Jon Fine spent nearly 30 years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in his memoir, Your Band Sucks (Viking), at no point were any of those bands "ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame." With backstage access to many key characters in the scene, Fine's memoir affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history. Fine will be joined in conversation by Douglas Wolk, author of Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean.

"It’s hard to remember the times when if you wanted to hear your favorite song, you had two choices: you could get yourself to a record store and buy an overpriced album or you could sit by the radio and wait for it to come on. Later you could also try to find it on MTV, if you were one of the fortunate even to have MTV.

But what if you didn’t like the kind of popular music they played on the radio? What if you yearned for music that was a little more edgy?

Jon Fine’s upcoming memoir YOUR BAND SUCKS: What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear) is a loving chronicle of his time in the indie rock scene from an insider who played the circuit, helped build a unique sub‐culture, and witnessed its downfall. Early reviewers have already proclaimed that the book deserves a spot among the best books about indie rock. Publisher’s Weekly has placed the book on its list of Best Summer Books of 2015. The Atlantic champions YOUR BAND SUCKS as the most evocative portrait of the underground music scene any wistful, graying post-punk could wish for.

Jon Fine, a young, aspiring rocker in suburban New Jersey was one of those teens who hated pop music. He hated MTV almost as much as he hated the hair metal cover bands that his high school friends played in. It wasn’t until he made it to college at Oberlin, a haven for progressive attitudes and the arts, where he began to meet other people like him; people who aspired far higher than the brain dead and desperately mediocre music that dominated the pop scene. It was there where he met and formed a band with two other musicians, Sooyoung Park and Orestes Morfin. They called themselves Bitch Magnet.

They were loud, aggressive and anything but formulaic. In the beginning, touring was a challenge but they persevered along with a whole network of like‐minded bands and their fans who were building an indie rock network for themselves. Bands like Mission of Burma and Jesus Lizard as well as Sonic Youth and Nirvana, all traveled through the same towns and played the same clubs. They booked their own shows and hauled their own gear. And their fans learned about gigs through a network of samizdat: photocopied zines, record store Paul Reveres, and handmade flyers pasted around town. Most of these indie bands were outsiders – with no threat of actual fame – but they created their own subculture where they were kings.

The success of Nirvana and the handful of other bands that broke through and secured recording deals with major labels also, ironically, hailed the end of the era. While Nirvana sold millions of records, most of these bands were not money makers. They broke up, grew up, or moved on. The internet gave many of them, including Bitch Magnet, a brief and sweet revival, when they geared up for one last tour or some festivals. But, for the most part, the scene – the record stores, bookstores, and dive bars they frequented – was gone. YOUR BAND SUCKS is a love letter to the birth of the indie rock scene and the misfits that found their home in it by an award‐winning journalist who was there when it happened." Press Release