In fact, I’ve spent the last year plundering music biographies, memoirs, magazine profiles, documentaries and podcasts for stories of start-up bands. I did this after Chris Scianni, an old friend, got in touch and asked for my help in writing about his decades of hustling in the music business. In high school, Chris and I had both been in bands — we shared a drummer — but mine was a bunch of goofballs burdened with too many opinions and too little patience for rehearsing. He was truly talented and dedicated, the best guitar player any of us knew, obsessed with Buddy Guy, Keith Richards and Joe Strummer.