Nostalgia for early to mid 90's "alternative" music......

I'm the first to admit that I was grumbling and curmudgeonly about the climate of "alternative music" during the post Nirvana years. After years of listening to indie, punk, hardcore, whatever type of music and watching bands and fans struggle to make ends meet, I got very disheartened watching a lot of bands (many of them second rate also-rans) take financial advantage of the situation and a lot of willing record companies exploiting a lot of decent bands. I didn't care for Nirvana beyond the initial burst of fresh air they provided amidst a sea of hair metal, and I didn't like they way a lot of different crowds started flooding into the music scene that they had previously mocked for years.

That all being said I'm only now realizing how great that time period actually was for music and art and the politics of both, and also how silly I was. There was still a lot to justifiably dislike about that period but now in retrospect I realize that bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and others who got big in their wake, fostered a definite liberal climate at the time through what they sang and spoke about. Even if it was just lip service, people saw what the independent music scene could accomplish on its own without the intrusion of huge labels or corporations (however much they still did play a part) and a lot of these bands musically and lyrically were fairly challenging to the status quo of music at the time.

And when I look around now, I realize I'd still rather a climate where a band as out-there and weird as the Melvins or the Butthole Surfers find themselves on major labels, or where a band as uncompromising as Fugazi can sell 150,000 records with no promotion, no videos, no radio, and charging only $5 for shows. I'd prefer that climate to now where a bunch of bands dressing "punk" and playing third rate green day rip off songs passes as alternative.

I realize I'm getting curmudgeonly again. And there still is a lot of great music out there on the independent scene and such. And bands like Radiohead or Coldplay or the Flaming Lips or many others are doing some very interesting things bubbling under the mainstream. But I do lament that at the time I didn't appreciate enough how positive and how bold a lot of the mainstream musical climate was during the early to mid-90's.

Just my nostalgia rant for the day. I apologize in advance for boring you to tears.

she don't use jelly,
she don't use cheese.....

My point is they are still out there doing challenging things on major labels and in mainstream music. I don't even know why they came to mind. But you get the point.

"She Don't Use Jelly" was a break that was a long time coming for them. They have taken so many fascinating twists in their career, and I'm totally gratified at the attention they're received since Soft Bulletin.

By the way, they were supposed to be reissuing all the old stuff on CD a while back. I went to the record store last week, and no luck. Does anyone know if that ended up happening?

Was there even such a word as "alternative" after about 1992 anyway? The major record labels realized that some of this "indie" stuff was actually selling significant numbers of copies to the music buying public. They knew that they had to get in on the action.

We all needed a major recovery from the 80's music, and the stuff from the early to mid 90's definitely filled the bill. I probably bought more music during those days, than at any other point in my life.

I never expected big labels to act in anything other than their financial interest. I was just dissapointed at the number of bands who after years of being rejected and dismissed by the big labels, saw fit to still get into bed with them.

But even the indie labels got windfalls from all of this. I remember reading that one one of the years during this time period, Dischord records and Touch and GO both cleared over a million dollars. That just blew my mind.

There was just much more of an adventurous climate on the part of the record buying public.

Yep, there was, before the 1990's. Back in the late 1980's, record retailers classified music that fell under the genres of punk, college, industrial, or whatever as "alternative". I honestly remember rock mainstays U2 and REM being labeled as alternative for marketing purposes.

i often wonder how the next musical revolution will play itself out. it's going to be hard to compete with the vanquishing of hair-metal though, in terms of a radical shift. It's interesting to see how the "alternative" music scene was co-opted by the corporations, packaged and sold, and how now they are still calling it "alternative" despite the fact that there are no more Whitesnakes for it to be an alternative to.

i often think that hip-hop could undergo a similar revolution, seeing as how a major glam-movement is going on right now similar to what rock was going thru in the 80's. Ferrari's, chix, jewelry, clothes:materialism essentially. I don't listen to hip-hop all that much - but i can see the parallels - and I think that I would listen to it if it underwent this radical change.

During around the same time you had public enemy and other socially conscious bands such as Arrested Development and such making great, politically minded, challenging music. It got swept away by the bling-bling, just as Nirvana and the more poltically minded bands got swept away by the faux punks and the mookish rap/rockers.

but it seemed that Hip-Hop had kept it's glam around. Whereas when rock destroyed Cock-rock in 89-90-91, they buried the glam rockers and they were never seen again. (or so it would seem, you are right to say that we have come close to full circle with the emergence of the mook).

