Quote:
Originally Posted by lucifer_sam
I think this is a phenomenon that predominates in the US as well. As recently as a few years ago we've been encountering numerous "alternative" bands that are just re-hashed, re-packaged generic post-grunge crap that's been on the radio for years.
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Eh. It also REALLY p
isses me off that the term 'alternative rock' has been hijacked Stateside. I mean, HELL, the music they refer to is by-and-large the only rock there
is in the mainstream,
period, so "alternative" to WHAT exactly?
I think, though, that this terminological problem initially crept up in the 90s. Prior to the onset of post-grunge, 'alternative rock' had been used to describe bands that were just that: alternative. American Underground, College Rock, and yes, Grunge, which emerged directly from the underground. All such music had yet to make an impact on mainstream tastes. People continued to listen to hard rock/power rock/whatever...Bon Jovi, and other shameless 80s pop rock crap. And then Nirvana happened......
Most everything else went thoroughly out of fashion. Suddenly, you were either 'grunge' or you were nothing. Everybody became a copycat act, each subsequent new act with increasingly bold mainstream aspirations.
What the media forgot to apply, in the midst of it, was one small but crucial piece of reasoning: once something becomes the standard and the norm, it ceases to be the "alternative". And yet the term stuck.