It was 1992; in a smoke filled basketball gym, tattooed cheerleaders with anarchy symbols on their jet black uniforms twirled their pompoms, while a dirty blonde guitarist with unwashed hair and a striped sweater strummed vociferously at his black and white Stratocaster. With the help of this iconic video Nirvana’s second album ‘Nevermind’ had just topped the charts, ushering in a cultural phenomenon known as grunge. Seattle would soon become the music capital of the world as the media and the world descended upon this previously ignored city, now home to some of the biggest names in rock. Often credited with restoring authenticity, meaning and passion to the music, Seattle’s favorite sons, were indispensable in establishing the cultural and commercial viability of alternative rock, which had unexpectedly captured the attention of Mtv and the disenfranchised youth, the world over. Although true for the most part, the point where most people falter is reducing the revolution to an individual (or a trio), forgetting that Cobain and company were merely key regiments in the motley alt rock army. The true unsung heroes of alternative rock were bands of the 80’s American indie underground. Bands united by a desire to crowd into a van, careen from state to state, winning over fans one filthy venue at a time, gradually building up an audience large enough to make record labels and critics take notice, so that ‘Nevermind’ and other 90’s albums could have a shot at mainstream acceptance. For anyone who thought that alternative rock was a revolutionary music style, this ‘new’ sound actually sprang from almost 15 years of innovation by hundreds of bands who remained below the radar of the corporate behemoths. Before the music industry conspired to make it commercial and marketable as a commodity and before it became just another generic category, another household word, alternative was simply, an attitude.
The story begins in the Regan era during the early 80’s. In a landscape littered with massive hair, synthesizers, and monster riffs; before the Internet and Ipods provided far-off music fans with information and communities -and before Nirvana- kids across the world grew up in relative isolation, dependent on mix tapes and self-created art to slowly spread scenes and trends. It was under these conditions that a movement began to stir unbeknownst to the mainstream, uniting a wide variety of bands who shared the same independent spirit, circumstances and fierce determination to make it on their own terms and who would ultimately prove to be the missing link between 70’s punk and 90’s grunge. After the initial punk explosion of the late 1970s had come and gone; the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, the Patti Smith Group, and all their New York City contemporaries, had made an abortive and failed run at commercial success. The few people who had picked up on those groups’ albums though, had sensed the opening of a previously hidden side entrance into rock, and were beginning to shove their way through. Linked under the loose genre ‘indie rock’ bands like Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Minor Threat and the Replacements languished in the musical minor leagues because they were too experimental for commercial radio, made unfortunate career decisions or eschewed mainstream success. Yet these bands formed the nucleus of a new youth movement. All across America a whole generation of alternative bands came off age in venues as eclectic as the bands themselves. Unable to fill arenas and ballrooms they had to create their own improvised circuit. The bands often worked together, informing one another of venues hospitable to their new, seemingly unpalatable music. They vouched for one another to upstart labels looking for artists; they took each other on tour. In many ways, the music was a community. America’s youth, whose palpable frustrations and sense of dislocation were not represented by the studio polished glam rock prevalent on Mtv and who wanted something more out of their music would seek out the little college radio stations to the left of the dial featuring this separatist community categorized as ‘college rock’.
Before alternative music existed as a market classification, it was commonly used to describe a band that melded the sound of Black Sabbath with that of the Beatles, mixing aggression and tunefulness. Formed in Boston in 1985, the Pixies crafted a minimal sound based around the simple dynamic of quiet-loud and variations of the same. They played bitingly melodic miniatures, little spasms barbed with noise and surrealistic lyrics. With an immediately recognizable sound, opposing forces often fit together, a bouncy yet firm bassline joined to a quirky choir of punky guitars, Black Francis’s harsh primal scream besides Kim Deal’s coy and smoky harmonies, explosive grating riffs in songs crafted from prime bubblegum accompanied by Francis’s playful and inscrutable lyrics about slicing eyeballs, grunting whores and waves of mutilation. Their unique sound owned as much to the bands raw untrained musical imagination as it did to a desire to avoid the usual rock clichés. With modest but steady sales, a murky legacy and no clear school of descendants, the Pixies represented a peculiar pinnacle in the art of rock n roll. An archetypal college band, they played sold out gigs festooned with critical praise but were unsurprisingly aborted from the top of the charts. Throughout the 90’s their posthumous legend grew and grew as they emerged as one of the most admired and name checked bands of the alt rock decade. Influenced equally by the Beach Boys and the 1984 Metallica album ‘Ride the Lightning’, Dinosaur Jr. were the definitive noise guitar indie band of the 80’s, with a tendency to get lumped in with the grunge crowd, even though they were playing their brand of hard melodic songs with powerful hooks several years before the Seattle scene kicked in, as their effects laden guitar had a major influence on the shoe gazing scene that preceded grunge. With a myriad of dynamic shifts, soaring solos and crystal clear jangles, they combined the guitar fetishism of Sonic Youth, hard rock elements of hardcore and speed metal with mind blowing rhythmic and textural assault of psychedelic pop. Drumming often bordered on hardcore while melodies and hooks flew in every direction, complemented by vocalist J Mascis nasal drawl lethargic vocal style, a watershed style in shifting the scene from purposeful hardcore to ambivalent grunge. Dinosaur Jr set the standard for convulsive indie rock guitar fireworks with heavy use of feedback, distortion and a classic rock charisma to become the cornerstone of a new set of bands.
