Our band could be your life

[Thurston_Whore]

marchtofuzz said:

Thurston_Whore and me are evil twins (read mods) on this board.


cheers

You been taking those pill's again mate?

[thorn]

no methinks the best (funniest) chapter is on mudhoney and sonic youth, the shit they used to do!!!!!!

[RaunchHands]

i think it's a good book, even if it has its faults. i think if you consider it as aimed to those who don't know much about the american underground and underground music processes in general (and god knows if a lot of young kids that grew up glued to internet don't need to be reminded what a distro really is) then yes, it's a great tome.

i have been listening to that kind of music for over ten years now and reading tons of zines, web bios etc, so i didn't find anything really new in it. sure it's nice to have the history of so many good bands told with style.

my main complain is that azerrad based some of his chapters on little more than a couple of interviews. i remember some big black fan complaining that 99% of the quotes from that band's chapter were taken from a single forced exposure interview. i would have loved some more first hand stuff, things i can't find elsewhere.

i agree that the butthole surfers one is by far the funniest chapter of the bunch. "who are you?!?", "i'm alex chilton". that has me rolling on the floor every time i read it. it's almost unbelievable how those guys managed to survive for so many years living in those desperate conditions, and making music, even!

another very cool part is the one devoted to beat happening. here, again, most of the quotes come from a famous interview some girl that would later go and play with bratmobile did with them back in the days. and for some reason the quote of steve turner talking about calvin's love for teenage girls has been slightly softened. but the pages about the history of olympia's music community are really well written and so is the band history as a whoel.

i know i'm probably supposed to say this but one of the most disappointing parts was the one about mudhoney. azerrad seems to try really hard to show the parallel trajectories of mudhoney and sub pop, and frankly i don't think that's a good idea. sub pop gest most of the spotlight, and it's not like they don't deserve it, but that goes to mudhoney's expense, whose history and achevements sound way less impressive than the ones of green river and even mr epp.

also, mudhoney is basically the only band to suffer in a major way from azerrad's VERY questionable decision to only analyze the bands and their records during their tenures on independent labels. what the fuck? the migration of indie bands from small labels to the majors was one of the turning points of the 88-92 years, so why this?

one is also left with the feeling that the book does nothing to dispel the myth of mudhoney as a band that released a great debut EP, a weak first LP and a good second album (that saved sub pop's ass, no less) and then pretty much disappeared after that.

on the very last page, piece of cake is mentioned and is described as a "rush job". it's then added that the band was dropped by warners after "three low selling albums" (never mind that one was an EP and that the others were two good to great low selling albums). the fact that one full year before he finished his book mudhoney had already signed back with sub pop for the release of their retrospective box set apparently didn't impress azerrad much, either.

so yeah, really good book, i'd totally reccomend it to all the zombie nirvana / pj / grunge / qotsa fans out there, but one of its potentially best stories has yet to be written.

[norecess]

At first, thanks everyone for this warm welcome *lol*

And RaunchHands, I agree with you the Mudhoney chapter is not as good as the other ones. I think Azzerad just unintentially compared their success with the grunge explosion so that's why he approached them pretty negative. I enjoyed the story about Sub Pop though.

But then again, isn't Dischord the main subject in the Minor Threat chapter either? I'm not too sure on this one, it's been a while since I've read the book.

Another thing on Gibb Haynes, didn't he also pissed of Thurston Moore by asking him if he enjoyed fucking Patti Smith or something like that? I don't know, maybe I made it up myself. I'm good at that.

[Smallstone]

The Gibby Haynes - Thurston Moore interface happened during a 1989 interview the two of them conducted along with J Mascis for Melody Maker. It was to promote the Blast First compilation 'Nothing Short Of Total War'.
Gibby asked Thurston if he has screwed Lydia Lunch.
He also challenged Thurston questioning whether or not Thurston was his real name! Mr Moore kinda loses it a bit.
The whole interview is hilarious:)
I will post some more moments soon.

[Thurston_Whore]

Kool man.I didnt know anything about this but then again i havent read the book sad i know i dont own it yet

[thorn]

indeedo, some of the book it a bit based on micheal azerads opinoin not what ACTUALLY happened, which is a bit wierd but still its a pretty cool book!!!

[Smallstone]

True, but most if not all of 'history' be it musical/social/military is opinion and conjecture rather than 'fact'. It's not really weird at all. What is 'fact' anyway..... The only people who really know what ACTUALLY happened are those that were there. But say you ask 5 people in a band about what happened on any given subject, say a gig, a rehearsal whatever, you're gonna get 5 different answers. Human nature. This book is just one guys attempt at contextualising all this Alt Rock / pre grunge stuff.
However you could challenge the very premise of this book (if you were really bored!). As in why lump these particular bands in together anyway? What REALLY do Mudhoney have in common with say the Buttholes or Big Black? Musically they're not THAT similar. They're both from the US. They record/recorded for indies. They were part of a pretty wide ranging in style and content for want of a better word: 'scene'. Ethically I don't think for example Albini has that much in common with Mudhoney and if you dig into their history there's actually quite a bit of antipathy between them. Likewise the Buttholes and Fugazi. Polar opposites I'd say.
I'm not really ragging on the book as I love it and often dip into it and re-read chapters but as we all seem to agree it has it's faults. Primarily the pretty shoddy Mudhoney chapter. Sub Pop - blah blah blah.

[I love Kim Deal]

Must......buy......book.