The arrested development, digable planets, socially charged hip-hop thing I don't think gained the momentum it needed to completely overcome the the seeds of gangsta that would inevitably sprout this bling bling phase.

a great quote, from Motley Crue's manager.

of the early 90's. It's a pretty good flick about the Seattle music scene. The soundtrack isn't bad either.

I very much agree. Having musicians in my family , (who I think are awesome)but I`m sure will probably never get a break.

It's amazing when you think back to some of the very different bands that were able to sell a lot of records. Bands as varying as Primus, Belly, Weezer, The Breeders, Rancid, Ben Folds Five were being played together and playing packed houses. There just isn't that same kind of different inventive music going mainstream today. I think there's indie stuff just as good as some of those bands, but I also think it's great sometimes to have inventive music go mainstream.

I bitched and moaned at the time but now looking back on it, it was wonderful to have that kind of climate. Even if it made going to shows less enjoyable (slam dancing to Belly? C'mon, people), overall I think it was in retrospect a very positive thing.

They Might Be Giants,
Cake,
Big Audio Dynamite
the Refreshments
Social Distortion

most are a little long in the tooth,
but they made a sound that was unique, and not prepackaged.

After they signed to a major they've gotten better and better.How often does that happen? :)

Just asking?

When does simply remembering become nostalgia?

And it's pretty clear that the climate of challenging, rock based music that defies mainstream convention while acheiving success in mainstream realms and by mainstream financial standards has not existed for 10 years now.

And it's quite clear that fewer bands, musicians and big labels are willing to take the chances, and fewer bands are requiring them to.

K-Rock just went on air here in Seattle- basically their format seems to be "classic Alternative," and much of what they play is from these early 90s bands. Some corporate honcho probably figured out there is a nostalgia for that period.

is that all the posers and wannabes aren't hanging around here anymore! Being in Seattle in the early 90s got irritating at times - everyone was a Cobain imitator. There was only one Cobain.

Because the major label producers are too entrenched in using software like ProTools and Nuendo in the studio. Preprogrammed drums and samplers dominate the airwaves, and everybody seems pretty happy about that....I don't sense too much dissatisfaction with synthetically-produced music like Hip Hop and dance pop....My own opinion is that it wasn't the "fake Nirvana" bands that ruined the mid-90's freedom moment, but bands and artists like Nine Inch Nails who incorporated samplers and artificial drum patterns and dance beats...which greased the skid for the producers to sully the pure musicality of the moment with soullles and inhuman artificiality.

Once you take the humanity out of rock, you ruin it. You can't play rock with samplers.

Unfortunately, records arer cheaper to produce these days than they were in the early nineties, because of the pitch correction and "replacement" features of Nuendo and ProTools. Major labels don't need to spend the extra money on retakes, drum techs, getting the right room, extra studio time, etc. because you can produce a hit single now with a microphone, ProTools, a synth, and a computer....Beyonce's latest album was created using NO HUMAN MUSICIANS except for the singer herself.

Why would a record company waste all those extra bucks on testy, unreliable, drugged-out musicians who demand instruments on which to play their music (read: extra expense), when you can hire a couple of guys to use Nuendo and a singer/rapper and come out a weekend later with a hit single that cost maybe 20,000 bucks to produce and sells milions. A BAND using costly tools like amps and guitars and drums making a record might cost the company a LOT more to put out a single or album, and the guarantee of a hit isn't there...the fear of taking a bath on a rock band is crippling the rcord industry.

This is the real reason why hip hop and "rock" using samplers and computerized drums is selling and being promoted and rock is not. And it's the reason why the musical climate is so poor these days. I don't see a reversal anytime soon.

and, unfortunately, very true

you are on the money, RKZ

I think one of the reasons the early 90s were so creative was because the Industry had figured up until then, that they had The Next Big Thing(tm) down to a science. They were momentarily blindsided by Punk, successfully co-opted that movement, and set in place the standards which would make sure they'd never be caught like that again.

