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Research into the Alternative

Genre/Indie Rock

Alternative music was first referred to in the early 80s and was used as a means to describe bands

which broke from the general conventions of pop and heavy metal music, and formed a new

direction of more focused and honest rock. Within the alternative genre, there are many

subcategories, including Grunge, Hard Rock and Punk Rock. The focal connection between each

subcategory is the English pink movement. In the early 80s, alternative music was limited to only a

few college radio stations. By the mid 80s, it became more popular and it began to take over college

radio throughout the country. Around the time of the late 80s, many commercial stations began to

embrace the genre which was also known as college rock. They never sold many albums but the

influence on the music community would be felt in a big way soon when the format evolved to the

next stage.

Alternative Rock

College Rock

Experimental Rock

Goth Rock

Grunge

Hardcore Punk

Hard Rock

Indie Rock

New Wave Progressive Rock

Punk

Shoegaze

Research into the Indie Rock Subgenre

The name Indie is taken from the word independent, which describes the do-it-yourself attitudes

of its bands and the small, lower budget nature of the labels that release the music. The bigger indie

music labels tend to agree on distribution deals with major corporate labels, but their decision-

making process still remains autonomous. As such, indie rock is free to explore sounds, emotionsand lyrical subjects that dont appeal to larger, more mainstream audiences. Indie music is very

much grounded in the sound and sensibility of American Underground and Alternative Rock of the

80s, but modified for a more required audience. In the sense that the term is most widely used,

indie rock slit from alternative rock around the time that Nirvana hit the mainstream. The tastes of

mainstream music gradually reshaped alternative into a new form of serious-minded hard rock, in

the process making it more predictable and testosterone-driven.

Indie rock was a reaction against that phenomenon. Yet while indie rock definitely shares the punk

community's concerns about commercialism, it isn't as particular about whether bands remain

independent or "sell out. There are almost as many reasons for that incompatibility as there areindie-rock bands, but following are some of the most common: the music may be too whimsical and

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innocent; too weird; too sensitive and melancholy; too soft and delicate; too dreamy and hypnotic;

too personal and intimately revealing in its lyrics; too low-fidelity and low-budget in its production;

too angular in its melodies and riffs; too raw, skronky and abrasive; wrapped in too many sheets of

Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr./Pixies/Jesus & Mary Chain-style guitar noise; too oblique and fractured in

its song structures; too influenced by experimental or otherwise unpopular musical styles.

Regardless of the specifics, it's rock made by and for outsiders -- much like alternative once was,

except that thanks to its crossover, indie rock has a far greater wariness of excess testosterone. It's

certainly not that indie rock is never visceral or powerful; it's just rarely -- if ever -- macho about it.

As the '90s wore on, indie rock developed quite a few sub styles and close cousins (indie pop, dream

pop, noise-pop, lo-fi, math rock, post-rock, space rock, sad core, and emo among them), all of which

seemed poised to remain strictly underground phenomena.