Quotes from Michael Azerrad

punk rock as an alternative," he says, "a real attempt to change the social order of the world.

We felt real strongly about supporting the local scene," Miller says. "I'm not nationalistic, but if you're in the area, you should work where you are. You have to support that which is growing around you.

It doesn't necessarily have to be about getting anywhere, but about getting through the process of fulfilling your own possibilities.

they also went out of their way to play all-ages shows, often hurting their draw by playing two sets a night.

The Replacements, it seemed, secretly believed in themselves and yet adopted a loser persona to insulate themselves against failure.

We" was a sprawling cooperative of fanzines, underground and college radio stations, local cable access shows, mom-and-pop record stores, independent distributors and record labels, tip sheets, nightclubs and alternative venues, booking agents, bands, and fans that had been thriving for more than a decade before the mainstream took notice.

nerdier, more sensitive bunch who weren't interested in perpetuating the malice and exclusion they had felt growing up.

I MUST CREATE A SYSTEM OR BE ENSLAVED BY ANOTHER MAN'S." —WILLIAM BLAKE

I remember watching these kids getting up in the morning on my dorm floor, putting on a suit and tie and a briefcase, talking about this guy from California named Ronald Reagan and how he was going to be the next president," says Mould. "And I'd be sitting there arguing with those fucks in speech class and poli sci and just hating that, thinking, 'This is not acceptable behavior. This is not what we're supposed to be doing with our late teens.

I mean, rock music's got to be something that your mom would hate—if you want it to be really satisfying. We made music that moms would really hate

nerdier, more sensitive bunch who weren't interested in perpetuating the malice and exclusion they had felt growing up. "People made me feel bad when I was a kid," says Pedersen, "so why would I want to go out of my way to make people feel rotten, like somehow they don't belong or they don't cut the mustard?

Flipside, Maximumrocknroll, and Forced Exposure—but there were literally hundreds of smaller zines that collectively framed the indie aesthetic.

Maybe the people who feel the need to create and express themselves also need to cloud that over sometimes," Westerberg explained in a more candid moment. "Sometimes you don't want to be creative. You just want to be normal and not have to worry, or think, or write. People will then turn to distractions like drugs, liquor, or whatever.

None of us ever imagined that the band was a job," Albini continues. "The band was always a diversion. It seemed unrealistic to think that we could make a living out of it. So we didn't even entertain those notions." "We didn't want to save the world," Riley concludes. "We just wanted to play in a punk rock band.

The best Haynes could do was line up perhaps a week of shows, a month in advance. So the band was never sure what the next few months would hold. They'd simply aim for parts of the country where they hadn't been and hope for the best.

Punk in small towns in '88, '89 was just too dangerous to the normal way of doing things," Lunsford explains. "We found out how many walls there were in this free society that were blocking self-entertainment.

A band should only think national," he told Boston Rock. "Selling records to a local market is a hobby, like making records for your friends. It doesn't justify the cost and effort.

The male-female relationship, as a subject for song," Albini wrote, "is thoroughly bankrupt.

making things sound new was the whole idea.

The band members were outspoken about their distaste for conformism, especially within the post-punk scene, where bands were already tailoring their music to contrived images, threatening to reverse punk's hardwon gains. "It's so much style over content

They developed this influence and this clout and they shared it. It's a very inclusive movement.

It meant nothing to us if we were popular or not, or if we sold either a million or no records

Still, the gross-out footage is what really embodied the band's aesthetic. "Listen, man, one has no choice but to laugh in the face of terror," Haynes explained. "I think probably most airline pilots, when they see the ground coming at them, just before they hit, go, 'Oh my god, we're in trouble! Ha-ha-ha!

Musicians here weren't afraid to go out and work really hard for satisfaction more than for success. That's what it came down to—you were working for some other notion of glory than financial.