Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

by Michael Azerrad

“A LOT OF PEOPLE I KNOW—EVERYONE, MAYBE—JUST FEEL A GREAT USELESSNESS. YOU’RE A HUMAN BEING AND THE WORLD IS SO BIG; EVERYTHING IS JUST SO UNTOUCHABLE AND UNREACHABLE. THEY JUST WANT TO DO SOMETHING THAT THEY CAN BE A PART OF AND THEY CAN MOLD AND THEY CAN MAKE.” —IAN MacKAYE, 1983

But even this mighty band could not withstand the withering white glare of the major label spotlight and went down amidst tragedy, recrimination, and despair, still stubbornly clinging to their hard-won artistic freedom. Such is the fate of the pioneer.

The members of Hüsker Dü weren’t alone in their feelings—in his Matter column that same year, Steve Albini wrote, “Wanna be the big new teen in hardcore circles? Get some other dillheads together, call yourselves Antagonistic Decline or Vicious Tendencies or Unrepentant Youth or some such thing, copy every lick from the Dischord collection and write songs about military intervention, whether you know anything about it or not, and you’re guaranteed a good review in Maximumrocknroll.”

“You grow up, you change your perspective,” Mould explained. “You’re not always eighteen years old, drunk, with a mohawk, driving around screaming and hollering about anarchy—you don’t do that all your life.”

“Times ain’t tough, they’re tedious,”

Alcohol was key to the Replacements’ erratic performance style, and the band was consuming it in ever-larger quantities. “If it’s a small crowd, it helps sometimes because you see double,” Westerberg cracked, “and then you can fill the joint.”