Dust,
What is alternative music, you ask?
Yeah, I'm not good with labels and I am sure this is debatable, but my take on it is this:
Let's just generalize a decade, the 80's brought about a lot of bands that were post-punk from the late '70s punk movement. These band were not popular by mainstream radio standards.
Mainstream top 40 radio in the '80s and early '90s was all about pop and hair metal/glam rock. These post-punk band were many different styles of music ranging from witty smart to electronic dance rock to goth to dreampop to folk to grunge to jangle pop to americana. Many of the labels at the time that I heard for this kind of music were new wave, modern rock, college rock (because the college stations would play this music), progressive.
Where could one here these new sounds that were different from mainstream radio? Really cool friends with older siblings (in college) or MTV 120 minutes on Sunday nights from 10-midnight, or college rock stations, or public radio stations between the raggae hour and the latin music show, etc.
Sometime in the year of 1990 one of our pop stations (Q104) started a half hour show at 10:30 every night called Liquid Radio that was devoted to this music. Also, somewhere around this time Kennedy and MTV VJ had a nightly show called Alternative Nation. Soon the word "Alternative" was used to describe all these different styles of music that didn't fit into the pop music or hair metal category.
Then Nirvana released smells like teen spirit on video to MTV and the rest is history. Alternative became mainstream. Every Major record label wanted to sign the next Nirvana. Radio stations became Alternative Rock stations. The alternative rock sound is now the mainstream sound. The popularity of Alternative rock basically killed it. The quality of music went down due to the need to feed it quickly to its demanding listening audience.
What do people call it these days? I don't know and I don't think bands know either. Not that they ever wanted to label thier music. It is interesting to look at a bands myspace page. At the top their is an area for them to categorize their music. Their you will find words like "other/indie/electronic/minimal/etc."
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6 comments:
I first picked up on alternative music around 1987. This guy on my brother's cross country team gave me a copy of The Smiths "World Won't Listen." I remember I was talking to him about this great new album I got called "The Joshua Tree" and he said "give The Smiths a listen." I was hooked. I remember it was so honest and I hadn't heard anything else like it. I soon picked up all the Smiths albums I could, followed by the Cure, Echo and Bunnymen, REM, and Depeche Mode. Then I remember when grunge hit. Everybody was so into Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains,etc. I was "does anyone like My Bloody Valentine? Stone Roses? Ride?" They all said "no"
Actually, I have heard Pearl Jam desicribed as Alternative as well. That's where a lot of confusion comes in.
If this is how the alternatice moniker went from the college stations to the mainstream, perhaps a wiser description for truly alternative music is "Indie" or "Indie-Inspired".
Um, alternatice is really supposed to be alternative. Butt ewe new that already.
Yes, Pearl Jam was lumped in with the alternative music crowd, because they were indeed alternative to what was on the radio (at the time.)
So, you see, alternative was the label to describe all this new wealth of music that was "underground" now coming to the "foreground." But within the realm of alternative were many different genres...such as grunge, dreampop, americana, electronic, punk, etc.
With all the sub-genres, it is really hard to describe what alternative sounds like, but most people will know what you mean when you say alternative.
Anyway, indie is probably a more true term, but it seems to be following the same fate as alternative. Any artist who is not on a major label can say that they are indie (independent) or that they are on an indie label (small record company without the major $$$ backing.) This is all true and correct. But collectively people are starting to associate a sound to the term indie. (I'm not sure what that is, but I hear people say "they sound indie rock.") I hear people associate Death Cab for Cutie as indie rock. Death Cab just signed to a major label on their last album, so technically they are not indie anymore, yet they still sound indie.
All confusing...
The subgenres are what confuse me. I knew all the history of where alternative came from, but BB loses me when he talks about categories within categories etc.....
interesting. I heard some people who were in junior high in the 90s debating what a song's sound was...alternative, that's just acoustic rock... I just know if I like a sound or not.
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