GIMME INDIE ROCK

The 1980s are one of the most ridiculed and parodied epochs in popular music, what with all the skinny lapels, synthesizers, spandex, and Aqua Net. However, music fans in the know recognize that beneath the glossy veneer there bubbled a revolutionary movement of self-directed, anti-corporate, punk- influenced bands that created a nationwide network from the ground up—thanks to independently recorded releases, Xeroxed fanzines, and self-financed tours. In Gimme Indie Rock, music journalist Andrew Earles identifies and describes the 500 essential albums of this indie-rock movement that comprised bands from coast to coast, in markets large and small. From giants of the movement—Black Flag, the Minutemen, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., Big Black, the Pixies, and more—to lesser-known acts that made their own impact, if on a smaller scale—including Jesus Lizard, Cows, Low, Screeching Weasel, and others—Earles provides an exhaustive album guide to the era. Also giving nods to those bands that cut their teeth on the indie circuit but graduated to a greater degree of mainstream recognition in the early 1990s—including R.E.M., Soul Asylum, Urge Overkill, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, and Nirvana—Gimme Indie Rock is the definitive manual for the best American indie music made between 1981 and 1996.