Up until the 1990s, the section of the rock universe known as “alternative” was all over the place…there wasn’t what anyone could call a defining sound…if it was left of centre, weird to mainstream music fans and ignored by the media, then it was “alternative”...

If you were around the late 80s—the decade where the word “alternative” began to be used to describe a certain attitude in rock—you’ll remember that this was an umbrella term for so many different types of artists…

If you couldn’t categorize a song or an artist by tossing it into any of the regular buckets, then there was only one other bucket you could use…and it quickly filled up…

Singer-songwriters…indie pop artists…industrial bands…groups with synthesizers…goth groups…extra-noisy guitar bands…even rap was alternative for a while in the 80s: it was new, it was weird and it was hated by the mainstream…ergo: alternative!

There were so many different sounds and textures and moods and looks that just trying to come up with a definition of “alternative music” was impossible…basically, we went by the credo of “I can’t tell exactly what it is, but I know it when I hear it”…

Come to think of it, in many ways, back then was a lot like the alt-rock of today…a vast variety of sounds that were adventurous, different and sometimes weird…

But then came along something that codified everything, something around which everything else could coalesce and organize…and once that happened, alt-rock was unstoppable—for a while, anyway…

This is part 3 of our look back on the 1990s…

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