Our Band Could Be Your Life audiobook

Slipknot's Corey Taylor & others narrating 'Our Band Could Be Your Life' audiobook

Author and music journalist Michael Azerrad‘s indispensable 2001 chronicle of 13 bands from the formative 1980s indie rock and punk scene, Our Band Could Be Your Life, is getting an official audiobook version, due out May 21 via Hachette Book Group. Even if you prefer to read your books rather than listen to them, there’s an added incentive to checking out this audiobook: each chapter is narrated by artists (and comedians, and others) who were inspired by the bands in the book. As mentioned, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco reads the chapter on Minutemen, and Michael has been revealing a few of the other narrators one by one, but now we’ve got our hands on the full list. They are Corey Taylor of Slipknot (reading the Big Black chapter), novelist Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, reading the Mission of Burma chapter), Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! (reading the Minor Threat chapter), Colin Meloy of The Decemberists (reading the Husker Du chapter), Jon Wurster of Superchunk, The Mountain Goats, and Bob Mould (reading the Replacements chapter), Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards (reading the Sonic Youth chapter), comedian/complicated drummer Fred Armisen (reading the Butthole Surfers chapter), Sharon Van Etten (reading the Dinosaur Jr. chapter), Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields (reading the Beat Happening chapter), Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie (reading the Mudhoney chapter), Dave Longstreth of The Dirty Projectors (reading the Black Flag chapter), and Azerrad himself (reading the Fugazi chapter).

UPDATE: Listen to clips of Merrill Garbus, Jeff Tweedy, and Michael Azerrad reading from their respective chapters below.

Our Band Could Be Your Life is available on Amazon and Audible.

Another of Azerrad’s books, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana just got an audiobook version of its own last month, with narration from another Kurt: longtime MTV news anchor Kurt Loder. Listen to a clip below.