What is Alternative Music?.
What is Alternative Music?. When rock’n’roll became dominant music genre in the Western World, there were a couple of musicians and bands grew a movement called ‘alternative’. If you’re looking back at the 1965, there was Velvet Underground first formed in New York, then MC5 first got together in Detroit, and Captain Beefheart ruled over the California.
In 1965 was also the year when Roky Erikson from Texas started to bring psychedelic-rock with his group named 13th Floor Elevators. This also was the year when rock-group from New York called The Fugs formed. And you know what? This is the year where the first ever alternative album released by the American GI band called The Monks. Young boys who lived in Germany released a highly-rhythmic and melodic album named Black Monk Time.
The Sounds of Alternative Music
Alternative music comes with a very simply sound if you compare with other popular music genres today. It means that you can barely know the sound because it is not like any other.
The huge change happened from the mid 80s to mid 90s where alternative sound come the world of music, especially in America. Punk-rock once dominated the scene of music in America, before a couple of pop singers and hair-metal bands came to the surface. Besides that hip-hop became another huge force as well as cultural daftar sbobet for teens in America.
That made big gap between underground and mainstream. In the 80s, there is competition between these two worlds. Many people love to enjoy a couple of pop stars such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, and Lionel Richie. Meanwhile teenagers tend to listen to many rock bands such as Black Flag and Butthole Surfers.
But the change finally came when REM blew the music scene. After that, many bands appeared to become the major force of alternative music. One of the first alternative bands which signed with major label is Sonic Youth. And then alternative music really took off when Nirvana surprised mainstream as the greatest band that ever live in this world. Grunge became way of life and life style for many teenagers at that time.
The crossover on mainstream meant the identity crisis for Alternative music. If alternative music is hard to describe, it makes many people confuse what was alternative mean. If for example, alternative music is defined by Nirvana, copycats surely never know where to leave this kind of music. It took confusion to the alternative world.
Are Indie and Alternative the Same Thing?
if there is question about this one, the answer is yes and no. Alternative and Indie are the same thing. But if you talk about the semantic of these two world, that is another different story.
Different Point of View
Grammy Awards began to give awards for Best Alternative Album in 1990. After that year, a couple of award winning musicians have included were not from indie music such as Gnarls Barkley, Coldplay, U2, and Sinead O’Connor. So people will have different point of view when you have to define alternative music.