Punchy. Prickly. Personal.

One of the all-time best books about music is Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad. Released in2001, it dove deep into the careers of ‘80s indie icons like Black Flag, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Minor Threat, Mudhoney, and more. For all of the details about how ugly, fractious, and demeaning life on the road as an independent rock group could be, the book still captured the camaraderie of making music with warmth and personality. Most people who read it either wanted to be in a band or wanted to write about bands.

With Your Band Sucks, Jon Fine intentionally flips that model on its head and flips it the bird. With only one oblique reference to Azerrad and his book, this one feels like a direct rebuke to the rampant optimism with its “You can do it, too” energy. Subtitled “What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution,” he talks openly about the struggles of hungry and talented bands that existed at the next layer down. In fact, his most well-known band, Bitch Magnet, had a super-dedicated fanbase and played shows on a semi-regular basis with the bigger indie acts of the era.

However, Fine tempers what could have been a grumpy, woe-is-me screed about wasted youth with the wisdom of growing up. Not only does he open up about his own faults, many of which led to the dissolution of several bands, but he looks back on the entire scene without being so jaded. To be clear, he doesn’t pull any punches about bands he doesn’t like, the mistakes that the entire scene made when it came to providing the long-term health of music, or the perpetual reunion economy that fuels the indie rock of his era. At its core, he gives readers a glimpse into the heady world ‘80s and ‘90s indie rock without any sort of glitz or glamour.