# "Nirvana made alt rock popular". Historical revisionism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2014, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460 "2014-09-04T09:41:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/101 "2014-09-08T15:24:08Z")
> [@unwashed\_brain](#): > > Just wanted to point out that REM had a pretty big hit with _It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)_ off their 1988 album Document. Most people of my age knew, at the least, when to yell, “Leonard Bernstein!” Up until _Losing My Religion_ (which was a hugely popular song and video), I’d always heard of REM classified as College Rock. > > I really don’t remember anything called Alt Rock until the mid 90’s. I think the term “Modern Rock” was more prevalent in the late-80’s, early 90’s. Alternative was stuff like The Cure and New Order. Kiss Me and Disintegration-era The Cure was more popular that other posters are suggesting. > > Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, et al, were most definitely called Grunge, not Alt Rock. There may have been some nascent Alt Rock umbrella under which Grungy things thrived, but in the language of the time, the music was called Grunge. This may be regional. All of that was under the broad umbrella of “alternative music” when I was in high school in Chicago from 1989-1993. “Grunge” was definitely known as a specific genre underneath the “alternative” umbrella. Q101 started in 1992 in Chicago with the slogan “Chicago’s new rock alternative,” incorporating the already known “alternative” adjective in the slogan. The first song they played was The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love.” [This Chicago Tribune article](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-01-19/news/9701190222_1_seattle-grunge-bands-alternative-music) claims (although unsourced), that the term started around 1980. That’s a good bit farther back than I remember, but the complaints he has–in an article written in 1997–is that “alternative” has lost its meaning, and that’s exactly the sort of complaints I mentioned above that we had around 1993 or so when alternative simply became mainstream rock. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/102 "2014-09-08T15:26:30Z")
And [here’s a 1989](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/05/arts/home-entertainment-recordings-soundings-a-new-kind-of-rock.html) NYTimes article referring to REM as “alternative rock,” which is what I remember, too, although we just usually used the shortened “alternative” form. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/103 "2014-09-08T15:30:45Z")
And if you look through this [Google books](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22alternative+music%22&biw=1280&bih=1026&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1980%2Ccd_max%3A1992&tbm=bks) search, you will see “alternative music” show up in the press well before the mid-90s. [This Billboard Music article from 1985](http://books.google.com/books?id=jCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT5&dq=%22alternative+music%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=C8sNVPT5EcKUyASSpoDICA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22alternative%20music%22&f=false) contains the phrase “so-called ‘alternative music’,” implying that the phrase had some currency even then, so maybe the early '80s sourcing of the term isn’t as far off as I thought it might be. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/104 "2014-09-08T15:54:14Z")
^ Sorry, the above quote should accurately be “so-called ‘alternative’ music.” ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/105 "2014-09-08T17:01:39Z")
> [@Subterraneanus](#): > > I saw bands like the Clash and the Ramones in 1979, XTC and the B-52s in 1980, REM in 1985, Soundgarden as early as 1986, and was very involved in the US “underground” music scene throughout the 1980s. I played in bands, went to hundreds of shows, and was a college radio DJ from 1981-1986. Yes, there were indie/alt bands that achieved a measure of success before Nirvana–but nothing close to their success. If the question concerns which indie/alt band first achieved success on a massive scale, then the answer is clearly, “Nirvana.” You said they were definitely the first. They were not, and you haven’t disputed that in the above post. ---
**Author:** ![Sean\_Factotum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Sean\_Factotum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sean_Factotum)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/106 "2014-09-08T18:15:14Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > [This Chicago Tribune article](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-01-19/news/9701190222_1_seattle-grunge-bands-alternative-music) claims (although unsourced), that the term started around 1980. That’s a good bit farther back than I remember, but the complaints he has–in an article written in 1997–is that “alternative” has lost its meaning, and that’s exactly the sort of complaints I mentioned above that we had around 1993 or so when alternative simply became mainstream rock. Very early '80s matches what I remember when it comes to around when ‘alternative’ started being used. Basically, it applied to all the bands on the IRS and Factory labels, any band written up in _Trouser Press_ (my friend who introduced me to REM had a subscription. His mom called it his Pants magazine), newer bands made up of the survivors of English punk bands (such as Public Image Ltd), and the odd bands that were getting noticed but couldn’t fill a stadium (such as The Waitresses). But that’s just off the top of my head for the years 1980-1982 (roughly). ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/107 "2014-09-08T18:58:39Z")
> [@Sean\_Factotum](#): > > Very early '80s matches what I remember when it comes to around when ‘alternative’ started being used. Basically, it applied to all the bands on the IRS and Factory labels, any band written up in _Trouser Press_ (my friend who introduced me to REM had a subscription. His mom called it his Pants magazine), newer bands made up of the survivors of English punk bands (such as Public Image Ltd), and the odd bands that were getting noticed but couldn’t fill a stadium (such as The Waitresses). But that’s just off the top of my head for the years 1980-1982 (roughly). That fits pretty closely with what I posted earlier in this thread. I was in the greater Houston area at that time. Where were you? ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/108 "2014-09-08T19:49:19Z")
> [@Sean\_Factotum](#): > > It’s got to be an age thing. I first heard of REM when I was 19, the day _Murmur_ came out… I was in college in Seattle during the critical grunge years (1990-1994). Prior to Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten, there was a bit of a college music generational transition happening in the “alternative” scene. You could tell the junior/senior people by the REM (IRS era), Morrissey, and Replacements cds in their rooms. The freshman/sophomore had Nirvana (Bleach), Mudhoney, Sonic Youth. I’ve maintained before that grunge was really a rebellion against the whiny alternative emo-Morrissey scene, and not against hair metal or MTV. When grunge dropped the nuke on Morrissey and Bono, it caught the rest of the Billboard charts in the fallout. When Smells Like Teen Spirit broke, it all became ubiquitous. Even in the fraternity parties, Steve Miller and Jimmy Buffet would take a back seat to Nirvana and Pearl Jam. It all happened insanely fast. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/109 "2014-09-08T20:25:56Z")
There was some strange music coming out around that time. For 90% of it, you probably won’t ever see it again unless you catch it on a Beavis and Butthead re-run. And you’re right about campuses though pre-grunge. Another group I remember getting played a lot was Dead Milkmen. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/110 "2014-09-09T08:10:23Z")
In the late 80s/early90s, I would have drawn a distinction between “Alternative Music” (which covered everything from Punk to Synthpop to Goth to Shoegaze to 4AD-style Dream Pop to B52s to …whatever the Sugarcubes were) and “Alternative Rock”, which was, like I said before, synonymous for us with “American College Rock” - REM, Pixies, Sugar, and then all the grunge stuff. To my mind, The Cure _was_ “Alternative”, but _not_ “alt rock”. I’m not saying they aren’t a rock band (although, to me, the appropriate label is “pop band” not “rock band”), just that they’re not “alt rock” to me. This might just be a provincial usage. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/111 "2014-09-09T08:11:37Z")
double-post ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/112 "2014-09-09T11:26:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > And you’re right about campuses though pre-grunge. Another group I remember getting played a lot was Dead Milkmen. The Dead Milkmen were a college radio staple in the mid-late 80’s. They got a lot of airplay on V-91 (WVUA 90.7 FM) at The University of Alabama. ---
**Author:** ![Sean\_Factotum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Sean\_Factotum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sean_Factotum)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/113 "2014-09-09T13:21:51Z")
> [@AncientHumanoid](#): > > That fits pretty closely with what I posted earlier in this thread. I was in the greater Houston area at that time. Where were you? I was in Pittsburgh until 1983, and then ended up in Norfolk by the summer of '85. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/114 "2014-09-09T14:18:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > 1. Country albums from about 1984-1991 rarely crack the top 50 on the Hot 200. Once the grunge era got started, country started to rule the album charts. When Nirvana debuted, an even more important artist, at least commercially, also had his breakout: Garth Brooks. Brooks proved to be far more consequential for the music business than Nirvana ever was. Nirvana killed rock, while Brooks revitalized country, and country is stronger than ever commercially today. I always just kind of thought country was really popular during my college years because I’d gone from suburban Houston to Texas A&M in the fall of 1991, and the school has a heavy country/agricultural slant. I really never realized that it was a national sort of phenomenon until relatively recently. > [@adaher](#): > > 1. THe idea that hair metal was no longer commercially viable is the biggest myth. Yeah, Guns ‘N Roses’ “Use Your Illusion” albums and the single “November Rain” were in the 1992-1994 time frame, and were all Billboard Top 3 or better in their categories. Hardly the performance of a “dead” genre. