Damnably Records presents:
Jon Fine & Stewart Lee discuss "Your Band Sucks
Jon Fine + Stewart Lee + The Werewolves Of London
Entry Requirements: 18+
This event has now sold out and there will be NO tickets on the door.
Damnably is proud to present an evening with Jon Fine ( Bitch Magnet/ Coptic Light / Don Caballero) who will be in conversation with TV comedy star and music critic Stewart Lee then playing live with The Werewolves Of London (feat. members of smallgang).
Jon will be chatting about and taking questions on his critically accailmed book 'Your Band Sucks' What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear) published by Penguin Books. Doors 7.30pm Jon Fine & Stewart Lee on stage approx 8.30pm Live set to follow audience questions & Jon will be signing & selling books too.
Line Up
Jon Fine
Jon Fine spent years in various aggressive and underground bands—Bitch Magnet being the most known--and, as he writes in his widely acclaimed memoir Your Band Sucks: What I Saw At The Failed Indie Rock Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear), “none of them were ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame. But fame, of course, was never the point. What was the point was participating in—indeed, living one’s entire life in—the underground rock culture of the 1980s and 1990s, that miracle that happened when a generation of smart misfits found each other and built, by hand, a culture that persists to this day.
In spoken-word-performances-cum-discussions--which Jon has already taken to fifteen North American cities--Jon will read several short sections of his book, interlinked with a series of narrative reminiscences that will serve to join those sections into one narrative arc that will cover the tentative beginnings of the underground of the 80s, its flowering and flourishing, its reckonings with the mainstream (and vice versa) and the re-emergence of many such bands once again this decade, as many got back together for reunion tours. Including Bitch Magnet, a tour in which—well, why give it all away now?
Questions from the audience are encouraged. Actually, they’re mandatory. Where possible, Jon will be joined for a discussion of his book and the independent music culture of the 80’s and 90’s and today by someone who was there, too. (Musicians who’ve appeared with Jon at events in the US include: Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Mark Arm of Mudhoney, and Clint Conley of Mission of Burma.)
PRAISE FOR YOUR BAND SUCKS:
“[E]verything a cult-fave musician’s memoir should be: It’s a seductively readable book that requires no previous knowledge of the author, Bitch Magnet or any other band with which he’s played.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Jon Fine has produced as evocative a portrait of the underground music scene as any wistful, graying post-punk could wish for. . . . Fine can write, and because he doesn’t mind making himself look like a jerk, he summons up all the idealism and the cluelessness, the talent and the posturing, that went with the territory . . . Indie was, as Fine puts it, a ‘culture that unorphaned you,’ and he’s especially good on the haven that post-punk music offered Gen X misfits.” —The Atlantic
“The story of the indie rock era has rarely been told as well as it has in Your Band Sucks . . . Written with both anthropological detachment and deep romanticism about the making of music, Fine’s book belongs on the shelf alongside Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life.” —Salon
“Jon Fine has done something miraculous: he managed to drag me through a time in my life that I hated and made me actually miss it. Both a hilarious personal memoir and an obsessive guide to that weird moment in underground music before the great tsunami of the Internet changed everything forever, Your Band Sucks reminds you that one self-confessed rock-nerd’s journey through rejection, triumph, and cheap motels is as universal as any well-told story.” —James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem
“The short shelf of great books on indie rock adds another—an unlikely memoir about an obscure band that somehow found demand for its reunion in the Internet age . . . ‘I don’t regret a thing,’ writes Fine, and neither will readers who live vicariously through the author’s eyes and memory.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“For those of us who loved and lived indie rock in the 1990s, we were never sure if our alienation meant we were part of a revolution or just making the best of a chronic condition. Jon Fine captures what it meant to find a home in the margins—the dark humor, instant camaraderie, and strange hope of loud music, grimy road trips, bad food and worse booze. And then what it’s like, decades later, to find yourself a tourist in the same places, grown up but still maturing.” —Ana Marie Cox, Chief Political Correspondent, MTV News, author of Dog Days
“Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, but for would-be rock stars who live like train hobos and perform for dozens of fans a night.” —Men’s Health
“More striking than Fine’s clever words is his incisive commentary, which examines everything we’ve come to know about music in the digital age, from cyber communities to music streaming services to major record labels.” —Esquire.com
Stewart Lee
Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician. He made his name in the mid-1990s as one half of the radio duo Lee and Herring, alongside Richard Herring, a success followed through with extensive touring to build up a live following. He co-wrote and co-directed the mock Broadway hit Jerry Springer: The Opera, a critical success that sparked a backlash from Christian groups who staged a series of protests outside its early stagings.
After a return to the live circuit, and through BBC and Channel 4 specials and series, Lee has rebuilt an audience and a reputation as an anti-populist comedian.
Lee remains a significant draw in UK stand up. In recent years, Lee has been successful in selling out large venues including the ICC in his home city of Birmingham as well as larger venues in London. In December 2011 he won British Comedy Awards for best male television comic and best comedy entertainment programme for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
A 2009 article in The Times referred to him as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade". In June 2012 Lee was placed at number 9 in the Top 100 Most Influential People in UK Comedy. His stand-up features frequent use of "repetition, call-backs, nonchalant delivery and deconstruction", a device he often self-consciously refers to on stage.
Lee has written music reviews for publications including The Sunday Times. Through the early 2000s he was a regular presenter on Resonance FM.[ Asked in 2003 what his favourites were, he said "Most of my favourites are still going like The Fall, Giant Sand and Calexico. I listen to a lot of jazz, 60s and folk music but I really like Ms. Dynamite, and The Streets".
His debut novel, The Perfect Fool, includes an 'audio bibliography' – a list of recommended listening. Lee mentions that it was his love of the band Giant Sand that first attracted him to visit the Southwestern United States. http://www.stewartlee.co.uk
The Werewolves Of London
One-off show with Jon Fine and members of slamming https://www.facebook.com/smallgangband/