Our Band Could Be Your Life - Michael Azerrad

An extremely entertaining book chronicling the life and death of a dozen of the most influential punk, grunge and indie rock bands to come up through the 80s and 90s. Azerrad’s writing style leaves a little to be desired on occasion (he really hits the ominous forehadowing wayyyyy too hard) but overall this is really good stuff. One of the most interesting thing is that while all the early punk bands were totally DIY and comitted to it, they all went about it completely differently. Black Flag’s m.o. was vastly different from Minor Threat’s was vastly different from Big Black’s, but they all showed how you can be successful by being your own man and staying committed to the cause of your art regardless of outside influence. The book also does a great job playing connect-the-dots between the first touring punk bands and the massive indie success of Nirvana. Black Flag toured the country and got the network begun, and step by step those who followed built it up until by the time of Sub Pop, everything was in place for the success (or hell depending on your perspective) that followed.

HOWEVER I do have one major complaint. There is a big section about the Butthole Surfers. It gives a history of the band following how they built up their following touring on their wacked-out live show, getting picked up by Touch And Go, then moving to Capitol, after which the story ends. Touch And Go, like Dischord before them, operates on a 50/50 straight split with the bands after expenses for producing an album are covered. After their career stalled at Capitol, the Buttholes sued Touch And Go to recover sole ownership of their back catalog in order to repress the albums themselves and take a better cut of the sales. There was a big article in The Chicago Reader when all this went down which outlines the whole ugly affair. I felt that Azerrad’s decision to not include this story was dishonest in its representation of the band. What is even worse is that the article linked above is quoted in their section of the book, so you know Azerrad read it. It just rubbed me the wrong way that after spending all this time talking up the band and showing how T&G helped build them into everything they were, to skip the story that really shows them in an ugly light.

Other than that the book was great, even if I found the later sections on like Dinosaur Jr. and Mudhoney less interesting than the rest. Well worth anyone’s time checking out.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My first job out of college was working at Touch And Go records. I was an unpaid intern to start then I was hired as Shipping Manager. I think I was there for about a year total, and it was one of the most fun and fascinating experiences of my life. This was like 1992. I can’t begin to imagine how irritating I was to the rest of the employees there. I was just like, googly-eyed drooling fanboy who thought I was so cool. OMG L00K I AM WERKING AT TUCH AND GO!!!! GIVE ME REKERDS LOL! Anyways, Corey Rusk is a really great person, someone I totally respect. Ever since that whole Buttholes thing went down I’ve just been completely disgusted by them, and this undoubtedly colors everything stated above. Regardless I still think it’s valid, and the whole lawsuit issue really should have been included because I mean, fuck those guys.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Books, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.