On Alternative

I’m not sure when exactly I first realized that the term Alternative in reference to music was bullshit.  Maybe it was when I was sixteen and working my first job at a local supermarket.  One of my co-workers was trying to convince me to go see his band, and when I asked what they sounded like his response was, “We’re sort of an alternative to alternative.  But God I hate that word.”  By that time, the word Alternative did little for me.  I had already bought and eventually sold back too many albums from shitty bands proudly waving the Alternative rock banner to be fooled by this term again.  I was sixteen years old and turned on to a new contrived form of music: pop punk.  

Still, there were CDs hidden in my collection that I owned that I never would have told my punk rock friends I had.  Records like Radiohead’s Pablo Honey and The Bends, The Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish and Siamese Dream, and the entire catalog from Nirvana.  (It may seem odd that one would have to hide records as respected as these, but one thing you should understand, there is no one bitchier and more elitist than punk rock kids without pubes trying to prove how cool they are).  Alanis Morrisette, The Gin Blossoms, Hootie and the Blowfish, and 311 had all reared their ugly heads to the mainstream, and when someone talked about how they liked Alternative at this point, those were the sort of bands they were referring to.  There was no OK Computer, The Smashing Pumpkins were starting to experiment with their not so awesome electronica period, and the Seattle grunge scene was now retro.  For all intents and purposes, Alternative rock was dead.  It was adult contemporary.  Kenny G and Steve Winwood with younger faces.  

As for me, I never really thought about the term Alternative much.  I followed pop punk into things like the older street punk, and hardcore.  Eventually, I found my way into the late ‘90s version of emo, which put me right on the doorstep of indie rock.  Alternative rock radio stations began to fade.  You heard Alanis Morrisette played alongside Rod Stewart on the adult contemporary stations, and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam played alongside Led Zeppelin and Guns ‘N’ Roses on stations that referred to their format as Rock.  The Alternative section in record stores vanished, and now when looking for a record like The Smith’s Meat is Murder you might have to flip through a few CDs from Santana and Skid Row before you found it.  

As the world went digital, I never payed much attention to the genre section of iTunes when buying MP3s or uploading old CDs until a friend of mine posted this status update recently on Facebook: “Micheal Joseph Flanagen feels very satisfied about eliminating ‘Alternative’ as a genre category in his iTunes library.”  The first time I read this post, I simply giggled about it.  Then, I realized I was actually thinking about his post a lot.  A couple days later, I plugged my iPod into my computer and began doing the same thing.  Obsessively, I began changing the genre on every song to something I thought might be more appropriate, whether that term be Dream Pop, Baroque Pop, Shoegaze, or simply Indie.  Truthfully, I try not to think about genres in music as much as I might have when I was younger, but I guess I was a little bothered by the fact that if I chose to purchase a record from Matchbox 20, Limp Bizkit, or Fuel, iTunes would give these bands the same genre classification that they give to the Pixies, Arcade Fire, and The Flaming Lips.

You might be thinking that this whole process of giving every song in my iTunes library a new genre is a project brought on by me having too much time on my hands, and you are probably right.  I freely admit that there are probably better things that I could be doing with my time, but in a way, I feel like I am fighting a good fight.  Alternative, after all, was not a term coined by the musicians themselves.  Its often credited to radio programers in the late ‘80s.  This, to me, is strikingly similar to Sire Records re-titling punk rock as New Wave in the late ‘70s so that radio stations and consumers would not be frightened by the bands they had recently signed.         It may have been a smart business move by Seymour Stein, but in the same way that punk continued to exist as a separate entity from New Wave in the UK through Street Punk and in the United States through Orange County and Washington D.C.’s hardcore punk scenes, the music that was originally dubbed alternative continued to exist as well as a form completely unrecognizable from what MTV, mainstream radio, and the major record labels began to dub alternative.  

Major labels scrambled to find their next Nirvana, and in the process used the elder statesmen of the genre from its days of being known as College Rock as opening bands for the newly signed, easily marketable acts.  The Flaming Lips hit the road opening for Candlebox, but even they fared better than They Might Be Giants who was forced to tour with Hootie and the Blowfish.  Even bands like Pixies, who earned a more reputable headlining act in the form of U2, found themselves playing nearly empty arenas, as the crowds chose not to arrive until the headliner took the stage.  (Note: I am fully aware that U2 existed before the Pixies, and am in now way trying to imply that they are comparable to bands like Candlebox and Hootie and the Blowfish).  

There is this scene in Terry Zwigoff’s film adaptation of Ghost World where Steve Buscemi’s character, Seymour, goes to a sports bar to see an unnamed original Delta bluesman perform.  The blues man is an opening act for a frat boy band called Blues Hammer, a sort of joke rock/blues hybrid band.  The authentic blues man is ignored, yet when Blues Hammer takes the stage, the crowd cheers and begins to dance.  This was the fate that many of the innovators in Modern Rock had to face when taking the stage with their label’s newest pet projects (They Might Be Giants even found themselves booed during some of their Hootie and the Blowfish gigs).  

Of course, the real tragedy of the term Alternative is the bands it destroyed.  Acts like Jawbreaker and Loud Lucy, who had strong underground followings, found themselves picked up by record labels looking to find the next Green Day.  When their sales weren’t up to par, the bands found themselves dropped from the label.  Often the stress of the major labels forced the bands to break up, and their records eventually found their way out of print.  Then there is also the case of  Material Issue frontman Jim Ellison, who took his own life, some believe, because his band was dropped from Mercury Records.

I know I am now treading the waters of hyperbole, but this music is something that a lot of people take as seriously as an academic takes literature.  Music, after all, is typically regional.  Orange County and Washington D.C. have already been mentioned, but also consider Athens, Georgia and it’s relationship with R.E.M., The B-52s, and Elephant 6, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and it’s relationship with Merge Records, and more recently Omaha, Nebraska and Saddle Creek.  Of course, there are no comparisons more obvious than Seattle and Grunge.  Certain cities are often equated to a certain sound, and in 2009, the term Grunge almost seems laughable.  Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit has Kurt Cobain’s face tattooed on his chest.  With a few notable exceptions, the music from Alternative rock’s heyday that still receives radio play is just as laughable as disco, and now Indie, the term that would come to surpass Alternative is moving in a similar direction to include bands like Cut Copy and Paramore under it’s umbrella.   

I’m not suggesting elitism in music, by any means.  I would love to see these bands be able to make a living off of their music.  When I hear The Walkmen, Matt and Kim, Feist,  Grandaddy, and Cat Power songs played in commercials, I get giddy.  I loved hearing The Shins get name dropped in Garden State.  All I truly want is for major labels to not try to market the shitty pop band they just signed as if they are some sort of underground Indie rock heroes.  Am I asking too much?