So once upon a time, you know in the early nineties, there was this thing called “alternative music”. It was this supposedly new, up and coming music scene which included bands like Nirvana, STP, Pearl Jam, Hole, and so on.
It basically was anything that wasn’t Pop, Metal, R&B, or Rap (or country, or opera or whatever), and it was pretty good, or at least I thought so. Probably almost every white, middle class teenager at that time liked it. We all thought Kurt Cobain was a god, wore jeans and flannel all the time, and tried to act like people on “My so-called Life”.
Then, something happened. A lot of the ”Alternative” bands started disappearing, or started breaking up. Then a new generation of “Alternative” music started coming about. Except, well, this bunch sucked. Bands like Matchbox 20, Days of the New, Natalie Imbruglia, and so on started appearing out of the woodwork, which lead to the demise of alternative music as we knew it. These bands seemed to get played on both the ‘Alternative’ and ‘Mainstream’ stations.
Which lead us to ask, “Alternative to what?”.
The “grungy” teenagers who once liked that kinda music started morphing into other things, and this new bunch of alternative fans were nothing but trendy teenies. They couldn’t think enough for themselves to listen to anything that wasn’t on the radio. Now it seems that all the alternative bands that I hear anymore are a bunch of whining boys! I mean yeah, I can’t say that some of the stuff I listen to now isn’t kinda whiny, but come on! They’ve taken this a little too far. Unless of course, the bands I liked back when alternative was really the alternative to popular music that it claimed to be, were actually that bad, and I didn’t know it since I was a bit younger. Or maybe not, maybe I am right and we actually did have some good “Alternative” bands back then, I dunno.
