Popular Music Studies: Alternative Rock

Week 1Establishing the Genre

What is ‘Alternative Rock’?

• Often conflated with ‘independent rock’• A marketing label?• Independent or minor labels• Alternative in attitude…• A DIY ethos, anti-commercial outlook• Musical and production trends can be

observed

Four Stages of Rock Life and Death Cycle

1. NativeA small scene, based on art and community

2. SovereignThe breakthrough, belonging to all

3. RecessionaryRetreating from mainstream, fracturing

4. ClassicalForming into a canon

A Brief Timeline

• 1950s: Rock‘n’roll – Bill Haley, Elvis• 1960s: ‘British Invasion’• Folk, Blues, Psychedlia…• 1970s: Progressive Rock• By 1975: ‘corporate rock’, ‘AOR rock’

Sex Pistols

Velvet Underground

• The Velvet Underground and Nico (1966)

• The Stooges• The Ramones• MC5

• The Buzzcocks• The Clash• The Jam

• Punk…

• US - New Wave, Hardcore, ‘College Rock’

• UK - Mod-rock, Goth-rock

Siouxsie and the Banshees

Bauhaus

• “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” – the first goth record?

The Cure

• Early records fit the ‘goth rock’ aesthetic

Joy Division

• 1976-80• Signed to Factory Records• Two albums: • Unknown Pleasures (1978)• Closer (1980)

• Musical diversity Multi-national Control

• Debunked by Simon Frith

• Emergence of independent labels

• ‘Majors’ and ‘minors’

• Subordinate market, or test pool

Distribution and Licensing

• …• …• …• …

“There’s only two things that happen with independent labels – you either get bought out or you die.”

- Alan McGee

UK Indie chart

• Indie record store sales not registered in main charts, so…

• Started in 1980• Based on method of distribution

Authenticity

• Something which can be compromised by either commercial concerns or technological concerns.

• The ‘authenticity of the old’?• Romantic vs. Modernist ideas

• An issue of diametric opposites:

Authenticity

• Art v Commerce• Rock v Pop• Minor v Major• Honest v Dishonest• Credible v False/Manufactured

Authenticity

• The idea of “selling out”• Bottom-up, rather than top-down, control of

musical output• Bands should not want commercial success

The Replacements

• Started as hardcore punk• Signed to Twin/Tone in 1980• Stink (1982)• Soon moved towards a slower, less aggressive

sound which can be identified as the first strand of ‘alternative rock’

• Tim (Sire, 1985)

R.E.M.

• Athens, Georgia

• Signed to I.R.S. in 1980

• Murmur (1983)

R.E.M.

U2

• Formed in 1976, as a post-punk band

• Signed to Island in 1980

• Boy (1980)

U2

• The Joshua Tree (Island, 1987)

• Influenced by US blues and folk

• Island couldn’t pay their royalties

• Zooropa (Island, 1993)

The Smiths

• 1982• Signed to Rough Trade• Essential UK independent (or alternative)

band of the 1980s

The Smiths

The Smiths

• Commercial success within the UK• 1987, broke up as they signed a major-label

deal