Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 [Hardcover]

Steve Albini, the Minutemen, the Huskers, and Fugazi seem to come off best as principled artists here; the beginnings with indie labels like SST prove fascinating, and the conflict between ethics and long-term careers does make for tension within many of the bands' histories. I would've dropped the Surfers--whose antics more than any music had made them noticed--and combined Fugazi with Minor Threat. The K Records twee pop legacy, unfortunate as it is, seems not to fit into the whole, and Mudhoney's chapter seems taken from the author's two works on the Seattle grunge scene.

What should have been added? How Alternative Press and Option magazines worked with the smaller 'zines to educate and create savvy listeners, along with the indie and college radio stations, across the nation and abroad. Mail-order, in the pre-Net days, and good ol'word-of-mouth between fans at record stores, dorm rooms, garages, and gigs played as much as role as any other form of promotion these fledgling labels could create.

The decision, as with Option in the 80s, to only review lp's on indie labels ran into conflict as the majors used farm-league brands to nourish (and/or exploit) up-and-coming artists from regional areas. Concomitantly, this merge of the majors with the minors, and the distributors of British music here, is an neglected topic. IRS was an offshoot of WB, of course, as was Sire, but who can diminish their effect on college radio and local scenes despite or because of their added clout?

Joe Carducci (of SST) in his maddeningly Lester Bangs-ish "Rock and the Pop Narcotic" touches upon the role of labels and the whole mish-mash as hardcore dribbled into 70s metal and all sorts of (...)children spawned on those indie labels. Anyway, Azerrad's book is better written than many rock tomes. If not as erudite as Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming," it does pave the way for future studies of American indie music culture. One closing example: as the Huskers on early songs attempt to break the straitjacket of hardcore, it sounds like "whistling in a steel mill."

A complete history of second-wave American punk needs to include Germs, the Dead Kennedys (referenced by allusion and the occasional quote repeatedly, reiterating their importance), X (same as above), and Meat Puppets, just for starters.

The book at first seems to try to place its focus on the nascent hardcore scene, but then takes wild detours when focusing on Butthole Surfers (who were more symbolically associated with the noisy/thrashy aspects of the genre rather than being an actual hardcore band) and Beat Happening (who have no relation whatsoever to hardcore, and only peripherally to punk). I mean, Bad Brains, Flipper, and the Big Boys were as seminal to the HC scene as anyone else, even if they don't have the same 'founding fathers' legacy that characterizes Black Flag or Minor Threat (I also agree with many reviewers that the Fugazi chapter really belongs elsewhere).

Although I am a big fan of Sonic Youth and Big Black, I don't really consider them as defining elements of the hardcore or the 'indie scene' when compared to the Germs or the DKs. Furthermore, I *really* didn't see the value of including the Replacements and Dinosaur Jr... again, apparently more of a decision based on access rather than on actual significance. Mudhoney's chapter, more than anything else, seemed like an excuse to include Bruce Pavitt's generous musings on Sub Pop and the Seattle 'scene' that helped 'break' (in both senses of the word) home-grown punk.

In a different light, this could have been a worthwhile (although limited) outline of a history of important punk and post-punk indie labels (SST, Twin/Tone, Touch 'n' Go, Homestead, Sub Pop, Dischord, and K), but as such would have needed to include Alternative Tentacles, Slash/Ruby, Shimmy-Disc, Posh Boy, Ralph, and quite a few others. Sometimes the bands seemed to be mere commodities within the larger label-centric narrative, which would have been fine if the focus had been to document the rise and fall of the punk indie.

Anyhoo, to wrap up, it was cool to read about Black Flag, Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, and Hüsker Dü. The rest of the book pretty much dragged. I actually find the decade-long scope of the book to be utterly appropriate (from the first rumblings of west coast punk to the 'year punk broke'). I just didn't find it to be either comprehensive or consistent. I didn't feel totally ripped off, either, and that's why the book gets 3 stars. I'd recommend it to those who weren't there and would like some insight on the period, but would probably suggest they check it out at the library or borrow someone's copy first.