A Reading and Conversation with Jon Fine (author: "Your Band Sucks") and Juan MacLean (Six Finger Satellite/The Juan MacLean).

Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music--Bitch Magnet, Vineland, Coptic Light, among others-- and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.”

Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie rock underground emerged in the Eighties and evolved in the subsequent decades, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.

“[E]verything a cult-fave musician’s memoir should be . . . a seductively readable book.”—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.”—The Atlantic

“The short shelf of great books on indie rock adds another.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“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, singer and founder, LCD Soundsystem; founder, DFA Records

“A tremendous read.” —Stuart Braithwaite, guitarist and founder of Mogwai

"Funny, snarky, and often poetic . . . Gives us brilliant descriptions of the music and lots of vivid glimpses behind the scenes of a low-level touring rock band — the sublime, the scary and the just plain scatological." --Dallas Morning News

“The story of the indie rock era has rarely been told as well as it has in “Your Band Sucks.” -Scott Timberg, Salon.com

“A richly detailed walk through the wild side of the underground music business . . . Anyone interested in the indie-rock phenomenon will recognize many of the players, and the angst and the joy will strike all readers.” (A Best Summer Books selection.) —Booklist

"Like a song that appears out of nowhere to exactly fill a hole in your life that was never apparent, Your Band Sucks makes vividly real the ingredients that went into '80s indie rock. With a cultural critic's reach and an insider's self-critical insights, Jon Fine has produced the definitive anthropological "why" thousands of bands like his existed and what they accomplished. Exhilarating." --Ira Robbins , Trouser Press

"I imagine, in a small van, Jon Fine is very hard to take."
--Some guy on Amazon


John Maclean (aka Juan MacLean) was guitarist for the post-hardcore band Six Finger Satellite, based in Providence, Rhode Island. The band was struck by several tragedies, and Maclean eventually moved into production duties, utilizing his home studio in Providence. Eventually James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem/DFA) joined the band as sound engineer (where he became known for a punishing tour PA set up, which he nicknamed "Death From Above").

Eventually 6FS band broke up, and Maclean spent several years out of the music business, getting a degree at the Providence College and teaching English in New Hampshire. He continued a friendship with Murphy, who moved to New York City and founded influential dance-punk label DFA Records and started LCD Soundsystem. Murphy urged Maclean to get back into music, and got Maclean experimenting with modern electronic mixing equipment; DFA would include several Maclean compositions on compilation records.

His first album on the label, Less Than Human, was released in July 2005. He has released several records since then and has toured the world.