early-90s alt-rock vs. late-90s alt rock

genuine q: did pixies or husker du or sonic youth ever chart in the u.s.?

― all i wanna do is poll poll poll poll and zing and discuss mia (history mayne), Monday, May 17, 2010 5:48 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah they had 5 minor modern rock hits from '88 to '94

― couldn't think of anything to write instead of 'steendriver' (some dude), Monday, May 17, 2010 5:50 PM

VERY minor...in the Midwest about 1 in 75 people that you will run into randomly will have knowingly heard a song by any of the aforementioned bands.

lol I'd forgotten that "Brothersport" was so annoying, that may play into why AC hasn't charted

sonic youth is a vaguely familiar name...and they play here comes your man at baseball games & on mall P.A.s now, but i don't think anybody really recognizes it beyond the guitar riff...husker du, i don't even know....

xxxp MPP made it pretty onto the Billboard 100 didn't it?

pretty HIGH onto

oh yeah, 13

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_one_modern_rock_hits_of_2010

fwiw, the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alternative_rock include MPP in its list of 2009 Alternative Rock CDs (along with Green Day, the Dead Weather, Paramore, Pearl Jam, U2, Weezer, Wilco, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, other stuff).

Within the context of the modern rock charts, "100%" and "Kool Thing" were top 10 and therefore not minor. I still think those charts were just made up by some random dork though.

kool thing might not have been minor...but modern rock charts seemed kind of dodgy...i remember in '93 when i started to get into music, there was a two-hour block on the local top 40 station that was all modern rock, and that was all there was as far as modern rock goes...in 95 there was an actual local alt-rock station for about six months before it turned classic rock...they played stuff like the Deadlights, and the Nixons, and Loud Lucy, and Silverchair...by that time, Sonic Youth was already off the radar...

i think of "alternative" in the 90s as a marketing term, a brand of mainstream, rock-oriented pop offered to MTV-educated consumers who didn't want to think of themselves as unhip. though it carried a great deal of alt-cultural cache, "indie" (at the time) referred simply to label affiliation. since independent labels didn't then have much direct access to the radio listeners at whom alternative music was marketed, indie and alt were vastly different ballparks. alt was what commercially ambitious indie aspired to, and indie culture provided much of the cred that alt used to justify its distance from some other, ostensibly more mainstream-y mainstream. stereolab started the decade as an indie band, and like many others, ended it modestly successful alt rockers.

something like the alternative format still exists, though it seems to be playing for a much smaller slice of the pie these days. happy upside is that smaller labels and even label-less artists can compete with the majors - well, can at least get noticed and heard.

occasionally

In high school in the early nineties, I heard "progressive" and "post-modern" a lot.

postmodernism is characterized by an incredulity towards Animal Collective

Yeah, the thing is that until 1992 or so, there were only a handful of stations in the U.S. that called themselves "modern rock"/"alternative rock." It was a niche format and driven pretty much by whatever those stations, like KROQ, decided to play. So some of those early Modern Rock charts (beginning in 1988) look kind of weird and eclectic and British.

alt-rock absolutely was a marketing term, though any legitimate claim it had to making one seem not "unhip" was drastically reduced as the decade wore on...

early 90s alt-rock was basically mainstream radio-rock that fed the huge demand for 80s underground rock that had gone unnoticed by corporations and audiences alike until Smells Like Teen Spirit.

late 90s alt-rock was basically mainstream radio-rock with even more rough edges worn away in order to appeal to even more common denominators......I tend to think of tyhe late 90s stuff as crass and watered-down, but can see how the early-90s stuff can really grate...

actually irt postmodernism...the two hour modern rock radio bloc wz actually called Postmodern KFR

voted early '90s, 30+.

oh yeah, 13

― Have a slice of wine! (HI DERE), Monday, May 17, 2010 4:57 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

#13 on the strength of 25,000 copies. In 1998 a Jerry Seinfeld comedy album debuted at #59 with the same numbers.

postmodernism is characterized by an incredulity towards Animal Collective

― ksh, Monday, May 17, 2010 10:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ this is the sort of postmodernism I can get behind

me too, tbh

will stan for Feels & Strawberry Jam. that's about it

and some other tracks here and there

we call that "modernism"

postmodernism is characterized by an incredulity towards Animal Collective

― ksh, Monday, May 17, 2010 10:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ this is the sort of postmodernism I can get behind

― Police Cool. (crüt), Monday, May 17, 2010 6:23 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

me too, tbh

Thirded. Now we have a majority. So moved.