But, Seattle completely took them by surprise again in the early 90s. The original "grunge" sound (and I'm only using the term as a point of reference) was esentially a grass-roots, fan-based phenomenon, of kids rejecting the overprocessed sound of what was going on in the mainstream, and disillusionment with the 'rockstar' attitudes of so many so-called 'real' rockers (Niki Sixx and John Lydon spring to mind).

Better still, not only was the Industry surprised by Seattle, they couldn't *understand* Seattle. It was atonal, it was low-fi, and it was abrasive. It was, in fact, everything their focus groups told them people no longer wanted.

That sent them into a panic, and their reaction was to sign EVERYTHING, in the hopes of owning the new Next Big Thing(tm). That's why you had people like Foetus and Helmet, who had been plodding along for decades without any Major Label interest, suddenly finding themselves signed to Sony, etc, and being distributed in every WalMart in the US.

Ultimately, that tactic made the Major Label smorgasboard very tasty indeed. We would never have heard of Ween or Steve Albini, or many other relatively experimental performers, had it not been for this Industry panic.

But, you can imagine how expensive that reaction was--signing every band in the world. You can understand why they'd rather have complete control of peoples' access to music than take a chance publishing a CD that only ten thousand people will buy.

Enter the corporate domination game of the mid-to-late 90s and beyond. Welcome to ClearChannel's world of shutting down live performances of bands they don't back.


edit: many, many typos.

Drum machines didn't kill rock bands and ProTools won't either.

saying "rock can't be created with samplers" just limits the genre of rock.

Real art trascends its medium.


I own a ProTools studio, but I'm a rock fan. Go figure!

I'll also say that NIN did rock, I wasn't a huge fan or anything but they did rock.

I'd even go opposite of RKZ's opinion of ProTools, because it takes the studio power AWAY from BigMoneyCockRock Enterprises(tm) and puts it in every teenager's hands. Now every kid can have a studio, and its not a dream.

Rock's not dead, it's just hiding at the bottom of the sea of mediocrity, under the silt.

From Joe Carducci, who should know, having been a full-time grunt-worker/theorist for SST records in the 80's:


"A music that rocks can only be an active by-product of the playing of a band....its special musical value is that it is a folk form which exhibits a small band instrumental language as in jazz, rather than mere accompaniment to a vocalist as in pop."

Rock and the Pop Narcotic, pp.41

"ROCK IS NOT THE ONLY MUSIC WORTH LISTENING TO, but it is an important music, aesthetically speaking, and is due serious specific attempts at its definition and defense as MUSIC. (emphasis mine)....During my shift I came across many different mindsets by which rock music and its related culture are interpreted. Most of these are useful in some way, BUT THEY ALL SUBMERGE MUSICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR THOSE OF CLASS, FASHION, AND POLITICS........Simply because such resolutely undergroundist bands as the Stooges or Minor Threat were good does not mean that all other underground bands are good (or even trying to be good), or all bands outside the underground are not good. As we are dealing with a music and its artists' relative merits, the criterion for judement must be MUSICAL. And if it is musical then quality miht be judged found in any rock configuration whether its image lexicon is hip or tacky, elitist or white trash, urban or suburban...That is, AS LONG AS THE MUSIC PLAYED IS AN EXPRESSSIVE PRODUCT OF THE ROCK MUSIC PROCESS: GUITAR/BASS/DRUMS."

Ibid, from the preface


"Rock music needs some definition...that deinition will neither hold together nor aid us reconsidering the music unless it focuses on the essence of what rock music is AS A MUSIC, and IGNORES FASHION PARTICULARS and the flashier conceptualized fictions. Again, rock music is not the lyrics, nor is it the notes or the distortion on the notes. IT IS NOT AN ATTITUDE! (How typically New York, that one.) The msuic is rock when it is guitar, bass, and drums at the center, and they are played by musicians who know the language of the instruments enough to be expressive with them...it is a risky propostition; mistakes will be made....Rock reaches the spiritual by way of the physical; it requires an aesthetic of fully integrated completion whereby the musicians are listening to each other play and "talking" to each other via slight but constant adjustments and inflections which move the tune in new directions...."