Black Flag, the first band to rise out of the ashes of punk rock to spearhead the hardcore movement built up a fearsome reputation for staging shows that frequently descended into violence. They played an adrenaline charged brand of punk known as hardcore, a sound that captured the frustration and rage of the 1980s youth into short bursts of music which would thrill and inspire a whole generation of misfits and outcasts. By being resolute to their philosophy of ‘touring the hinterlands and bringing the message to the people’ Black Flag eschewed mainstream success in favor of independent creditability simultaneously pioneering the indie DIY ethic through the incessant touring that was instrumental in setting up of an alternative circuit and through SST, the label the band founded which would go on to become arguably the most influential independent label of the 80’s.
Hardcore legends Bad Brains started off as a funk and jazz fusion band in 1977, but within a few months of playing transformed into a punk rock band also adept at reggae, having adopted the philosophy of Rastafarian. Though influenced by the Sex Pistols, they considered the music too slow and as a result subsequently invented the genre of speedcore. As an all-black rock band they were often subject to racism while incendiary lyrics along with rowdy and unpredictable shows resulted in them being banned in the state of Washington. Together with Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, the band became pioneers of punk's hardcore fringe, influencing nearly every subsequent hardcore or quasi-hardcore outfit as well future hardcore front men Henry Rollins and Ian Mackaye. The unlikely pairing of clamorous yet emotional music with melody and harmony would make Husker Du one of the best and most influential underground bands of the 80s. Starting out as a fast and furious hardcore band like Black Flag, Husker Du eventually started writing more melodic material, inspired equally by the original wave of punk and 60’s pop of the Beatles and the Byrds with the more lyrical, expressive sound of folk music. Their 1984 magnum opus ‘Zen Arcade’ now considered an alternative rock classic, delivered angry/sad reflections on politics, society, and the human soul without sacrificing a shred of their intensity and soon broke into college radio. Song-writing/singing duties were often shared between guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart, each having a distinctly different voice and attitude. With a sound featuring loud distorted fuzzy guitars, pounding drums, and passionate frenzy instrumentals, the band always struck a balance between high energy riffage and a melodic sense which future bands like Greenday would borrow heavily from. While Black Flag toured relentlessly across the US inspiring scenes wherever they went, Minor Threat kept their hardcore message more parochial and specific. The straight edge stance that preached abstention from casual sex, drugs and alcohol was developed furthest by band leader Ian MacKaye in the Washington dc scene with the song ‘straight edge’ , a 45 seconds long blast of pure energy best experienced while jumping up and down erratically in a sweat drenched mosh pit. Their songs were typically speedy with fast punk drumming, two guitars, and a few more chords. Following its split, Ian experimented further with the hardcore sound until he formed Fugazi, a band which retained the indie ethic with blasts of emotion often found in songs of Minor Threat. Distributed by Ian’s own Dischord label Fugazi played a strain of post punk that never catered to fashion and constantly pushed the envelope of what punk rock could or should do, attracting a large fan base and a monumental place in punk rock’s history in the process. In Fugazi, the guitars got more angular and choppy, drums adopted different patterns, stopping and starting to create different sections or moods within individual songs. Over the top raw and emotional vocals, intertwining guitar parts, nervous energy, oblique yet sing along melodies gave them the distinction of being one of the tightest bands in history.
