Bob Mehr, Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements: Like this band or not, this is really well written and covers practically every era of the band's existence and thereafter in full detail. Since I like the band, I thought it was probably the best account of a band I've read in book form. (Hey, I love R. E. M. best, but reading a book about their lives might actually be really boring.)
Brendan Mullen, Don Bolles & Adam Parfrey, Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times And Short Life Of Darby Crash & The Germs: I think this band basically blows, and their live performances were so crappy that I almost died laughing when I listened to Germicide ("dahhhh, F*** YOU!!! Ahh, come up here!!!"), but reading a blurb-form account of their short life indeed (like two and a half years) from a couple hundred sources, edited together beautifully, makes for a stunning look at what it must have been like to be part of the Los Angeles punk scene between 1975 and 1980. And Darby (who was actually pretty smart for such a dumbass) and the gang emerge as legitimately interesting characters--it's not just a look at their years as a band, we get to hear about Darby and Pat Smear attending a $cientology-based high school which is some of the most fascinating garbage I've ever read.
Other books I've read but don't really recommend are Martin Popoff's Anthem: Rush In The 1970s (this guy is a total hack who has written like 300 books, though I guess this was readable), Andrew Earles' Husker Du: The Story Of The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock (this one's okay but has lots of factual errors), or Liz Phair's Horror Stories (this isn't about her actual music very much at all, but rather a bunch of depressing incidents that happened to her over the course of her life--you'd never think this was written by a woman over 50!)
I've never read any book about Nirvana, though I suppose I could; at this point, I've been through the Nirvana history in so many other forms (articles, documentaries, DVDs, discussions) that I guess reading a book about them would be a sort of refresher course. What you're remembering is when we talked about how there are no accounts of Kurt Cobain's adolescence that are anything but bullying and trouble and disgust, and how Washington State is actually full of rednecks if you get away from Seattle.
NP: Beck - "Morning" (arrrgh....yeah, you're gonna be REAL happy to hear what I have to say about this)
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