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 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.
And here’s a 1989 NYTimes article referring to REM as “alternative rock,” which is what I remember, too, although we just usually used the shortened “alternative” form.
And if you look through this Google books search, you will see “alternative music” show up in the press well before the mid-90s. This Billboard Music article from 1985 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.
^ Sorry, the above quote should accurately be “so-called ‘alternative’ music.”
You said they were definitely the first. They were not, and you haven’t disputed that in the above post.
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?
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.
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.
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.
double-post
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.
I was in Pittsburgh until 1983, and then ended up in Norfolk by the summer of '85.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
[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.