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What made you decide to write a book on 80s?
"Because it had to be done. This hugely influential and fascinating era was routinely ignored in the history books and someone had to do it. So I did it myself."
On what basis did you decide to pick Mission of Burma and not Bad Brains or Dead Kennedys for example?
You have no problems admitting it is an incomplete book. What are some of the bands that nearly ended up in the book - but didn't?
In your introduction you mention that the bands took cues from the 60s counterculture. How was it different for the bands in the 80s?
Was it just about rebelling against the Republican establishment and the then current mainstream stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna? Or would that be a simplistic view?
Some of the stories have already appeared in book form, like Henry Rollins' Get In The Van. Some stories appear here for the first time. Was it easy to convince for example Clint Conley or Lou Barlow talking about the past?
Although the battle was more fun than the arrival, at times I wonder what kept bands like the Hüsker Dü going. They had to endure so much just to fill a tiny club and sell a few thousand records. Why did they keep going?
For me the book's message seems to be that quality and quantity aren't related. Actually sometimes it felt as though the mainstream can't produce good music. Can a big star create art?
You start the book with Black Flag. In the last chapter we can read all about Beat Happening. You can't get more different than that! What do all the bands share?
In your book - and in reality - not only the bands were relevant. The clubs, zines and labels played a major role in the underground scene as well. Nowadays we also have the Internet. From MP3s to online magazines, information is far easier to get a hold of. How do you see the role of the internet?
All the bands mentioned in the book - and others as well - laid the foundation for Nirvana. What did these bands lack, that Nirvana did have, to become a million-selling supergroup?
In documentaries the producers tend to skip the 80s. Why do you think they forget to mention bands like Sonic Youth, Bad Brains and/or the Replacements?
Has it been a positive influence? You could say that looking at Pearl Jam spawning Creed or Bush serving us a dose of Nirvana Lite, it hasn't been all good.
Before I read the chapter on the Minutemen, I couldn't even finish the first side of Double Nickels On The Dime. Now I have it on repeat. Did your opinion on some bands change during the writing of the book?
Post Nevermind and certainly now there are so many more records being released. On the one hand you could say it is easier to release a record. On the other hand it is as hard to get noticed. There's no denying that the success of Nevermind changed everything. But did it change for the better or for the worse?
How do you evaluate the scene now?
Finally what's next for you? Will you be at the Mission of Burma show? http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/709/our-band-could-be-your-life/977/
"The question seems to imply that I included Mission of Burma at the expense of Bad Brains and Dead Kennedys, which is not the case. I chose the bands in Our Band Could Be Your Life because they most fully represented some key aspect of the arc which the American indie underground took between 1981 and 1991. Those aspects could mean a sound, a philosophy, a region, a label or just a noted person (Steve Albini or Calvin Johnson, for instance). That entailed making considered determinations about which bands best suited the purposes of the narrative.
For instance, I knew I had to write about DC hardcore. Bad Brains surely invented the genre but did their best and most influential work pre-1981. Minor Threat, on the other hand, not only perfected and popularized the form but founded Dischord Records, networked extensively and invented the concept of straight edge. The choice was obvious.
I also knew I had to include a California hardcore band. Once again, Dead Kennedys did their best work pre-1981 and were never stylistic innovators; on the other hand, Black Flag made their best album in 1981 when a guy named Henry Rollins joined the band, which proceeded to do more to pioneer both the indie circuit and the sound of what would become alternative rock than any other. Furthermore, compare the impact of the Dead Kennedys' label Alternative Tentacles to the impact of Black Flag's label SST. No contest.
Mission of Burma not only represents the thriving Boston scene at the time, but they show how even a band that would now be considered relatively accessible was sure to fail commercially at the time, since there was no infrastucture - venues, fanzines, record stores, radio, etc. - to support them. And their melodic and distorted music, with its quiet verses and loud, anthemic choruses, turned out to be visionary and hugely influential."
"Actually, I don't think that's a "problem" to which I must "admit." This was a populous and sprawling community; a thorough profile of its every resident would take the better part of a lifetime. The whole point of the form of Our Band Could Be Your Life is that it is representational - it in fact tells the complete story using certain bands as examples.
