Reviews
In 2006 The Guardian rated Our Band Could Be Your Life as one of the 50 best music books ever written. In 2009, Paste magazine named the book one of the 12 best music books of the decade. The Los Angeles Times listed it as one of "46 Essential Rock Reads." In a review of the book in the Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau wrote, "...Let me give Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life its well-earned thumbs-up. Here's my rave: While reading this 500-page history of '80s indie-rock, I only resorted to something lighter to avoid putting my back out. All 13 profiles are page-turners."
In the New York Times Book Review, critic Eric Weisbard wrote, "In the decade Azerrad covers, indie America proved that world-class rock could be created outside corporate structures....Our Band Could Be Your Life passionately resurrects thirteen indie groups...Azerrad is adept at drawing out musicians' war stories -- and this bare-bones movement was full of them." Time's Benjamin Nugent said it was "A timely reminder that Cobain and company were merely a key regiment in the motley alt-rock army...Our Band Could Be Your Life narrates, down to the homemade posters and tour van repairs, how these bands gradually built up an audience large enough to make record labels and critics take notice."
The book review website Baby Got Books said "If you graduated high school (or were at least supposed to graduate) any time between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s and have any interest whatsoever in music, you absolutely must read this book. While it tells the story of bands that truly lived the indie/punk lifestyle, it also sheds a brand new light (not always favorable) on the people in those bands. Fascinating stuff." Another writer states that "As music history, this book is important. None of these bands got much coverage in mainstream rock magazines while they were doing their most innovative and vital work, and Azerrad has done a great job of gathering ex-bandmembers up for revealing interviews...However, the book collapses under the weight of its own in-crowd cool."
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