"The cultural-economic logic that has ... brought microbrews to every hamlet in Illinois has erected an enormous lifestyle palace called Pierre's in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and when, one Friday night in August 1996, Chris Holmes and his curious vision of pop music were summoned there, I went with him."

"[T]he Pierrites had honed and refined their hedonism to an edge sharper than what one finds in the larger cities. Their Midwest wasn't about prayer or hard work, conformity or Main Street martinets, and it was even less about the clever commentary of pop ideology...."

"It was about drunkenness, cocaine, and copulation; it was about that sense of futility that Hamlin Garland and Theodore Dreiser knew so well, that acid Midwestern nihilism that sends one back Friday after Friday and that, for a brief moment at least, made the growling pseudo-nihilism of Alternative the winner in the local authenticity sweepstakes."