Bruce Adams - You're with Stupid - hardcover book

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Book/Magazine

Bruce Adams - You're with Stupid - hardcover book main photo

You’re with Stupid is both a cultural history of the Chicago music world at that time, as told through the record labels and distributors that Adams worked for, and a how-to road map to founding a DIY operation.

I grew up in Chicago and worked at some of the labels Adams writes about in this book. He does a great service in sketching out the different rosters and aesthetic approaches they took. “The people behind the bars or record store counters, or piling the boxes up in warehouses, were often musicians, or artists, or both,” he writes in the first chapter. “Well-stocked record stores and distributors brought records into the city, giving people opportunities to listen to and process music. . . . Rent was cheap enough that people didn’t need full-time jobs and could pursue their enthusiasms.” Chicago was, as Adams calls it, “a fertile center of the American indie rock scene.”
- J.C. Gabel, Book Forum

As co-founder of one of the most influential American indie labels of the ’90s, Bruce Adams has a lot to say. Detailing how he and Joel Leoschke launched kranky records and operated throughout their formative years, You’re with Stupid is a thoroughly entertaining read.
- Aquarium Drunkard

Published by the University of Texas Press in Nov. 2022 as part of its American Music Series.