Alternative music has long struggled with finding its unique voice due to the stigma of being labelled as “different.” What’s the alternative to this?
There you have it. To keep everything the same. There’s nothing wrong with being cautious about pursuing a career in the music industry just to make money. He’s the one in a regime of repression. Racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of discrimination If you’re looking for a venue where the most radical radicals can be championed, you’ll find it in underground music.
Is that what you were looking for? Really? No, I don’t think so. The safest answer, if you’re looking for an alternative to what your parents appreciate, is alternative music.
In what year did alternative music begin?
The timing couldn’t have been better: just as rock ‘n’ roll was taking over the Western world. In the early days of rock, an underground of artists provided an “alternative” voice.
Let’s go with 1965 as our hypothetical “ground zero.” Back in that same year, the Velvet Underground began their start in a New York loft, the MC5 played their first show in Detroit’s garage, and an eccentric Californian child named Captain Beefheart took to the stage for the first time.
Roky Erikson and the 13th Floor Elevators, a psychedelic-rock band from Texas, formed in 1965. In that year, a couple of New York poets called The Fugs created a rudimentary rock band to perform their sarcastic poetry. As if that wasn’t enough, it was the year that The Monks, an American GI band living in Germany, released Black Monk Time, which may have been the first-ever underground rock record.
What Kind of Music Is “Alternative”?
To be considered an “alternative,” alternative music must, in theory, sound different from current mainstream music. You can at least tell what it isn’t by knowing what it isn’t.
As a result, the definition of “safe” and “alternative” changed dramatically from the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, especially in the United States. Pop stars and hair-metal peacocks predominated in 1980s America after punk-brief rock’s appearance on the cultural radar, with hip-hop emerging as an indisputable cultural force.
There was an enormous divide between the mainstream and the underground. With hardcore, punk had evolved into a genre of music that was all about activism at the grassroots. Hardcore or not, entire networks of bands operated independently of the commercial music industry. For most of the 1980s, there was a contented separation — and a mutual disinterest — between these two spheres of influence and influence. The Butthole Surfers and Black Flag were the freaks’ answer to Madonna and Michael Jackson. Things started to make clear after a while.
But eventually, things had to alter. REM, a group of “college rockers,” became a household name for the first time. Previously underground noise band Sonic Youth has found a home with a major label. On the other hand, Nirvana emerged from nowhere to become the world’s most popular band. Grunge was a goldmine for major-label A&Rs, causing them to go into a frenzy. They demolished the Once-insular music scenes of any barely competent crew. If that didn’t work, they built their own. For ages, The Simpsons’ Hullabalooza festival satirised it as an exercise in profiteering.
What Types of Music Qualify as “Alternative”?
In their attempt to define what music is, genres frequently fail.
The vast majority of genres with well-defined criteria also belong to a certain historical era. For example, if someone describes shoegaze, krautrock, grunge, or post-rock as “a style and sound,” but also a period that we can look back on from the comfort of hindsight, we’re not just talking about a specific style and sound.
The idea of genre as a rigidly defined sound and associated identity is on its way out. The rise of the emo cult is undeniable, but there has been a noticeable surge in costumes that are impossible to quantify. Consider bands like Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, or Yeasayer; their seamless blending of multiple genres results in a sound that is neither one nor the other.