Our Band Could Be Your Life book

Softcover, 528 pages, 5.5 x 1.55 x 8.25 inches

"Azerrad crisscrosses the American landscape of nineteen-eighties "underground" rock music, from Washington, D.C. (which spawned such bands as Fugazi and Minor Threat), to Washington state (Mudhoney, Beat Happening). He profiles thirteen bands that came of age before Nirvana closed the gap between alternative rock and the mainstream market, and the best stories here are the most marginal, such as the chapter on the explosive Boston band Mission of Burma. Even in his treatment of better-known bands, though, Azerrad does a fine job of demonstrating how the post-punk prime movers of the eighties echoed the original rock-and-rollers of the fifties—springing from a complacent political climate to reject the sentimental excesses of the music that preceded them."  — The New Yorker