Rating: 
Summary: I WISH THERE WERE MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS ONE.
Review: I don't know if it is because I lived through this period of time listening to a number of the bands featured in this book, but I found this read fascinating. It is not so much a book about individual bands, but more a documentary of the evolution of a counter-culture and its most representative players. Even though the chapters are about specific bands it also covers the labels and cities that spawn and support them. A great read that I recommend even to the most casual observer of the great independent bands of the past twenty years. If you grow tired of watching "VH-1 behind the music" about drunken overpaid slobs who piss their life away to amass and eventually lose wealth, this book is your fix.
Rating:
Summary: Second Wave Punk Classic
Review: Michael Azerrad has written another gem. He is truly one of my favorite writers working the punk beat. In this one, he traces several 80's punk bands through the exciting artistic triumphs and the mostly insurmountable business obstacles. I knew many of the artists and some were friends of mine. Azerrad's prose took me back to an important personal history and he nailed it. All the excitement of what we were doing with all the frustration of trying to make a living out of the music. The ending nearly brought a tear to this jaded eye. This is great history and I urge anyone remotely interested in punk music or rock music histroy to give it a read.
Rating:
Summary: too young to have lived thru it
Review: i love most of the bands in this book, but becase i only started getting interested in punk/indie rock in 1990 i didn't know much about any of these bands' "salad days." every chapter is like a capsule review of each bands' indie career, and usually fades out by the time - and if - they sign to a major label. what's funny to me is that my favorite chapters were about the bands i like the least - beat happening and surfers. it's entertaining, a little depressing, and yet very inspirational overall to read about each bands' struggles in their early years on the road and on independent labels with varying degrees of business competency. it's also sad sometimes to read about the general disfunction and personality conflicts that led to many of these bands' break-ups.
Rating: 
Summary: good read...
Review: Azerrad does an excellent job in this chronicle of a very maligned decade. To those of you who thought the 80's was Soft Cell, Springsteen, U2, Men at Work, and Aldo Nova, should read this book. The chapters on Black Flag and Butthole Surfers are great...the Replacements section should have covered their entire career; even though they moved to a major label halfway thru their lifespan, they were "indie" in attitude to almost the bitter end. It's still flabbergasting that this band did not somehow become the biggest in the world (instead, we got U2 and R.E.M.)...Azerrad brings home some very fond memories.
Rating:
Summary: Smell the sweat
Review: A brave endeavor, this one. Azerrad tells it like it was for the mostly 80s punk scene, revisiting some of the heavyweights--Black Flag, Minor Threat, etc.--along with all the toil they faced as they paved the road for what many underground bands now take for granted: touring on shoestring budgets in the middle of nowhere USA, recording on a whim, making their own CDs and so forth. Azerrad makes it clear just who broke ground, and he does so with a high journalistic integrity: He's intimate with each band member quoted but not so close as to refrain from documenting the many downsides exhibited by each punk band, from style changes to personality conflicts. He notes their humor too, and the lack thereof, as with Fugazi, a band that is notably into not having a good time, onstage or off. When the band wallows in excrement, like the Butthole Surfers did, Azerrad makes the reader feel as if he were caked in it right along with them. When SST rips off their bands, so too does the reader feel ripped off. Which is why Azerrad should be commended in many regards. To even think about such a document raises many problems: which bands to focus on, who to interview (especially so long after the fact), whose side to lend more credence to when the opposition is so obviously befuddled and so on. Which bands deserve the print is always a thorny issue in the high-and-mighty underground punk scene. Stronger emphasis on this characteristically political decision deserves more attention in light of its sensitive nature. Scenes are made and destroyed this way, and ironically, Azerrad's book in its own way contributes to this phenomenon even though, for many of the bands, it is well after the fact. American punk's background is importantly documented in this book, even if its history is reconstructed ever so slightly. It is therefore valid to question the inclusion of a band like Beat Happening when bands like 7 Seconds, Bikini Kill, Green Day or The Offspring (as a few obvious examples) could have provided other important perspectives on the emergence of independent punk into the mainstream. But any attempt at a document of this sort will face this issue, and Azerrad pulls it off with flying colors despite a few shortcomings. It is a luminous volume, and the band members' sweat colorfully drips off of each page so much so that you forget that Azerrad himself probably sweat for years in order for you to relive it.
Rating:
Summary: Inspirational, Enlightening, Hilarious
Review: I picked up a copy of this book, almost expecting it to be like medicine: here are bands that I should have been more familiar with during my teen years in the eighties, so I'd better buckle down and learn about them. As it turned out, I was hooked from the first chapter about the shenanigans of Black Flag. This is a very entertaining read, not only for the standard stories of punk rock misbehavior (the Butthole Surfers chapter alone is worth the cost of the book), but also because the reader can't help but be struck by the dedication and sacrifices made by these artists. Their work ethic was astounding, and the rewards few and far between. Every spoiled college student, every armchair punk who sniffs about their once-favorite band selling out should be have this book carved into their sunken chests. Azerrad does a great job of combining entertaining storytelling with insightful analysis. Each band profiled had a different personality (or several), but they all show up in each other's stories, and the reader is afforded a view of the larger picture that is often lacking in individual bands' stories. As you read, you understand why he chose the bands he did, though there are a few more I would like to have seen profiled, as they are mentioned so often in the book as influences, e.g.: Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains and Meat Puppets. I finished this book right around the time the Video Music Awards were on MTV, and I'm ready to start an underground band now. We need another revolution! Any volunteers?
