Kudos to a person I didn’t know in a sports forum, in the post dial-up internet era, for recommending Michael Azerrad’s brilliant Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–1991. It is a book that has directly shaped the person I am today. Much gratitude to Michael Azerrad for publishing the book.
From a young age until I purchased a copy of Our Band when I was 23, a handful of years after it was published, I had accepted the formats I was given in my radio market. My parents both listened to the same local radio station, which played a lot of songs from their own youth. When alone in my teenage years, I switched between my own small CD collection and listening to a local market radio station that played either Rock or Grunge genre music, or a second local market station that mainly played Alternative but also sprinkled in some occasional Grunge. This was a time before widespread media conglomeration, and I give thanks to both of those radio stations for providing musical alternatives to dip our toes in, and for serving as a safe haven from exclusively top 40 radio. I had yet to experience the “college radio,” “left of the dial,” or true “indie” experience. Because of those two radio stations, I got to listen to more popular alternative songs of artists featured in Our Band, like “Pepper” by the Butthole Surfers, “Teen Age Riot,” and “Candle” by Sonic Youth.
When I first read Our Band, I read it continuously. I remember on first read, absolutely falling in love with the Minutemen, SST label, Hüsker Dü, and the Replacements. It was one of the few books that I took a pencil to write down notes on what stories and which indie record labels to further explore their catalogs, one of the few books that I bent the corners of pages on what albums I should listen to. The brilliant “History Lesson – Part II” by the Minutemen spoke to me and became my new favorite song, decades after it became an ethos for a scene at the time. A few Replacements songs: “Unsatisfied,” “Bastards of Young,” and “Can’t Hardly Wait” immediately caught my eye. There are far too many amazing songs and albums from the artists listed in Our Band to name every one, so please, read the book. I first read Our Band during the early days of YouTube and when iPods were still thriving, so I remember seeking out and purchasing CDs from the bands in the book. Excitedly holding a physical copy in my hands… the relatable joy that you only get with physical formats of media.
I remember absolutely loving Michael Azerrad’s storytelling and narrative voice in Our Band, even though I was living alone in this simple basement level apartment, I was so damn excited to be there, reading the next chapter. I remember on first read, absolutely falling in love with the music and characters, the origins of the book title, in the band the Minutemen, the SST label, Hüsker Dü, Fugazi (and their minimalist DIY approach), and The Replacements. Bands that I wasn’t familiar with before reading. Our Band and my own listening experience had added the word delve/delving to my common vocabulary usage, as it conveyed my own journey into the new to me artists, bands, labels, albums, and their stories that I had no prior knowledge of before reading Our Band. I went and paired Our Band with the amazingly formatted and informative, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die by Robert Dimery, which added so many amazing new albums and artists into my life, ones outside of Azerrad’s underground scene.
After reading Our Band, I spoke with a long-time, good friend who was living 90 miles away (not Josh, but a mutual friend) who had also recently read Our Band independently and gone through their own wonderful delve into the bands featured in the book. In person, we began having conversations about our own listening experiences and discussing our favorite Mats albums (and other bands) in order of listening preference. While conversations about our favorite Mats album have evolved over time with new reissues and our changing personal tastes as we listen to more music, they are conversations I always love having. Our friendship strengthened and improved, due in part to conversations we had about bands we loved and had just discovered.
I soon filled up my 80 GB iPod Classic and listened to iTunes a lot more than local radio. It was a short period of time before I discovered there was a college radio station in my new area, a few years later our own left of the dial music station came to town and is still supported by our market, and around the same time that station started playing music, I found a hard cover version of Our Band, so I gifted my original copy to Josh. Having his own copy and listening to their music helped Josh become a bigger fan of the bands in Our Band as well. And before I realized, the library is an excellent source of free music to listen to. At about the same time in my life, I decided to buy a record player, a stereo receiver, and speakers, and purchase so much vinyl so quickly, both online and from great local record stores.
Clickable URL hyperlinks to each book’s Wikipedia page are included below, for exploration purposes. While you can find both books online, please support your local music and bookstores when you can!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Albums_You_Must_Hear_Before_You_Die
Thanks for reading, and happy music exploration!
Alex
Scummy Water Tower Productions co-founder, reviewer, business manager, and editor. Thank you for visiting this site: scummywatertower.com, and YouTube for Water Tower Sessions!
Contact me: alex@scummywatertower.com
