Independent music from Chicago was absolutely essential to my developing sensibilities. My teenage mind was blown away by labels like Touch & Go, Drag City, and Thrill Jockey, but as I dug deeper, I zeroed in on the magical, shadowy kranky. It was pre-Internet, and I didn't get all the scene connections or timelines, I just happily listened in my shitty apartment and felt my world shift. You're with Stupid does something equally remarkable: It tells the history of that time and place without making any of that early, optimistic magic disappear.
Brandon Stosuy, co-founder, The Creative Independent
You're with Stupid serves as a primer on the independent record label boom of the late 1980s, the documenting of a city's diverse scene, and the quiet explosion of a new kind of music via kranky. Most importantly, it offers the backstories of some of your favorite bands and albums of the last thirty years.
Mac McCaughan, coauthor of Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small
This well-informed love letter to Chicago, a hub of DIY music and sonic explorations, allows the reader to witness the birth of a label and largely covert scene that continues to mutate and resonate. Bruce Adams, though, avoids pure homage, bringing the same acute critical eye, and yes, barbed tongue, that helped build this musical revolution. A funny, bullshit-free chronicle of life in underground music.
Kevin Martin, The Bug, King Midas Sound, Zonal
A story of passion and perseverance with a soundtrack that echoes from the pages...Dedicated fans of '90s alt rock will find inspiration and lessons.
Publishers Weekly
[Adams'] prose efficiently wrings out important and nutsy-boltsy specifics that will trigger strong memories in those who were there, enrapture readers who bought the records in lieu of being there, and perhaps encourage the spawn of Those Who Came Before to bring back, aurally if not in person, artists like Labradford and Bowery Electric and Jessamine.
Backyard Industry
There was once a point when indie music tended to mean something with clear connections to rock music. Nowadays, that line is much more blurred, making for some stunning artistic feats - and the music scene in Chicago in the 1990s and 2000s played a big part in that. Bruce Adams's new book offers an inside look at the evolution of that scene and its lasting impact.
InsideHook
You're with Stupid proves [Adams] as adept at communicating what it was like to be immersed in a time and place of intense creativity as behind the scenes making it happen.
The Wire
You're with Stupid is most successful when it contextualizes kranky inside the larger Chicago music scene-and indie as a whole. Chicago was and is such a vibrant city musically that the larger discussions of where the bands and labels fit into regional and national networks of groups, scenes, and zines were welcome and illuminating...this book got me interested in music that was new to me-I dug around online for Labradford and Stars Of The Lid-and gave me a greater sense of Chicago's scene in the '90s.
Razorcake
Adams' book is a story about both a Chicago and a world that doesn't exist anymore [You're with Stupid is] a first-hand account of a fascinating time in music history to motivate us into some truly focused, immersive, offline activity.
Bandcamp Daily
[Adams] does a great service in sketching out the different rosters and aesthetic approaches [indie record labels in Chicago] took...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.
Bookforum
[You're with Stupid] succeeds as both a memoir and a cultural history of a brief wrinkle in time when a few Chicago neighborhoods seemed to comprise the center of a then-flourishing underground rock universe.
Aquarium Drunkard
You're with Stupid is a thoroughly entertaining read...Reading the book feels like sitting next to [Adams] on a bar stool, hearing memories of a bygone but beloved musical era straight from the horse's mouth.
Aquarium Drunkard
You're With Stupid is every self-described Gen X music nerd's dream come true.
The Stranger
kranky co-founder Bruce Adams provides behind-the-scenes insight on the Windy City's music labels (with Touch & Go and Wax Trax! leading the charge) and how they contributed to the meteoric rise of Gen X stars such as Liz Phair, Nirvana, and Smashing Pumpkins...this book nurtures our sense of nostalgia for a tremendous decade of music, especially in kranky's pursuit to 'release music that transcended the moment,' and reminds us of simpler, pre-Internet times where radio airplay, touring, and fanzines heavily influenced the success of music's breakout stars.
SPIN, "Best Music Books of 2022"
The best kranky releases sound refreshingly different, not just from other indie rock of the '90s but from nearly everything on the radio, or off it, in 2022. They're well worth a listen. And You're with Stupid is worth a read, especially if you belong to the generation that stayed up late to catch '120 Minutes' on MTV and attended Yo La Tengo shows in multiple millennia.
Washington Independent Review of Books
[Adams] proves to be an incisive and wry observer of the Windy City's paradigm-shifting musical ecosystem and his role in shaping rock's vanguard...You're with Stupid abounds with interesting insights about musical and cultural niches that deserve more attention and, more importantly, it reveals the inner workings of one of history's greatest record companies.
The Stranger
An amazing and insightful read into one of the more low-key scenes of [the 1990s].
The Recoup