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/115 "2014-09-09T14:28:28Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Yeah, Guns ‘N Roses’ “Use Your Illusion” albums and the single “November Rain” were in the 1992-1994 time frame, and were all Billboard Top 3 or better in their categories. Hardly the performance of a “dead” genre. I never really thought of GnR as typical hair metal, though. At least around here, GnR was respected and listened to by people who loathed hair metal like Motley Crue, Cinderella, and Poison. Apparently, the idea [isn’t restricted](http://www.metalsucks.net/2010/07/23/the-top-ten-bands-most-often-miscategorized-as-hair-metal-2-guns-n-roses/) to my upbringing. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/116 "2014-09-09T21:08:53Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I never really thought of GnR as typical hair metal, though. At least around here, GnR was respected and listened to by people who loathed hair metal like Motley Crue, Cinderella, and Poison. Apparently, the idea [isn’t restricted](http://www.metalsucks.net/2010/07/23/the-top-ten-bands-most-often-miscategorized-as-hair-metal-2-guns-n-roses/) to my upbringing. Well, they certainly weren’t what we called metal, which was more along the lines of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Pantera, Motorhead and Sepultura, to name a few. It’s kind of interesting though; even back then among my metalhead friends, there was a sort of recognition of “good” hair bands, and “bad” hair bands, with the good ones being ones that were actually technically skilled and on the hard side (Motley Crue, Van Halen and GnR come to mind), while the bad ones were the ones that were more about image, and less about music - Poison, Cinderella, Warrant, Nelson and Enuff Z’Nuff stand out in my mind. They didn’t listen to those “good” bands, but they did at least respect the musicians, which is more than could be said for the bad bands. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/117 "2014-09-09T21:15:13Z")
They only people I remember actually professing love for hair bands were skinny girls wearing strategically ripped tight jeans. I approved of the girls And the jeans ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/118 "2014-09-09T21:15:35Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Well, they certainly weren’t what we called metal, which was more along the lines of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Pantera, Motorhead and Sepultura, to name a few. Yeah, they weren’t part of the normal metalhead scene, either. Interesting you mention Van Halen, because that’s another one I would not normally lop into the hair metal category. I put GnR and Van Halen into a more ambiguous “hard rock” category. Motley Crue, though, I would put in hair metal. There was pretty much no love for Motley Crue from metalheads here. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/119 "2014-09-09T21:32:42Z")
> [@AncientHumanoid](#): > > They only people I remember actually professing love for hair bands were skinny girls wearing strategically ripped tight jeans. > > I approved of the girls > > And the jeans Well, the hair bands had a hell of a lot more platinum albums than the grunge bands. And something else the grunge bands got exactly zero of: #1 Billboard hits. I’m not even sure the grunge acts even got so much as a top 10. Unless you count Pearl Jam with a cover song, “Last Kiss”, which hit #2. Grunge may have been the rage on MTV and college campuses, but it was actually just a short-lived niche phenomenon. It’s consequences for the music industry were far more significant than their popularity at the time, mainly because the industry perceived it as the next big thing. WHen it turned out it wasn’t, it was quickly thrown into the same circular file as the hair bands. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460/120 "2014-09-09T22:12:39Z")
[quote=“adaher, post:119, topic:697460”] [quoteAnd something else the grunge bands got exactly zero of: #1 Billboard hits. I’m not even sure the grunge acts even got so much as a top 10. Unless you count Pearl Jam with a cover song, “Last Kiss”, which hit #2.[/quote] Yeah, in terms of airplay singles, that’s almost right. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit #6 i the Hot 100 and Pearl Jam’s “I Got Id” (of all songs–not that it’s a bad song, it’s just hardly one of their iconic tunes) hit #7. But I got nothin’ after that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nirvana-made-alt-rock-popular-historical-revisionism/697460.md?page=7)