Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981–1991
By Michael AzerradLittle, Brown & Co., $26
The seasoned rock scribe’s hefty history of American indie rock reads like an extended appendix to his authorized (but juicy)1993 Nirvana bio, Come As You Are. Having traced the history of the band that took indie rock aboveground, Azerrad now turns his attention to pre-grunge trailblazers such as Hüsker Dü, the Minutemen and the Butthole Surfers. But each band’s long struggle to the middle gets its own disembodied chapter full of not-so-relevant details (you’ll learn about Steve Albini’s favorite brand of beef jerky), rendering Our Band a collection of profiles in search of a narrative thread that never appears. Azerrad takes a stab at placing the music in a broader context, but he ends up selling his subjects short by failing to explain why these scruffy losers ever mattered.
—Alex Pappademas
