Our Band Could Be Your Life’ captures spirit of ’80s indie rock
By Paul Bullock
Old Gold and Black Reviewer

From cursory investigation, Michael Azerrad’s latest work, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, seems like it could be a disastrous smearing of the decade that led up to the so-called “Alternative Rock Revolution.” With quotes from such esteemed musicologists as Janeanne Garofalo, Matt Pinfield (the large, bald, raspy-voiced ex-MTV host of Farmclub.com) and Kurt Loder adorning the dust jacket, I must admit that I put some serious thought into investing $25.95 in this new hardcover from Little, Brown and Company. Even after realizing that Azerrad’s highest selling work to date was the frighteningly titled Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, I took the chance that the subject matter would carry me through what could easily be a train wreck.

Fortunately, my fears were quite unfounded. Azerrad’s work takes on the rather daunting task of highlighting the decade that polarized rock music between the growing number of independent record labels and distributors against the multinational media conglomerates, and delivers the best collection of writing to date on the period. He takes 13 of the most influential and important acts from the 1980s and gives many of them more credit than they might deserve. In roughly 500 pages, he outlines the development of the nationwide network of small clubs, struggling labels, and fanzines.
These gave rise to monumental acts like Black Flag, Minor Threat, The Replacements, Sonic Youth and Beat Happening, while recognizing some of the more obscure but no less important groups like Big Black, Minutemen, and Mission of Burma.

Our Band Could Be Your Life also tells the stories of the men and women in New York, Southern California, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and finally the Pacific Northwest who supported the bands by producing and selling their music. Azerrad recognizes the dual importance of band and label in creating the scene that exploded with Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1992. He limits his investigation of each act to the period of time in which they were on an indie label and purposefully overlooks equally important acts, like R.E.M., because they were always on majors.

The accounts of each band are filled with the anecdotes and in-jokes that will provide any music fan vaguely interested in the period with ample ammunition for snobbery. Stories like Gibby Haynes’ (of the Butthole Surfers) first disturbing on-stage sexual romp with Kathleen Lynch and snippets of the Minutemen’s Mike Watt’s gastrointestinal history do well to balance the humor and hardship of the touring musicians who struggled to establish the path for so many acts to come.

It is granted that this book was not meant to specifically catalogue all of the creative output of these bands but it still has some nitpicking omissions that will bother some music obsessive types (i.e. only one loose reference to Alex Chilton in the entire chapter on The Replacements). But overall, Azerrad manages to put together a work that not only will be often cited in most future work on his subject, he also inspires the reader, giving forceful motivation from his title.

Our Band Could Be Your Life, taken from the Minutemen’s “History Lesson-Part II,” is the kind of book that makes people start bands or write music articles. It challenges those who care about rock music to examine a point of view, respect the work of the past, and create something new. It has also inspired me to wonder if Come As You Are could really be as awful as it sounds.