I'm going by the kind of stuff they played on 120 Minutes:

1990

Cocteau Twins- Heaven or Las Vegas
Sonic Youth- Goo
Ride- Nowhere
Pixies- Bossanova
Jane's Addiction- Ritual De Lo Habitual
Robyn Hitchcock- Eye
House of Love
The Las
TMBG- Flood
Happy Mondays- Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches
Sinead O'Connor- I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
The Breeders- Pod
Peter Murphy- Deep
Social Distortion- S/T
Alice in Chains- Facelift
.....

My favorite stuff is generally between 1993 and 1996. Earlier than that most of the stuff sounds pretty dated now. Post OK Computer era stuff just doesn't have quite as many of my favorites.

As of right now.

Over 30, voted late 90s.

The first half of the decade had all the big ones, Slanted and Enchanted, Nevermind, Automatic For The People, Rid Of Me, Exile In Guyville, etc. But the 2nd half of the decade had a lot more great records. Just the year 1997 alone had a ridiculous amount of great music.

early 90s, 30+.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

early 90s, 30+. Late 90s was weak sauce. Ugh.

I do like this handful of late '90s radio alts:

(1996) Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
(1997) Foo Fighters - Everlong
(1998) Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta
(1999) New Radicals - You Get What You Give

But, c'mon:

(1990) Faith No More - Epic
(1990) Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
(1991) Big Audio Dynamite II - Rush
(1991) Jesus Jones - Right Here, Right Now
(1991) R.E.M. - Losing My Religion
(1991) Siouxsie & The Banshees - Kiss Them For Me
(1991) Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
(1992) Blind Melon - No Rain
(1992) Pearl Jam - Even Flow
(1992) Spin Doctors - Two Princes
(1993) Radiohead - Creep
(1993) The Breeders - Cannonball
(1994) Counting Crows - Mr. Jones
(1994) Green Day - Longview
(1994) Weezer - Undone-The Sweater Song
etc.

I like about as many of those songs from each list

Neither. 1994-1996. The MID-90s!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

boo yah

The old fart brigade stumbles onward.

Late 90's had that huge influx of rap-metal. holy god that was an embarrasment

the first nu-metal album was 1994 (Korn), Kerrang was going on about Nu-Metal when that came out, though I think it took a while for it to catch on in the US.

lol exactly 100 votes! someone make a pie chart

the first nu-metal album was 1994 (Korn), Kerrang was going on about Nu-Metal when that came out, though I think it took a while for it to catch on in the US.

well, wouldn't rage against the machine kind of count as the "first nu-metal album"? or is that too pedantic/too much about defining "nu-metal"?!?

RATM got the 'funk metal' and 'rap metal' tags a lot but i don't know if they were actually metal enough (or at all really) to get the 'nu-metal' label, they were just a harder alt-rock band

nah, Korn were the first band to be called it. I probably still have that issue of Kerrang up the loft. RATM never got called nu-metal, not even now.

not here anyway

Korn WERE pretty unique when they first came out, that much i will concede as true. though AFAIC it was because of Jon Davis's love for bagpipes (which made him kinda Bon Scott-ish).

the whole nu-metal thing wasnt just rap + metal, it had something to do with specific tunings didnt it? (at least at first) most of the early ones were Korn clones (remember that bunch of chancers Coal Chamber?) Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Slipknot were second wave nu-metal i guess?

oh god one of my mates loved Stuck Mojo.

and anyway, though i didn't vote i would've voted early 90s (30+ y/o) -- a lot out of (continuing) ignorance of what was going on in the alt-rock world (other than the stuff on mainstream radio) more than anything else (graduated college, looked for and got my first post-college graduation job and was super busy, went back to law school ... and was therefore too busy/preoccupied to listen obsessively to college/left-of-the-dial stations any more or go to concerts).

xxpost I wouldn't say it had to do with specific tunings. A lot of nu-metal bands use(d) drop D tuning, but that predates nu-metal, and downtuned guitars are a heavy metal standby since the days of Sabbath. To me nu-metal is usually identifiable by the rhythm and the vocals.