Alt Rock? What's That?
Wilson and I can't stop arguing about "alt rock."
Basically, I think it's a genre and he thinks it's a corporate conspiracy ad campaign.
I define it as American rock music from the early 80s or later that's guitar based; eschews hard rock, grunge, classic rock, or pure punk conventions; and is (or was) popular on college campuses and supported by independent record labels.
Wilson thinks the term is hopelessly vague, and instead we should be talking about more specific genres like (say) No Wave.
How to resolve this conundrum?
By countin' stuff, of course.
That's what I always do.
So, this time I counted the number of times the phrase "alt rock" was mentioned on Google-indexed web pages along with names of assorted American 80s or 90s rock bands.
To make sure the pages actually were talking about those bands and not (say) the element helium or the Buddhist notion of Nirvana or some pretty flowers called posies, I required that the pages also mention the name of the frontman/leader of the band.
In cases where there were two singer-songwriters (e.g., the Posies), I required both of their last names to be mentioned.
I only looked at bands because names of solo acts are mentioned millions of times in passing, whereas band-frontman combinations only occur on pages that actually say something about the act.
So, counts of solo act name appearances would be way too high.
That caused me to leave out (say) Beck.
Finally, I computed percentages by dividing the number of times the band and frontman names appeared into the number of times those words appeared along with "alt rock."
We also got into a nasty internecine war over the term "indie rock."
I think it means 90s rock that probably would have been called alt ten years earlier, but is also set apart by a certain absurdist attitude and strong influences like Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground.
Wilson thinks it's just the same as "alt rock," a hopelessly vague term that's really a marketing strategy.
So, I redid the same analysis but swapped "indie" for "alt" in the search terms. (JA)
The Alt Rock-O-Meter
| Band/Leader or frontman | Total | w/"alt rock" | Percentage | w/"indie rock" | Percentage
| | Fountains Of Wayne/Collingwood-Schlesinger | 2040 | 397 | 19.5 | 693 | 34.0
| | Camper Van Beethoven/David Lowery | 2300 | 384 | 16.7 | 702 | 30.5
| | Replacements/Paul Westerberg | 9990 | 1380 | 13.8 | 2410 | 24.1
| | Flaming Lips/Wayne Coyne | 9920 | 1160 | 11.7 | 2450 | 24.7
| | Throwing Muses/Kristen Hersh | 986 | 114 | 11.6 | 205 | 20.8
| | Dramarama/John Easdale | 448 | 51 | 11.4 | 60 | 13.4
| | Meat Puppets/Curt Kirkwood | 2970 | 340 | 11.4 | 643 | 21.6
| | Sonic Youth/Thurston Moore | 16,100 | 1820 | 11.3 | 4150 | 25.8
| | Dream Syndicate/Steve Wynn | 3610 | 365 | 10.1 | 585 | 16.2
| | Smithereens/Pat DiNizio | 3090 | 307 | 9.9 | 456 | 14.8
| | Hüsker Dü/Bob Mould | 4970 | 487 | 9.8 | 1300 | 26.2
| | Jane's Addiction/Perry Farrell | 11,600 | 1010 | 8.7 | 1840 | 15.9
| | Posies/Auer-Stringfellow | 1330 | 115 | 8.6 | 319 | 24.0
| | They Might Be Giants/Linnell-Flansburgh | 5150 | 441 | 8.6 | 674 | 13.1
| | Dinosaur Jr/J Mascis | 6630 | 555 | 8.4 | 1810 | 27.3
| | Soul Asylum/Dave Pirner | 3170 | 268 | 8.4 | 473 | 14.9
| | Lemonheads/Evan Dando | 6950 | 573 | 8.2 | 1540 | 22.2
| | Cowboy Junkies/Margo Timmins | 2640 | 212 | 8.0 | 279 | 10.6
| | Sebadoh/Lou Barlow | 5090 | 396 | 7.8 | 2270 | 44.6
| | Sleater-Kinney/Brownstein-Tucker | 1750 | 127 | 7.3 | 707 | 40.4
| | Blake Babies/Juliana Hatfield | 3500 | 249 | 7.1 | 1110 | 31.7
| | fIREHOSE/Mike Watt | 3020 | 202 | 6.7 | 717 | 23.7
| | Helmet/Page Hamilton | 9450 | 629 | 6.7 | 956 | 10.1
| | dB's/Peter Holsapple | 834 | 55 | 6.6 | 123 | 14.7
| | Pixies/Frank Black | 44,500 | 2910 | 6.5 | 7750 | 17.4
