What's the Alternative?

Well, I promised I’d write about the so-called “alternative” music scene, and since I can’t think of anything else to write about today, I guess I’ll do that.

A long time ago (the 80’s), music was at a crossroads. Disco was dying out and there wasn’t another major musical fad that seemed ready to fill the void of the American conscious. This led to a fragmentation of sorts; the largest segment, headlined by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, filled the radios with crappy pop that many people in my generation still can’t get enough of. Other bands took different routes: Hair Metal bands like Def Leppard and Gunz-N-Roses tried – and failed – to take the sounds of earlier bands (like Led Zepplin) to new, higher levels; rap began its incursion into the mainstream thanks in very large part to Run-DMC’s cover of Aerosmith's “Walk This Way”; and in the distant background, a segment of music classified as “punk” was making a lot of noise for the few who were listening.

Punk Rock was stereotyped as loud, 3-chord-playing, anti-social, skateboarding punks (thus the name) who were mad at everything in the world. There was some justification to this label, because many bands (The Sex Pistols, The Dead Milkmen, et al) filled all or part of that description. But the underground music scene held a lot more than just the punkers. Bands with original sounds (REM, The B-52’s) and things to say (U2) were ignored in the early parts of the decade but became major forces by the early nineties. These bands didn’t fit any of the categories, so a new one was created: Progressive Music.

Fast forward ten years or so. The grunge sound of the early nineties was an accumulation of sorts of the anti-pop sound that had built up through the 80’s; grunge faded away after five years of domination, but like the beach just after high tide, it left everything smooth and flat. Boy bands and slut divas aside, pop music became a little edgier (which isn’t saying much) and progressive music became…well, less progressive; more mainstream.

And that’s more or less where we are today. Progressive has been renamed to Alternative, but the alt songs are played on the same stations as the slut divas and they all sound more or less the same. Sure, there are a few fresh sounds here and there, but instead of taking their own track, they’re quickly swallowed up by the homogonous pop/alt world and become processed to the point of blandness (can you say No Doubt?).

It’s all very depressing. As I stated in part one of this series, I don’t even listen to musical radio much anymore.

Fearless Predictions of the week: Ohio State 24, Texas 17

Carolina 35, New Orleans 3