYC. Except for the brief period when the [...] Surfers were there, Azerrad never even mentions Athens. And when he does mention bands touring in the South, the comments are always negative -- it's always bad gigs with crowds who don't get it. I don't know whether Azerrad is just prejudiced against the South or what, but his history is badly skewed against it.

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Good for Bands you are not that familiar with.

Well written but for a few of the bands I was familiar with it was not that interesting.
For the bands I didn't know much about, there was something to learn.

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Great content, cheesy writing

The thing about this book is that with this subject matter it can't help but be good. I loved it. I don't like the way that the author writes. This book is about bands who were trying to do their own thing and he writes about them in the same old music critic, dramatic, sensationalistic style that just isn't appropriate here. Highly recommended though.

Underground Punk

Read this book when I was in highschool, got it from the library, but never finished it. A couple years later I decided to read it again but couldn't find it in ANY libraries. At Borders it was too expensive. Found it on Amazon, used and cheap. Recieved it within a couple days of the order, in perfect condition! The book has a lot of information, also. You get to see how the uprising of punk music started(underground punk music). Very interesting. Might get you into some new bands you never thought you'd like.

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It was a musical revolution that happened in the midst of Reagan's 80s: a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations and other subversives who re-shaped and re-energized American rock music with punk rock's revolutionary do-it-yourself credo. The music that resulted was deeply personal, always challenging and immensely influential. This book traces the arc of the American indie underground in the 1980s, from obscure beginnings to the point a decade later when the mainstream sat up and took notice. Beginning with the pioneering and notorious punk band, Black Flag, the story continues with the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, Husker Du, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr, Fugazi, Mudhoney and Beat Happening, among others. Without major label support, these bands depended on resourcefulness, creativity and an all-powerful sense of community.

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