| | Living Colour/Corey Glover | 2830 | 175 | 6.2 | 200 | 7.1
| | Helium/Mary Timony | 2300 | 138 | 6.0 | 961 | 41.8
| | Yo La Tengo/Ira Kaplan | 3740 | 209 | 5.6 | 1120 | 29.9
| | Presidents Of The U.S.A./Chris Bellew | 1010 | 53 | 5.2 | 80 | 7.9
| | Red Hot Chili Peppers/Flea | 37,300 | 1950 | 5.2 | 2120 | 5.7
| | Soundgarden/Chris Cornell | 26,500 | 1360 | 5.1 | 3030 | 11.4
| | Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder | 37,800 | 1710 | 4.5 | 4270 | 11.3
| | REM/Michael Stipe | 39,400 | 1750 | 4.4 | 4450 | 11.3
| | Hole/Courtney Love | 105,000 | 4400 | 4.2 | 6330 | 6.0
| | Pavement/Stephen Malkmus | 14,000 | 586 | 4.2 | 4630 | 33.1
| | 10,000 Maniacs/Natalie Merchant | 11,900 | 484 | 4.1 | 1070 | 9.0
| | Nirvana/Kurt Cobain | 111,000 | 3830 | 3.5 | 9860 | 8.9
| | Stone Temple Pilots/Scott Weiland | 15,700 | 551 | 3.5 | 2090 | 13.3
| | Material Issue/Jim Ellison | 12,000 | 356 | 3.0 | 212 | 1.8
| | Primus/Les Claypool | 14,500 | 427 | 2.9 | 1280 | 8.8
| | PJ Harvey/Polly Jean Harvey | 14,100 | 329 | 2.3 | 1440 | 10.2
| | Van Halen/David Lee Roth | 33,400 | 782 | 2.3 | 1990 | 6.0
| | Beatles/Lennon-McCartney | 192,000 | 3350 | 1.7 | 10,100 | 5.3
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What does this all mean?
Well, here's what I think:
- Alt and indie aren't the same thing. Back to numbers: if you compute what's called a "correlation" between the alt and indie percentages, you get +0.496.
The numbers measure similarity.
They can range from -1 (totally different) to +1 (exactly the same), with 0 meaning "you can't predict one from the other."
So, you can kind of predict but kind of can't.
The two things are related, but different enough that you'd want to talk about them separately.
- There is a core set of 80s rock bands with high alt scores and (often) moderately high indie scores.
From the top of the list to the Posies, every single act apart from the Fountains of Wayne had an LP out circa 1986 - 1988.
Despite arguable exceptions like the Smithereens, these acts are exactly the ones I thought of as "alt" when I was a college DJ at that time.
- There is a set of Boston-area high-volume bands from the latest 80s and early 90s that falls below the Posies point: Dinosaur Jr, Lemonheads, Sebadoh, Blake Babies, Pixies.
I think they deserve their own category (anyone know what it's called?).
I have no idea why Throwing Muses is in the standard alt rock category instead.
- Grunge acts consistently have very low alt and indie scores: Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Hole, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots.
Likewise don't-put-me-in-a-category rock band Living Colour.
So, "loud early 90s American rock band" does not equal "alt."
These bands are clearly a well-defined genre.
- The indie scores are really quite high for a set of 90s bands with unpredictable alt scores, most of which were on independent labels like Matador: Fountains of Wayne, Sebadoh, Sleater-Kinney, Blake Babies, Helium, Pavement.
If you think about it, Blake Babies makes sense because leader Juliana Hatfield went on to make a bunch of non-grunge records on independent labels.
The Camper Van Beethoven score is anomalous.
My basic feeling is that when you say "indie rock," you mean independent-label 90s bands of a certain style.
- I put in Van Halen and the Beatles just to confirm that the alt and indie indices are measuring something different from just being a rock band.
They are.
- REM isn't an alt rock band. It's way too mainstream to be alt. Maybe it started out that way, but it isn't now.
- The bizarre Fountains of Wayne score and the amazingly high Pixies raw hit totals really throw me.
I have no idea what they mean.
Count your alternatives independently.
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