Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution

Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear)

A memoir charting thirty years of the American indie rock underground by a musician who was at its center
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Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes, at no point were any of those bands â€œever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.â€ Yet when the members of his 1980s post-hardcore band Bitch Magnet came together for an unlikely reunion tour in 2011, diehard fans traveled from far and wide to attend their shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs.
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Their devotion was testament to the remarkable staying power of indie culture. In indie rockâ€™s pre-Internet glory days, bands like Bitch Magnet, Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youthâ€”operating far outside commercial radio and major label promotionâ€”attracted fans through word of mouth, college DJs, record stores, and zines. They found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours, and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of the time.
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Your Band Sucks is an insiderâ€™s look at that fascinating, outrageous cultureâ€”how it emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and its odd rebirth in recent years as countless bands reunited, briefly and bittersweetly. With backstage access to many key characters on the sceneâ€”and plenty of wit and sharply worded opinionâ€”Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.

Praise for Your Band Sucks:
â€œEverything a cult-fave musicianâ€™s memoir should be: Itâ€™s a seductively readable book that requires no previous knowledge of the author, Bitch Magnet or any other band with which heâ€™s played.â€ â€”Janet Maslin,Â The New York Times
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â€œJon Fine has produced as evocative a portrait of the underground music scene as any wistful, graying post-punk could wish for.â€ â€”The Atlantic

Country	USA
Author	Jon Fine
Binding	Paperback
Brand	imusti
EAN	9780143108283
Edition	Reprint
Feature	Penguin Group USA
ISBN	014310828X
Label	Penguin Books
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	320
PublicationDate	2016-05-03
Publisher	Penguin Books
ReleaseDate	2016-05-03
Studio	Penguin Books

Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear)

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