Ibid, pp. 54-55

"The first group to use the then-rudimentary synthetic percussion technology in a rock sound was the French group Metal Urbain....They were certainly guitar-oriented and generated a cold, metallic, riff-based sound....The percussion programs were very simply set up and did not vary throughout the tune- a low frequency pulse for a kick beat, a light trace of white noise patterned after the hi hat, and an incorporeal popping in place of the snare drum....In an interesting post-breakup interview, guitarist Herman Schwartz indicated that he considered the group to be a rock band in the tradition of the Sex Pistols and Gene Vincent - his examples - and not an anti-rock conceit like Bowie or Throbbing Gristle (also his examples.) It seems he felt rock music can exist seperate from the concerns of the rythym section...later artists to embrace synthetic percussion would not be so sincere or so rock in intent."

pp.355

"It was the Black Flag work ethic that by example turned great local curiosities all over the country into touring, recording, record releasing rock bands despite the marketplace hostility of that day towards American rock music. The Industry, from A&R departments to reional offices, from Rolling Stone to college radio, had all but breathed a sigh of relief with the Sex Pistols' break up and the Clash's sell out. The spicy new pop flavors they would now embrace would be such as the English Beat, Madness, or if they wanted to get "radical," PiL or Au Pairs. They actually believed that the new American bands were hopelessly, garishly out of date - "punk" having been done. Get that? They thought that these signposts of contemporary rock music were brainless redundancies of a form that was an aesthetic dead end to begin with....! Oops."

pp. 364-65

"The pop process today no longer yields rock music even in the harshest, most "uncommercial" underground scenes. If Metal Urbain, Ministry, Big Black, Nine Inch Nails, etc. want to put distorted guitars over a drum machine IT MAY BE COOL BUT IT'S POP.... To the extent that they succeed in passing for rock they threaten what market exists for rock music. Pop COULD rock in the days of live analog one or two or four track recording when pop groups and even session groups like those of Sun, Chess, and Stax had to play live to record and so risked rock no matter how pop the intentions. But in the pop world now with its high tech recording studos rarely are two musicians ever actaully playing together. No rock is committed just because four guys are making loud noises at the same time. AND NO ROCK OCCURS JUST BECAUSE POP OCCASIONALLY SERVES ITS AUDIENCE QUITE INTIMATELY AND WELL."

pp. 105

Carducci's intent is to define rock music as an aesthetic process seperate from the aesthetic process known as pop...they are two different approaches: rock is played in a small band format by guitar bass and drums, whereas pop can occasioanlly come in a "rock" flavor, but once you have removed the central core of the small band format, you are dealing with a music that is NOT rock. The pop approach/process is derived from the Tin Pan Alley way: producer-driven, lyric/singer-centered, the song and the singer all important; this process was tailor made for the ProTools generation, as it in one fell swoop provides the amateur producer, to as you contend, take the power away from the hands of the big studios and into the hands of some kid in his bedroom....the ultimate result may sound cool and may even sound sorta rockish, but it's not rock music. It's a form of pop, just like all dance musics, hip hop, techno, etc. Like he says, rock music is not the only music woth listening to....In order for a music to be rock, it must be played on real instruments by a small band.

And as we all know, Nirvana was a rock band. In order for another mid-nineties moment to occur again, the arbiter of change MUST be the organic product of the rock process, like Nirvana, because it is exactly this physical approach (like that of the Beatles, Elvis's band, the Stones, the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, Led Zep, etc. before them) that most directly triggers the spiritual realm in the listener, leading to the most effective marketplace upheaval. Unfortunately, what is left of the rock audience these days for the most part favors the non-physical approach....and is quite happy with the synthetic, glossy, non-tactile product on the market.

I never said rock was dead; quite the opposite. Rock exists now outside the marketplace, with no real chance of effecting the pop charts...however there is a healthy local band scene in just about every city in America, with players from all classes working the rock aesthetic. This can be good, as it focuses these players' attention to the physical matter of creating the music itself instead of the pop concerns of monetary success, geting laid, pissing off mommy and daddy, etc. Basically, rock is no longer he dominant marketplace force as it was in the sixties, seventies, and mid-nineties; it is back being a localized phenomenon, like it was in the 80's, when Black Flag, Husker Du, et al. operated in isolation and in turn laid the groundwork for the explosion to come.

All of the sudden, things just went to crap again.

As I still listen to all my Lillithish stuff, 80's alternative, and old classic rock and roll (with some occasional classic R&B thrown in), I have come to the conclusion, I'm either now too old to care or too old to be easily manipulilated by "the man". Or maybe I just know what I like.