seeyouauntie

What do you exactly mean by alternative? This label has been thrown around a lot.

Matt

"Slide It In", Whitesnake.

subbacultcha

alternative to good...

conscience

Um...Winger? Alternative?

Alternative is not a joke....

I can very well tell the difference between bands like "Whitesnake" or "Winger" to "Nirvana" or "Soundgarden"

Matt

There is no alternative.

benedict

I've split this off from the other thread.

Virex, if you don't have anything intelligent to say on the matter - but persist in doing so anyway - a "holiday" can and will be arranged....


Benedict

Jackskeleton

it used to mean Alternative to the mainstream stuff intill it became the mainstream crap.

mllefoo

Alternative used to be the New Wave stuff before it became popular. Stuff like Book of Love, Nick Cave, Erasure, Siouxsie and the Banshees...

Then it became stuff played on college radio like REM (back in the Murmur days), B52s, etc.

Now alternative is an arbitrary label that means nothing because nothing played on commercial radio can be considered "alternative".

Matt

LOL, whatever.

What is intelligent and what is not is entirely subjective.

There is no alternative anymore. There used to be, before Nirvana came around and changed everything. Just like other people have said, what was once "alternative" is not anymore, and hasn't been for ten years. So if the "alternative" to the "mainstream" is now the mainstream itself, then wouldn't that make the former mainstream now alternative--former mainstream bands like Winger and Whitesnake, like I mentioned?

Now playing: Madonna, "Holiday"

POWERBOMB

Anything that is not Madonna, Britney or Debbie Gibson. So as subbacultcha said, alternative to good.

B5Erik

This topic of conversation/debate came up almost 10 years ago when "alternative" became the biggest selling sub-genre of Rock and Roll.

The "alternative" tag represented the idea that it was NOT mainstream, and went against the grain - kind of a college crowd artsy thing.

After "alternative" merged with Metal (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, etc), then the earlier "alternative" just about died. The old school "alternative" bands like The Cure, and the Smiths were not as hot as they had been.

And Metal bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Dio weren't as hot as they had been. Pop-Metal bands like Warrant, Winger, and Slaughter were just about dead in the water.

So now, you could very well call Whitesnake alternative - in the sense that they are the alternative to the mainstream.

Of course, "alternative" is on the decline, and has been for about 5 years, so maybe "alternative" will be alternative once again.

I just find that OVER labeling music is stupid. Hell, there are labels that are out there now that I don't even know about! It gets kind of silly....

Trout

I always thought alterative was a label created by the music companies so they could distance this type of music from the other kinds, thereby making it sound like it is something new and original. Did any of these "alternative" bands actually call themselves that?

GuessWho

Then Winger (who I saw last month) by this definition IS alternative today!

seeyouauntie

Those bands were always labled as grunge, and there was a debate about that because STP was not a part of the whole Seattle scene.

From what i remember, alternative was used for bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Weezer...basicaly, anything the media labeled alternative. So, I guess its just a word created by the media which is why it never made sense and so many bands could be labled that way. Stupid genres....

Jason

I agree. "Alternative" used to be a broad general term for rock and pop that had large followings but had no 'commercial' appeal. After Nirvana and REM broke out in the early 90's, it was packaged and sold like any other pop music.

I like the idea that there's some redeeming value to the former mainstream too, especially since it was shown the door so quickly when Nevermind was released.

n/p - Tweeter and the Monkeyman

B5Erik

Sure, the "grunge" label was thrown around a lot with those bands, but it was largely the "alternative" radio stations that broke them, and the "alternative" press gave them lots of exposure.

"Grunge" was just a sub-genre of "alternative," just like "Thrash" or "Pop-Metal" were sub-genre's of Heavy Metal.

It DOES get silly sometimes how everything gets labeled the way it does....