The Minutemen, a southern California trio whose sound though inspired by punk and hardcore, stands as the most unique, organic and unclassifiable of any band active during the '80s. The band worked without the aid of boundaries to express both an acute sense of humor and a distinctive social and historical consciousness. The late, great D. Boon whose distinctive guitar playing, which runs through a gamut of styles and sounds, sang and wrote thoughtfully independent songs in ways not seen before or since. Along with his childhood friend Mike Watt’s conspicuous, inventive and unpredictable bass playing Minutemen songs were usually short bursts of creativity jammed full of music in the standard two-minute rock song. In attitude they are very much a punk band, though one which possessed enough vision to create music that is visceral and rebellious beyond the punk ethos. The Replacements, frequently described as having a friendly rivalry with Husker Du, blended post punk angst with pop melodies in an alcoholic self destructive manner. Raucous in the vein of their idols the Sex Pistols, they built a career on uneven performances with music which was full of contradictions, sloppy and majestic at the same time. Westerberg’s self deprecating painfully honest lyrics mixed with hook laden endearing riffs and a solid rhythm section made these eternal underdogs one of the most creative and compelling rock n roll bands of the decade. With a mix of complexity and immediacy, Mission of Burma occupied a special place in the post punk world. The band swerved seamlessly from chugging beat and jangly guitar to off-key chords and off-kilter rhythms. Influencing a series of bands in the past decade with their integration of musical experiments and anthemic rock, Mission of Burma's music has held firm, unaffected by fashion, unsullied by imitation, and undiminished by the passage of time. Despite being most well known for their appearance on Nirvana unplugged, The Meat Puppets have always been one of the most underappreciated voices of the alternative underground helping expand the limits of hardcore, bringing in more elaborate musical techniques and classic rock styling’s without losing its punk edge.
A lo-fi band that challenged the accepted punk image but still made uncompromising music, Beat Happening thought of themselves as a punk band despite their gentler and sensitive approach. Musically haphazard, they often shared and swapped guitar and drumming duties and as a result a gig would often involve almost as many lineup changes as songs. Sticking to the DIY ethic with bare minimum production and instrumentation, often just guitar and drums, their songs were trashy in feel and were typically about pop oriented subjects – crushes, going out, none of the serious dark stuff beloved of the hardcore bands of the time. The band with likeminded musicians Pastels in the UK and the Vaselines in Scotland defined the genre which would soon be known as indie pop, bands wanting to play loud and discordant but can’t help writing pop songs. Undoubtedly the most significant underground band of all time, crystallizing the importance of indie rock and New York in the music world while proving to have immense staying potential is Sonic Youth, a New York band influenced by punk rock but rarely sounding like it, choosing instead to explore dissonant sonic landscapes at the expense of traditional song structures and melody. Guitarists Moore and Ranaldo became known for propping up a dozen guitars behind the band during performances each tuned unconventionally and some containing objects such as screwdrivers and drumsticks jammed between the strings and fretboards. From uncompromising avant rockers in the No Wave scene to indie guitar pop trailblazers, they have often been anointed the kings of the alternative scene with wild dissonant experiments, pop gems and passionate thrash seizures, seeing them cover the limitless possibilities of an electric guitar. A band formed in 1980 in the small university town of Athens Georgia, R.E.M. produced some of the most consistently fascinating, successful and honest music of the past 20 years, combining lyrical and musical experimentation in ways that nonetheless are accessible to mainstream rock. However before they became the poster boys for alternative rock, they were critic darlings and the most popular college rock band of the '80s marking the point where post-punk turned into alternative rock. With a musical blueprint of chiming guitars, an energetic rhythm section and Michael Stipe’s enigmatic, mumbling vocals, the band underwent a steady, decade long rise from underground heroes to bona fide superstars. Along the way, they inspired countless bands, from the legions of jangle pop groups in the mid-'80s to scores of alternative pop groups in the '90s, who admired their slow climb to stardom. Though there were no overt innovations in their music, R.E.M. had an identity and sense of purpose that transformed the American underground. The quartet's arty mix of punk energy, folky instrumental textures, muffled vocals and introspective and oblique structures is believed to have brought guitar pop back into the underground lexicon.
By the time Kurt Cobain committed suicide in April of ’94; alternative rock had changed from an independent community of fledgling musicians that thrived on competition and cooperation to a fully fledged commercial enterprise. The late ‘spokesmen of a generation’ during his life, often publicly acknowledged the influence of these bands in his music and held them in great regard. In the wake of Kurt’s death, the rise of post grunge and the scene being flooded with hordes of Nirvana imitators, the legacy of these indie bands was lost in the process; bands who never got media coverage while they were doing their most innovative and vital work, who never made any real money but still managed to get by on meager earnings and small cult followings. While Nirvana’s success proved that an independent idea could become a big business, changing the life of bands that had sought out a humble living on the road just a few years before, it also made one believe that somewhere out there could very well be brilliant rock bands nobody's heard of, about to change the musical landscape just one more time.
