Jon Fine: Indie Rock is Beautiful, Even When Your Band Sucks

In 1986, three kids at Oberlin College formed a band. For the next four years, Bitch Magnet would streak across the pop music sky like a rocket, enthralling millions, minting cash and... and...

Jon Fine's book, Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear), is out now.

(Courtesy of the publisher)

 Actually, they didn't do any of that. The band played in skanky clubs, sold a handful of records, and then split up. But in 2011, Bitch Magnet was talked into reuniting by one of the U.K.'s biggest music festivals—and people showed up! The band's improbable story is recounted as part of the history of a musical underground most of us may have missed. Bitch Magnet's guitarist Jon Fine has couched that secret history in a memoir, called Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear). 

But first, let's get a term straight. 

"Indie rock is now on car commercials, it's slightly fey, it's jangly," says Fine, who is now executive editor at Inc. magazine. "To me, in the 1980s, indie rock was oppositional, aggressive, and... weird! It was this unbelievable assault. I was really into the bands that [made] an amazing rock record and it has nothing to do with the blues. Here are some teenagers making records in multiple time signatures, you can't hear the vocals on half of it, it's unbelievably evocative and beautiful."

Fine shares with host John Schaefer equally personal and categorical assessments about bands like Wire, the Pixies, Pitchblende, Mission of Burma, Slint, The Clash, and many more, while explaining the passion that kindled his first love of music. 

"There's this idea that when you're 16, you can be in a weird band," Fine says. "That's incredibly powerful. There's a place in the world for people like this, bands like this."