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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Rainard Jalen

Eh. It also REALLY pisses 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.

lucifer_sam

The first bands to earn the nomenclature "alternative" bands were American, not British, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. Sonic Youth, REM, Fugazi (not to mention king of all cosmos Nirvana) were all American acts centric to the beginnings of "alternative" music.

I absolutely hate the term, though.

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Rainard Jalen

You misunderstand my meaning. Yes, the term is American in origin. What I meant is that I resent how it was later hijacked by the media in the light of post-grunge.

I think it's a perfectly good term to use in reference to underground/independent rock music - the meaning would in that case be accurate - "alternative" to the manufactured, mass-produced popular stuff in the mainstream.

someonecompletelyrandom

Ick man you aren't kidding. Here in Houston people view Alternative as "white trash music" because of all the pop-grunge with southern vocal-twang ****!