Rating:
Summary: Everybody's Punk
Review: I like this book a great deal; Azerrad writes well, for the most part, and neatly (perhaps too neatly) encapsulates some of the most important bands of the last 20 years, from Black Flag to (*gak*) Beat Happening. The book is loaded with interesting tidbits, stories, vignettes, and so forth. There are some great lines throughout, and it seems nearly every chapter has somebody offended by Public Image Ltd., in one way or another, which'll probably have John Lydon coughing up his tea and biscuits if he bothers to read it. I am unsure whether Azerrad's doing indie rock revisionism in this work, however. The stories fall within the same narrative confines -- quirky, disenfranchised would-be rockers XYZ run into each other in an amusing fashion; decide to form a band; against all odds, they produce considerable sonic (and, of course, punk rock) excellence until they either implode or join a major label. They all seem to follow this basic arc, which seems a trifle tidy to me. I came in on the earlier, punkier side of things (Black Flag, the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat), and I feel like Azerrad is weaving a tapestry linking those important bands to grunge and "alternative," creating a seamless web of musical innovation and negation culminating in Cobain's primal sonic scream. Not like the later bands aren't important, of course, but I think they were very different from each other, while Azerrad tries to paint them all with the same punk rock paintbrush -- it comes out more in the later chapters, where his comments are the equivalent of "how punk rock is THAT?" or "You can't get much more punk rock than that." Sure you can, Michael. That seems an important thing for folks to do these days; punk retains credibility, beauty, purity, and power, all these years later, so scenesters seek to identify with it, rather than come up with a new idea. Maybe there are no new ideas, anymore: clean guitars vs. fuzzy guitars; loud vs. quiet; fast vs. slow; long songs vs. short songs, etc. Whatever the case, everybody seems either punk or hip-hop nowadays. That said, I like how Azerrad dealt with each band, gave them their own chapter, although I think some deserved longer chapters than others, in my opinion. And the lack of a follow-up section in each chapter, sort of a "where are they now" seems lacking to me. If you haven't heard (or heard of) the bands he's referring to, then please go out and start listening to them!!! You'll never be the same, and it'll certainly help you appreciate what he's talking about more, and give you an inkling of how great these bands were. The omission of the Bad Brains is truly surprising to me. All in all, this book is worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Inspiring
Review: An excellent read that will provide both the fanatic and the casual reader with an excellent background on the sounds and feelings of 1980's indie rock. To read about some of the struggles these bands went through is really inspiring, and it helps to reinforce how blown away some of these bands (Dinosaur Jr, Butthole Surfers) must have been when they acheived some degree of mainstream success. It also provides a great dialgoue on the whole "indie vs. major label" dilemna that these bands went through, and it's implications for their music and the culture at large. If you're a fan of "alternative" rock, or any of these bands, you will find these stories entertaining, enlightening and inspiring. Plus, you'll probably have a whole new list of cd's to buy or pull out of the closet! It's also helped me to re-discover some of these artists. After reading about Ian McKaye, I have a new respect for him, and I'm going to go out and buy some Dischord cd's, just because he deserves it! Worthwhile!
Rating: 
Summary: our band could be your life
Review: i remember reading Come as You Are when i was in, like, the eigth grade or something, and i have to come clean and admit that that book turned me onto a lot of bands which i probably wouldn't have discovered for a long time thereafter, because, well, living in suburbia, you don't tend to find out about anything even somewhat subversive, unless you're counting, say, snoop doggie dog, and even then you'd probably be pretty hard pressed to relate, especially if you're white and come from a middle class background, but i guess there's always trying. and in that sense, i think that was one of the most important books that i read in the eight grade, and probably my entire high school experience. so when i stumbled across azerrad's our band at the library the other day, i immediately wanted to check it out. ultimately, though, i don't really see what the point of all this is. i mean, anyone who was ironically turned on to punk rock in the early 1990's, when nirvana became so big, and understood that music could actually transcend commodity and might mean something beyond donning that as a fashion statement and showing up to school in ripped jeans for a few days, were most likely compelled to find out about the bands that did proceed that whole phenomenon. and i think in many ways that's what this book is attempting to do, acting as sort of a bridge to put the whole nirvana thing in better perspective, as someone else pointed out--a lot like legs mcneil's book, please kill me, delineates 70's punk rock scene and how it all comes together, though without the oral narrative. but anyone who has some small modicum of interest in picking up this book probably already knows a good deal about the bands contained within it (though maybe not all of them, because azerrad strangely feels compelled to cover everything from a band like black flag to beat happening, which is kind of strange in itself-- it would have been awesome if azerrad asked henry rollins what he thinks about being lumped in with a band like beat happening). so while this is a well detailed book, offering a lot of things that you may or may not have known about your band of choice(because, well, no one can like all of these bands, or even find them all relevant), it seems probabal that if you're reading this, these bands are most likely already your life, or at least a part of it.
Rating:
Summary: And It's Accurate, Too!
Review: I can't vouch for the other twelve chapters, but -- speaking as someone who was there and fairly close to the inside -- Azerrad does a truly remarkable job with Mission of Burma, both in terms of getting the facts right, and capturing a sense of time and place, the mood of the Boston scene in their heyday. That gives me a lot of faith that the remarkable portraits of the other bands are as fair and accurate as they are vivid. A truly significant achievement in rock journalism.
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