By David Cohen
Sometimes you just have to be heard.
That's a theme of Michael Azerrad's "Our Band  Could Be Your Life: Scenes
From The American Indie Underground, 1981-1991"  (Little, Brown & Company),
an engrossing new book about 13 bands from around the United States that existed on the fringes of popular culture, a  place where pop hooks and carefully sculpted looks were replaced with music  of ferocity and intensity.

Some of these bands created great songs or albums. Some did not. But not one of them became big stars or even made a serious dent on commercial radio, not even after Nirvana opened the floodgates for alternative bands in 1991. Still, I enjoyed spending 528 pages reliving the exploits of these musicians to whom music seemingly meant everything. The book is packed with other elements  --- just about every chapter has some tales of gross pranks or festering personality conflicts ---   but Azerrad's book is basically a  story of what people will do in order to play music.

There's an old John Lee Hooker blues song that has a line that goes: "It's in him, and it's got to come out." That was seemingly the case with many of these folks, including such powerful songwriters as Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, D. Boon of The Minutemen, and Grant
Hart & Bob Mould of Husker Du. There are also portraits of some who went  beyond making music to carve out what they perceived to be a more ethical way  of doing just that,
including the sober scenesters of Sonic Youth,  former Northwestern journalism student Steve Albini, and Ian MacKaye, whose band would only play all-ages shows, would not grant interviews to magazines its members would not read, and would not appear anywhere where the admission was higher than $5.

Many of these musicians (some of whom are still  quite active) were interviewed for this book, and a common theme  seems to be that very few of them ever thought there was any chance they'd  become famous. Fame and fortune, to many of them, was something they  weren't good enough to achieve or accomplished enough or polished enough or  educated enough. Still, they
found compelling reasons to express themselves. Given that we seem to be in age when so many people (see: "Survivor" and the casts of so many of TV's reality shows) yearn to be famous but don't have anything to say when they have the public ear, the stories of these  musicians are quite instructive and a tad wistful. And Azerrad's book --- even if  it is a tad "hipper  than thou" in spots --- serves as a reminder that we  in the news business can't assume that the width and breadth of what is  interesting in our culture will come bubbling up to us --- we sometimes should  seek to find it and attempt to understand it.

 David Cohen  is a copy editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of "Rugged and Enduring: The Eagles,The Browns and 5 Years of Football."