48 In 2012?: #3 Everybody Loves Our Town by Mark Yarm

     I love oral histories.  They are a modern way to tell a modern history and become a great documentation of a moment in time.  It allows the people who were there to tell the story in their words which really lets the character of the people and the moment shine.  They don't get bogged down with boring recitation of facts and limit the amount an author can filter the details.  "Everybody Loves Our Town" is an oral history of the Seattle music scene that grew in the 80's and exploded in the early 90's.  It documents the rise of bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and all the problems that came along with it.
     One of the great things about oral histories is how they show people's different takes on common events.  Numerous times in "Everybody Loves Our Town" we get two or three different stories from eye witnesses how an event went down.  This could probably be as much attributed to copious drug and alcohol abuse as it could the human condition, but it's this condition that makes the oral history more real then an author determining a definitive sequence of events.  History has always been in the eye of the beholder and these types of books show us all the beholders.
     By letting the artists tell the story we also get a first hand look at another condition common in the arts, jealousy.  As much as people like to talk about camaraderie of the Seattle scene being what made it special, it wasn't any more immune to bitterness then anywhere else.  Just like anywhere in the entertainment industry, we see a bunch of bands who didn't reach high level of success lashing out and talking trash on the bands that did.  They were all about money or not true to the scene or all about themselves.  It's a stance I don't understand, it seems to me the point of being in a band or a movie star or a writer is to create something that people will enjoy and you can make a living off, but one I realize will always come with the territory.
     There was very little new I learned by reading the book.  It basically reinforced many of the stories and characterizations I was already familiar with (Big Surprise: Courtney Love comes off as a horrible person and nobody likes her!).  If there was one knock on the book it would be it's lack of time-frame.  It tends to jump around in time without really letting you know and at times it becomes a chore to figure out what the context of some of the events are.  But it was a wonderful trip down memory lane and had me making a Seattle playlist on my IPod.  If you're a child of the late 80's/early 90's, this is a great read.  If you are younger and consider yourself a student of music it's probably a must read.