I was at a bar last night and there was a lot of 311 being played on the jukebox. Definitely took me back but I also thought the music held up quite well.
Feel free to use the widest possible definition of ‘alternative’ for this thread. It really did encompass a wide variety of music back then.
Well, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, REM and Weezer spring to mind. But while they started out as alternative they soon became pretty mainstream.
My more alternative faves would be
Morphine
Concrete Blonde
Rage Against the Machine
The Flaming Lips
And so many more…such a good time for music, IMHO
Go back to the 80’s and
Big Boys
Dicks
Minutemen
Subhumans (English)
Soundgarden
Pretty much anything that Mike McCready and Chris Cornell were involved in
OK, lemme think of what I still listen to reasonably regularly, and who haven’t been mentioned, and that are reasonably rock (so not counting Massive Attack, Portishead, and the like). Some of these straddle the 80s:
Sleater-Kinney
Pixies
My Bloody Valentine
Red Kross
Radiohead
Shellac
Pavement
Dinosaur, Jr.
Sonic Youth I might put on there, I did love Goo and Dirty, but Sister and Daydream Nation were in the late 80s, and I associate them more with that decade.
Pixies are def an 80’s band in my mind!
And, let’s not forget
Yeah, they straddle the late 80s, and early 90s. Surfa Rosa was '88; Doolittle was '89; Bossanova was '90 and Trompe Le Monde '91. So they’re right on the cusp.
ETA: Oh. forgot Come On Pilgrim, '87. So more of a foothold in the 80s. Culturally, yes, I’d call it 80s. I don’t really think of the 90s musically until around late '91 and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
I’d forgotten that Surfer Rosa was so near the end of the 80’s. In my mind they’re linked with Throwing Muses, Violent Femmes, Husker Du and the like.
Still an awesome choice
Monkey Gone to Heaven is a classic!
The Breeders — not the biggest recorded output in the 90s (or since), but influential and absolutely classic stuff. Pod is the album for the cool kids, Last Splash is the summertime trip to the county fair where you have a great fuckin’ time.
Kathleen Hanna had three projects in the 90s — Bikini Kill, Julie Ruin, and Le Tigre. I can see an argument that all are in some way dated or too idiosyncratic to have “stood the test of time,” but there are some great bangers on those records and they certainly influenced a lot of later musicians.
Cat Power — made her bones in the 90s and released one classic album in the decade, *Moon Pix. *I hear echoes of her style in lots of (often kinda insipid) singer-songwriter stuff today. I’m glad she got sober in the 00s for her sake, but I can’t say I appreciate what it did to her musical output. The Covers Record came out in 2000, but it’s pre-9/11 so maybe we can add it to her tally there.
I’ll be specific and also nominate only the 1990s incarnation of Belle and Sebastian, when Stuart Murdoch was in the band. Those three albums, and If You’re Feeling Sinister in particular, just scream 90s sensitive-guy indie music to me.
I honestly can’t think of a 90s alt rock band that hasn’t stood the test of time. But being a 45-year-old guy who listened to a lot of alt rock in the 90s, I may be a bit biased.
Still enjoy Weezer, Green Day, Offspring, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots, Cranberries, Blink-182, Veruca Salt, Garbage, Letters to Cleo…and actually my 12-year-old son likes these bands too, so I guess they have held up ok.
Awesome!
If I may venture a bit south of the border , Cafe Tacuba is a great Mexican alternative rock band that did their best work in the mid 90s (and did enjoy some mainstream success). They have totally stood the test of time.
Closer to the vibe of this thread so far, I’d venture that Camper Van Beethoven’s 1990 album “Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart” is still worth the occasional listen.
Great one.
The 90s was something of a golden age for two very different alternative subgenres I like - industrial and Britpop.
Of the industrial, I still love the stuff I listened to then, like Ministry, My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult, NIN, Pigface, Skinny Puppy, Young Gods and Revolting Cocks.
Of the Britpop - most of it’s held up quite well, but I find Oasis unlistenable now. Blur, Pulp and Suede are still great, though.
A third 90s-centric genre somewhat adjacent to Britpop is shoegaze, and that’s still awesome and I still listen to them all. Lush, Ride, Slowdive, even harder-to-pinpoint acts like House of Love and Pale Saints.
IMO, those of us who listened to and enjoyed alternative music in the Nineties are the least qualified to determine which bands have stood the test of time. I tried playing the Amps (Kim Deal’s post-Breeders project) at work one day, and the twenty-somethings almost staged a walk-out.
The Dicks and the Big Boys??? Whoa. Didn’t expect those entries in a million years.
Did you follow Biscuit’s command and start your own band?
I was the perfect age for “alternative bands breaking into the mainstream” in the 90s, and I also lived in L.A. for four years and kept my radio locked on the ROQ. Having said that, though, I’d say that a lot of individual songs from that era hold up as well as any classic boomer track 25 years on, though I’m hard-pressed to think of many artists whose careers have done the same (maybe Garbage). The 90s were a glorious era for one-hit wonders:
Sugar Ray “Fly”
Smash Mouth “Walkin’ on the Sun”
Harvey Danger “Flagpole Sitta”
Ruby “Paraffin”
Primitive Radio Gods “Standing Outside a Phone Booth…”
Forest For The Trees “Dream”
Elastica “Stutter” and “Connection”
And on and on. All of those singles still sound pretty awesome today, IMHO.
For multi-album artistic longevity though, I’d say go back to the 80s. The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Minutemen, X, R.E.M. (even when they were selling platinum, there wasn’t a drop in their music’s quality), Husker Du.
I guess the better question should have been “What 90s alt-rock bands have NOT stood the test of time?”
Maybe Blind Melon?
While I love that style of music; the waif voiced singer (Mazzy Star, Belly, Breeders, Liz Phair, etc) is definitely evocative of a specific time and doesn’t really have that timeless appeal necessary to say it holds up well.
TOO SOON! 
Depends on the audience - the industrial I mentioned is still a hit with the younger crowd on the dancefloor at my local Goth club (or was before *waves* all this). Younger there being teenagers…
Shoegaze was always niche even in alt circles, though…