If you are a child of the (late) 60s, 70s, or 80s you could not have escaped the so-called "alternative music explosion". 
Luckily for fans of this long musical era the library has quite a few books and a large number of CDs for you to check out. The offerings are as varied as the music: general histories (From the Velvets to Voidoids), oral histories (the hilarious and often disturbing Please Kill Me), musical overviews (the 4 CD Left of the Dial compilation), pictorial works (CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years From the Home of Underground), histories of individual bands, and biographies and memoirs of influencial musicians.
Here's more of a sample:
Black postcards : a rock & roll romance / Dean Wareham.
Britpop! : cool Britannia and the spectacular demise of English rock / John Harris.
Left of the dial [sound recording] : dispatches from the 80's underground.
No Wave / Marc Masters ; edited by Rob Young.
Our band could be your life : scenes from the American indie underground 1981-1991 / Michael Azerrad.
Redemption song : the ballad of Joe Strummer / Chris Salewicz.
Rip it up and start again : postpunk 1978-1984 / Simon Reynolds.
Saint Morrissey : a portrait of this charming man by an alarming fan / Mark Simpson.
Spin : 20 years of alternative music : original writing on rock, hip-hop, techno, and beyond / edited by Will Hermes with Sia Michel.
This must be the place : the adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th century / David Bowman.
Whores : an oral biography of Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction / Brendan Mullen.
If you don't see any CDs by or books about your favorite band just let us know. We love getting suggestions for books and music to add to our collection!
Submitted by A. Levie.