What’s most profound and life-changing about being in a touring hardcore-punk band, as anyone knows who’s been in one or close to one, is also what’s most difficult to explain. (There are thousands of befuddled family members and co-workers and significant others who would readily agree.) When America-at-large is told about what has been happening under its nose for close to 40 years now — on stages, yes, but also, mostly, in living rooms and basements; in vans, home recording studios, and motel rooms; in diners, convenience-store parking lots, and record and skateboard shops; on beaches, twilit cobblestone streets, and crowded sleeping-bag-strewn floors — America-at-large, in the thrall of mainstream show business’s garish commerce and competitive individualism, misses the point entirely. Perhaps only photography such as appears in this, Chris Bavaria’s second book of pictures taken during his time on the road with Mindset, has the capacity to disclose the camaraderie, joy, passion, ambition, and strangeness that hide in plain sight in the everyday settings where independent music scenes surreptitiously conduct the bulk of their affairs. Each of the book’s 83 images depicts a minor miracle, a moment that should not, in the normal course of things, have happened and that cannot be fully explained. - Matt LaForge

First Edition
8x10", 78 pages, 100lb glossy paper, 200 printed.