Yeah but that’s pretty close to what I consider “alternative” to mean. It was mostly a marketing/programming term. In the beginning it was maybe the labels and MTV opening up to more variety but pretty quickly it became Nirvana>Bush>Silverchair>Stone Temple Pilots>Creed>Nickleback or just the predominant style of commercial hard rock.
I didn’t listen to the radio or watch MTV back then but by 1988, in my world, Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were already completely ubiquitous. The “alternative” phenomenon was just a braindead music industry adapting several years late to what young people were really listening to. This was a positive development because it put Bryan Adams and most of the ex-Eagles out of business but the majority of good music stayed under the radar.
I would probably put “100,000 Fireflies” on my list of the best singles of the 90’s but it would be insulting to call The Magnetic Fields “alternative”.
In the 80s, there was a definite “alternative” scene (though we mostly called it “college rock” at the time). Bands that were an actual alternative to the crap being played on the radio and MTV (and yes, for the most part, they were cult bands who didn’t sell many records). There was a whole underground network of clubs and zines and independent labels, and many bands slept on audience members’ floors and toured in crappy hoopdie vans. In that context, “alternative” had meaning. When the 90s bands who rehashed the 80s bands’ sounds and watered them down got airplay, it was still branded “alternative” though it was in reality mainstream (and hence not an alternative to anything).
Look at his list of Top 50 Bands of All Time. The Beatles come in at #10. The Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin aren’t on the list at all. No prize for guessing his #1 band.
But even that is fairly useless as a definition. Sleeping on the floors of fan’s houses doesn’t connect all of those bands in one defining scene any more than skinny jeans and eyeliner qualify a band for the emo scene.
And I am aware that “scene” and “emo” are supposed to be different. My pasty white buttocks they are!
Sure, but most of the bands in the underground scene in the 80s, though often wildly different in style, ended up playing shows (and sleeping on floors) together, since the clubs that supported such music were nowhere near as numerous as they are today. Anybody who went to those shows would probably have described it as a “scene” even if the music wasn’t all of a piece.
ETA: I guess what I’m getting at is that it was a culture (subculture, really, I guess, though I hate that term) as much as a single unifying musical style - and, for better or worse, there were no real subcultures in the 90s: everything got swallowed up by the mass culture at a frightening rate after the 80s.
The Pixies were pretty much done by the 90s, although Frank Black made the list with “Headache”…a good song, but I’d rather see “Calistan” or even “Los Angeles” in there.
Yeah, I was really surprised to see “Today” down in the 80s. It’s not necessarily my favorite Pumpkins song, but that opening riff is stellar–one of the quintessential intros of 90s alternative music. On that basis alone, I would probably rank it in my Top 10 or 20 of 90s alternative rock songs. I would put 1979 very close behind. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” would not make my Top 200.
And Interpol #2. I like listening to Interpol, but they do not display enough talent or variety to come anywhere near a top 500 bands of all time, let alone top 50.