{"id":5050,"date":"2013-07-13T03:48:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T03:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/austinkleon-michael-azerrad-our-band-could-be\/"},"modified":"2021-07-20T21:20:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T21:20:43","slug":"austinkleon-michael-azerrad-our-band-could-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/austinkleon-michael-azerrad-our-band-could-be\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-5050 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/austinkleon-michael-azerrad-our-band-could-be\/attachment\/5051\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/tumblr_mpua04Sa9H1qz6f4bo1_1280.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/tumblr_mpua04Sa9H1qz6f4bo1_1280.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/tumblr_mpua04Sa9H1qz6f4bo1_1280.jpg?zoom=2&amp;resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/tumblr_mpua04Sa9H1qz6f4bo1_1280.jpg?zoom=3&amp;resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tumblr.austinkleon.com\/post\/55304565503\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">austinkleon<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Michael Azerrad, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0316787531\/wwwaustinkleo-20\/ref=nosim\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI must create a system or be enslaved by another man\u2019s.\u201d<br \/>\n  \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.blakearchive.org\/exist\/blake\/archive\/transcription.xq?objectid=jerusalem.e.illbk.10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">William Blake<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If you think life is rough for indie bands nowadays, you need to read this book. I especially liked the chapters about The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and Fugazi.<\/p>\n<p>Some favorite bits below.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On \u201cjamming econo,\u201d or, keeping your overhead low and accepting your limitations:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Corporate rock was about living large; indie was about living realistically and being proud of it. Indie bands didn\u2019t need million-dollar promotional budgets and multiple costume changes. All they needed was to believe in themselves and for a few other people to believe in them, too. You didn\u2019t need some big corporation to fund you, or even verify that you were any good. It was about viewing as a virtue what most saw as a limitation.<\/p>\n<p>The Minutemen called it \u201cjamming econo.&ldquo; And not only could you jam econo with your rock group \u2014 you could jam econo on your job, in your buying habits, in your whole way of living. You could take this particular approach to music and apply it to just about anything else you wanted to. You could be beholden only to yourself and the values and people you respected. You could take charge of your own existence. Or as the Minutemen put it in a song, \u201cOur band could be your life.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, \u201cLowering your sights was raising your sights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Most of the bands in the book either held day jobs or lived on next-to-nothing. It\u2019s incredible how frugal bands had to be\u2014at Mission of Burma\u2019s peak, they were only making $500 a month, split between four members. The Minutemen recorded DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME for $1,100. Interestingly, some of the noisiest and nastiest bands were the best at the business side: Big Black always made money on tour, and the Butthole Surfers \u201csold out\u201d as soon as they could.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On promotion:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mike Watt of The Minutemen:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhere we had the most control was at the gigs. So the idea was to get people to the gig. We had divided the whole world into two categories: there was flyers and there was the gig. You\u2019re either doing the gig, which is like one hour of your life, or everything else to get people to the gig. Interviews were flyers, videos were flyers, even records were flyers. We didn\u2019t tour to promote records, we made records to promote the tours, because the gig was where you could make the money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>On networking and sharing:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere weren\u2019t too many secrets back then,\u201d said Mission of Burma manager Jim Coffman. \u201cEverybody was just kind of helping everybody out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sonic Youth was especially good at networking \u2014 Thurston Moore published a fanzine in which he profiled bands and musicians he wanted to connect with, they would figure out who the hot critics were and go schmooze with them at parties, and they would do everything they could to help out other bands, building up tons of good will. A lot of this was calculated, of course, but it also just was a natural outgrowth of the band members\u2019 interests and curiosities. Here\u2019s Lee Ranaldo:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We\u2019re all voracious acquirers of information, whether it be books or movies or whatever, we\u2019re just really vastly into what\u2019s going on in culture aad trying to synthesize what\u2019s going on. I think that was just a natural impetus, a natural tendency\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of bands are trying to present themselves as a singular entity in the center of it all. And I think we\u2019ve always been the exact opposite, trying to present ourselves amidst a universe or a society of stuff going on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A few more favorite quotes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ian MacKaye: \u201cI didn\u2019t know enough about the world to really sing about it. But I knew enough about my world to sing about it.\u201d <\/li>\n<li>Bob Mould: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so much about \u2018smash the system\u2019 but \u2018make our own system\u2019.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Lee Ranaldo: \u201cWhen you tuned a guitar a new way, you were a beginner all over again and you could discover all sorts of new things.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Mike Watt: \u201cYou need bad things to make good things. It\u2019s like with farming\u2014 if you want to grow a good crop, you need a lot of manure.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Steve Albini: \u201cThe greatest thing about punk rock for me, as an outsider, was that the concept that you had to be allowed in was no longer valid. You could be operating in a vacuum, you could be as fucked up an individual as you cared to be, and if you did something of worth, all these external conditions were immaterial.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Lou Barlow: \u201cIf you want something to happen, you write a song about it.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Brendan Canty: \u201cNo matter what you do, you\u2019re probably going to be lost in the annals of music, so you might as well play what you feel like.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s interesting to compare the structure of this book to Will Herme\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/tumblr.austinkleon.com\/post\/15949763951\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LOVE GOES TO BUILDINGS ON FIRE<\/a>, which also covers a particular music scene in a set time period, but tell its story chronologically, rather than band-by-band. It\u2019d also be fun to do a remix of this book and collage and juxtapose excerpts based on themes, such as \u201cthe van,\u201d \u201cin the studio,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n<p>Filed under: <a href=\"http:\/\/tumblr.austinkleon.com\/tagged\/my+reading+year+2013\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">my reading year 2013<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>austinkleon: Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 \u201cI must create a system or be enslaved by another man\u2019s.\u201d \u2014William Blake If you think life is rough for indie bands nowadays, you need to read this book. I especially liked the chapters about The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5052,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions\/5052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}