The title comes from a Minutemen lyric, and it crystallizes the book’s thesis better than anything Azerrad could have written himself: punk rock was an idea, not a musical style. The Minutemen’s sense of musical liberation, their political engagement, and their frugality were metaphors for a whole mode of living. This book is the story of thirteen bands who took that idea seriously enough to build an entire parallel infrastructure around it.
DIY is punk’s core mentality. Punk was about starting a label, touring, and taking control. You want a record? You pay the pressing plant. It was a new frontier. Azerrad’s best insight is about how this commercial hopelessness was exactly what held the scene together. Because it was such a small world, cooperation was imperative. Once Nirvana broke out, all of that collapsed. Bands were signed by indies for purely speculative reasons, on the hunch a major would buy out the contract. The scene, once a refuge for original thinkers, was overrun by jocks and cheerleaders in underground drag.
Some bands resisted the pull. Fugazi and Beat Happening finding the mainstream repulsive, never to be persuaded. Azerrad doesn’t moralize about either path. They all found a way to make a career in music against serious odds, by dint of initiative, resourcefulness, and probably a fair amount of naïveté.
The part about digital distribution felt prescient even though Azerrad could barely see its outlines. Laser printers, home CD burners, and MP3 software enabling musicians to achieve unprecedented vertical integration to make, record, and distribute their own music. The blueprint these bands drew in the turns turned out to be the blueprint for everything that followed.
My favourite chapters were the ones on the Minutemen and Fugazi. I also made a playlist that roughly follows the timeline of records mentioned.