Jim Groom

Revisiting the book that immortalized the ’80s indie punk rock scene · For Our Consideration · The A.V. Club

Maybe the most important legacy of the bands in the book is an approach that [Minutemen’s] Mike Watt outlines in Our Band Could Be Your Life: “We just could never see mass acceptance of our music. But that didn’t make it little to us—it was still important. But if we were going to do it, we had to make sure the dream fit the tent. A massive bourgeois tent would be too much dead weight. Let’s just carry enough to get us there.” That is the crux of the book and it applies more than ever today, as making music becomes even less lucrative than it ever was.