Every Anxious Wave

If you dig alternative 90's music-- especially The Melvins-- and also enjoy the paradoxes of time travel, then check out Mo Daviau's novel Every Anxious Wave . . . Karl Bender, who was in a popular indie band back in the day, discovers a time-traveling wormhole in his closet, but-- in typical understated ironic hipster fashion-- he will only use the the wormhole to take certain select people back to certain select rock shows . . . we're talking bands like Beat Happening and The Smiths and Frank Zappa and The Magnetic Fields and REM . . . you get the idea . . . but things change when he strands his friend in 980 AD (instead of 1980) and enlists the aid of a cute, obnoxious, chubby astrophysicist to get him back; my favorite trope is that Karl somehow receives text messages from his friend in 980 and emails full of advice from his future self, who is living in a post-apocalyptic version of Seattle . . .  and then there's his Indian landlord, a wealthy slumlord married to a beautiful woman, who is actually a closeted homosexual who just wants to get it on with Freddie Mercury in 1982 . . . while this book isn't quite as good as Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, it's certainly in the same ballpark (and it's a lot more fun than Primer).