For that reason, there were no bands that "nearly ended up in the book." I carefully chose bands that fit the narrative and then proceeded to write their stories."
"The big difference was that there were far more Baby Boomers than there were in the next generation (which some people call "the Lost Generation" for good reason). All those Baby Boomers constituted a demographic that could not be ignored by the music industry and the culture in general. There was just too much money to be made on all those kids. Note that all the big so-called hippie bands - the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, etc. - were on major labels.
By the time punk and post-punk came along, those same Baby Boomers controlled the culture, including record labels and radio stations. But they didn't get this new punk music - and because Baby Boomers have a lot of trouble admitting they're getting old, they simply pretended punk didn't exist and kept playing the Doors and Led Zeppelin on the radio. After a while, Generation X came along - and since they were just as numerous as the Baby Boomers, they got what they wanted. And what they wanted was bands like Nirvana.
Many of the American indie bands of the Eighties did take cues from the Sixties counterculture - after all, that was the only counterculture they knew before punk. They were just old enough to remember the hippies and regretted that they had been a little too young to participate in that movement. But they also saw how the hippies totally sold out. They vowed not to make the same mistake."
"That would be a simplistic view. As Our Band Could Be Your Life demonstrates over and over, these bands were doing whatever they wanted. Very often, that flew in the face of what was happening in the mainstream. But sometimes it didn't - the entrpreneurial streak of the indie scene was right in step with the times, for instance. These bands were more sophisticated than to merely contradict whatever the mainstream was doing. That would make them as captive to the mainstream as someone who was working within it.
And by the way, Madonna and Michael Jackson are still "current mainstream stars."
"First of all, let's make this perfectly clear: my story of Black Flag did not appear in Rollins' Get in the Van, which is a separate book by another person.
To answer your question, it was not difficult to convince people like Clint Conley or Lou Barlow to tell their stories. They were very justifiably proud of what they had accomplished and were glad, like virtually everyone else in Our Band Could Be Your Life, that their story was finally being told. The only reason they'd never spoken about it before was because no one had asked."
"Those people kept going despite incredible adversity because their bands were really, really great. I don't know if you've ever played in a really good rock band - I have, and it's totally intoxicating. You'll do anything to keep it going, even if you hate the other people in the group. It's that good."
"You should check out this band called the Beatles, they're really cool."
"A belief that the quality of one's music is validated only by how true it is to one's heart."
"Well, it saves everyone a lot of phone bills, for one thing! A lot of bands now schedule their tours, deliver their artwork, publicize their shows and music and conduct other business via the Internet. Fanzines can exist without needing to pay for paper, printing and postage. Radio stations don't need a transmitter or even CDs. It provides precisely the kind of liberation and empowerment that the Eighties indie scene only dreamed of."
1. Very tuneful songs
2. A good-looking frontman
3. Top-notch production
4. MTV
5. Most of all, timing. Nirvana benefited from how all those other bands had, for years, gradually opened up the ears (and wallets) of the listening public.
1. Those bands didn't sell any records. Documentaries about obscure bands don't get good ratings.
2. Up until relatively recently, the people who produce those documentaries have been too old to have grasped that music when it came out. So they ignored it because they didn't understand it.
"That's if you only look at the mainstream, which always co-opts the underground eventually. Don't forget the incredibly vital, flourishing indie scene that exists today, and it was all built on the shoulders of the people profiled in Our Band Could Be Your Life."
"Yes. They say familiarity breeds contempt, but with music it's the opposite - the more I played these bands, the more I loved them. Somehow, knowing the stories behind the bands in Our Band Could Be Your LifeÊmade me appreciate their records more. And that's exactly the effect it seems to have on readers, too. I couldn't be more pleased about that."
"Neither. It just changed."
"I think it's great. There are lots of good bands and they can make well recorded records and earn a decent living, as opposed to the way it used to be."
"I'm currently deciding on what will be my next book. I'm also getting ready to record with my band the King of France; after that, we'll look for a label to put out our record. And yes, I will be at the Mission of Burma show. I wouldn't miss it for the world!"
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