In his oral history of the American underground rock scene in the 1980s, journalist Michael Azerr... more In his oral history of the American underground rock scene in the 1980s, journalist Michael Azerrad traces the development of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos within punk and indie rock. When asked by Azerrad why his punk band, Minutemen, followed a DIY ethos in producing their own records, spurning labels, booking their own tours, and sleeping on floors when necessary, singer-bassist Mike Watt casually remarked, "Because that was our version of punk." 1 Punk and DIY, in this way, became linked through the practice and labor of bringing punk spaces and shows into existence. This association has produced DIY as "a loose signifier of radicalism," with a conceptual ambiguity mirroring that surrounding punk. 2 Such ambiguities have enabled the privileging of a specific type of white, male, subcultural labor. Our Band Could Be Your Life, serving as a memory of a specific type of DIY culture, is haunted by inevitable cooption by mainstream culture, as embodied in Azerrad's epilogue. 3 Azerrad's lamentation immediately folds under scrutiny: the 'youth culture' pined for is a white, heterosexual male youth culture; the underground a safe haven for those discarded by mainstream white culture; cooption as the return of the underground to mainstream white culture.
In his oral history of the American underground rock scene in the 1980s, journalist Michael Azerr... more In his oral history of the American underground rock scene in the 1980s, journalist Michael Azerrad traces the development of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos within punk and indie rock. When asked by Azerrad why his punk band, Minutemen, followed a DIY ethos in producing their own records, spurning labels, booking their own tours, and sleeping on floors when necessary, singer-bassist Mike Watt casually remarked, "Because that was our version of punk." 1 Punk and DIY, in this way, became linked through the practice and labor of bringing punk spaces and shows into existence. This association has produced DIY as "a loose signifier of radicalism," with a conceptual ambiguity mirroring that surrounding punk. 2 Such ambiguities have enabled the privileging of a specific type of white, male, subcultural labor. Our Band Could Be Your Life, serving as a memory of a specific type of DIY culture, is haunted by inevitable cooption by mainstream culture, as embodied in Azerrad's epilogue. 3 Azerrad's lamentation immediately folds under scrutiny: the 'youth culture' pined for is a white, heterosexual male youth culture; the underground a safe haven for those discarded by mainstream white culture; cooption as the return of the underground to mainstream white culture.
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