A bewitching account of the lures, torments, and rewards
of making and performing some of the most interesting music in some
of the most iconic indie bands (Galaxie 500, Luna) in recent
memory
What do you do if you're an outsider with a funny accent coming of
age in alien bastions of privilege in New York City and Cambridge,
Massachusetts? If you're a certain sort of kid, you front a rock
band. And if you're Dean Wareham, you end up founding a rock band,
Galaxie 500, that continues to enjoy what can be called notable
postmortem cult success. And then you start a new band, Luna, which
enjoys even more spectacular, albeit still "cult" success (which
means they don't play your songs on mainstream radio and you never
crack MTV), until, some fifteen years after it began, that band
reaches its natural end too. And then you write a book about it
all: an unsentimental journey through the great, world-wide
indiemusic landscape.
A wickedly honest and unsparing account of a journey through the
music world-the artistry and the hustle, the effortless success and
the high living as well as the bitter pills and self-inflicted
wounds-by a brilliant and fearless participant-observer, Black
Postcards is absurdly rich in rewards for anyone who was ever in a
band or just took an interest in indie music over the past twenty
years-a sort of Kitchen Confidential written by a
different species of front man. Black Postcards also
captures what has happened, for good and ill, to the entire
ecosystem of popular music over this time of radical change, a time
when categories like "indie" and "alternative" started to morph
beyond all recognition. Rolling Stone called Dean Wareham's band
Luna "the greatest band you've never heard of " and named its album
Penthouse one of its 100 greatest rock albums of our time. Black
Postcards is also about what it's like to have to pretend to be
civil as you answer the same helpful question over and over again,
"Why aren't you guys more famous?" Why indeed?