Our Band Could Be Your Life

No list of books on the indie music scenes of the 1980s is complete without this classic tale of the rise of commercial tensions regarding indie rock bands.

Music offered a form of rebellion against conformity – and punk challenged the corporate music industry of the 1970s with its DIY code and aesthetics. But in its wake, new forms of rebellion and alternative pathways to success emerged – at least for a time.

These bands that Azerrad chronicles became the giants of this alternative scene, and they were the sound of college radio. As Azerrad writes, corporate labels co-opted new… show more.

A one-of-a-kind book about the wider history of underground music in America in the 1980s, it traces the thread from Black Flag to Nirvana, cataloguing a huge range of vital bands in the process, and documenting many scenes that would otherwise have been lost to obscurity.

An expansive compendium of many of the most important punk bands of the 1980s – especially Black Flag, the Minutemen, Minor Threat, Husker Du. Essentially Azerrad provides interesting band biographies. He also listens to participants and recognizes the difficulty of DIY touring, including sleeping in the tiny tour band with other members squashed together. Greg Ginn of Black Flag is quoted, “If we got a flat tire, we would get an old tire that was discarded in the back of a gas station that they’d given up on and put that on… It was real bare bones.” Azerrad discusses the… show more.