Then you add on top of it the whole house scene in Chicago. Seattle and Chicago almost simultaneously had that moment. Veruca Salt, any one of those bands from that era, were all awesome, and any one of them could have gone on and had success. Eventually, it was just her and her guitar and myself and eventually Casey Rice. Now everybody has to earn every nickel and it doesn't seem quite as glamorous to drag your ass up and down the country if there's no tour bus or record deal on the horizon.. Wes Kidd: I got offered a gig to go work with a guy who managed my band, at Red Light Management. But also, Ive got a good job, Im married and have got great kids. But the strength of the music and its influence on the sounds that followed matter just as much, if not more. When Willie Nelson finally acknowledged his 90th birthday on stage last night (April 29) near the end of a massive tribute concert at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl, it was with his trademark . Local H was right there with them. The current lineup performed and talked about that long and rich career on Sound Opinions last April. He had done Exile In Guyville and everybody was intimidated by that. Read my partner Greg Kots fine biography Wilco: Learning How to Die. Wes Kidd was a founding member of Rights Of The Accused and Triple Fast Action. We could draw six people to almost any club on Earth. Guitarists-vocalist Nathan Kaatrud (a.k.a. In late 1991, Nirvanas Nevermindwas on its way to becoming a full-blown cultural phenomenon, sending label representatives cool-hunting in marginal hubs of artistic activity across the U.S. in search of the next Seattle and the next big payday. We were still a band, and we still loved it. This simply is a place to get the conversation started. Everything was pretty much guitar bands and gritty, great melodies, great Cheap Trick- and Urge Overkill-influenced bands. It was just as robust and quite honestly, Scott still plays here. But as with new-millennial Urge or everything Corgans done in this century, it just aint the same. It was more about, Wow, those guys made a really great record, and we got to up our game.. ADVERTISEMENT. And I tried to enjoy it for what it was. I think certainly that Capitol thought that Jesus Lizard was the next Nirvana. Which we all managed to spend. Oh my god, what a great guy. That's why that stupid post-rock term came about, because it was just musicians looking for inspiration elsewhere. It fucks with your head a little bit. We toured with everybody. I think it was very much a fear of success for a lot of bands in the Midwest. 2 Sets of 90s Rock. And that was kind of cool. The Cranberries. Local journalists, bought off with access and promotional spending, began to write about this feeding frenzy as though it were the renaissance of a music scene that had been percolating along nicely regardless.. 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Alternative Rock. Wes Kidd: Oh yeah, it was stupid. Like Eleventh Dream Day, Material Issue was ahead of its time, but it was as good as the ironically marginalized genre of power-pop ever has gotten. Touch and Go became a distributor and manufacturer for a lot of them, doing millions of dollars of business with some of the weirdest music and people imaginable. I had a home place that I knew intimately and I could just jump in there when I needed to. You could just kind of feel it. Is Blake or [guitarist] Rick [Ness] there? And I was like, Get the fuck out! and hung up the phone. One guy took us record-shopping in New York and we basically got to fill up a shopping cart, with hundreds and hundreds of CDs, which was great. alternative rock, pop music style, built on distorted guitars and rooted in generational discontent, that dominated and changed rock between 1991 and 1996. She was clearly unprepared for the stage, so those kind of stick out. 5. And at the same time, by that point, were almost 30 years old and you start to feel like, how is this even going to continue? That was insane. They were just super tight. Chicago 90s Alternative Rock Cover Band. We opened for Alanis Morrisette one day at Grant Park. Where in L.A., theyd say, Id rather not work for two weeks, and wait for the right band. And whenever we went to a label, we got to rob their closets of promos, we went to Epic and Atlantic and Capitol and A&M and Interscope, the list goes on and on and on, and made off with a ton of free music. I think the story of Chicago music prior to that era was one of accomplishment, but at the same time, bands and artists who just werent of a mindset of come and exploit us. It was more of, Were difficult artists, were tough to work with. Everybody just came out of the place just at once. We can be whoever we want to be. Local Hs eighth studio album, Hey Killer, was released in 2015 on G&P Records. Blake Smith: In high school, we made fake IDs, so wed come down to go to clubs whose names I dont want to say because some of them are still open, and wed see bands like Green, The Slugs, Big Black, Naked Raygun. With Beverly native Johnny Blackie Onassis Rowan joining on drums, Urge (or session musicians hired Monkees-style to fill in for them) slickened up their earlier sound and won fame for Andy Warhols euphemistic 15 minutes thanks to the 1993 album Saturation and the placement of their cover of Neil Diamonds super-schlocky Girl, Youll Be a Woman Soon on the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction. Alas, a very different sound soon emerged from Seattle. Suddenly, older, difficult, and even anarchic movements, as well . But at that point, thats kind of what that meant. He produced Veruca Salts reunion album, Ghost Notes, which was released in 2015. They looked fucking kickass, they sounded even better. When you first start a band, or at least when we first started that band, and you have that sort of epiphanal moment or series of moments where you realize that this is no longer just a group of friends that are getting together to have fun. Tortoise, Mule, the Jesus Lizard, Mouse, and other animal-named-bands. They looked great. The way Nirvana took what Big Black was doing and turned it into pop songs that were being sold to millions of suburban teenagers. Something more than just a local bar band.. But even now, only a black-hearted curmudgeon could listen to Sister Havana and fail to smile broadly. But you somehow mesh in a way thats creating something new. Then we played at Elbo Room and Thurstons and that world, and then I felt like something was going on when we headlined Double Door and sold it out. Pearl Jam managed to hit the scene hard and fast, considering they formed in 1990, and Nirvana changed music in 1991. Veruca Salt broke up shortly there after. It was some band, then us, and Local H was opening. The legendary first-wave British art-punk collective Mekons had adopted Chicago as their town, says Doug McCombs, of Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day, and Brokeback; Mekons/Three Johns founder Jon Langford relocated to Chicago in the early '90s. I was in line at a grocery store and he ran up out of nowhere and paid for my groceries. That, to me, feels like the first time I actually produced something. Labels sank fortunes into promotion, buying out venues and offering tickets for free, paying headline bands for support slots and festival positions. There was everything before Exile In Guyville and then there was life after that. And we were still just trying to figure out how to write songs and play our instruments, really. I sound like an old guy. That just wasnt what we were doing. But that album probably is the least popular of their initial releases, so as with Survivor or Chicago the band, what do I know? We thought that because they had such a big machine that it was going to be probably a better place for us. Some artistslike the Pumpkins, Liz Phair, and Local Hcontinued to tour and record. Local booking agencies became international players. I often look for bands that don't sound like anyone else, and Scissor Girls were kind of like that. And we all ended up getting super drunk and we got up there and we were the only band that played a side of Neil Diamond and everybody else played their own songs. This list may not reflect recent changes. I wanted to just make enough money to work in a studio and get paid for it. He had that great Midwestern taste that we also had. And that was anathema to a lot of Chicagoans, who said, Its not cool, youre not indie. So there was that tension in Chicago all through this, like, How much do we sell out? There was nothing free about it. The next thing I know I was backed up against a wall, this guys in my face telling me how great his band is. They werent just going to phone in it, so to speak, and just slap it together. Guys like him dont come along every day, and I still miss him. CN Entertainment. Right after all that happened, with what the industry did, I remember immediately after that wave, its like, Britney Spears and all the boy bands. Tortoise, Mule, the Jesus Lizard, Mouse, and other animal-named-bands. Right behind them were names like Veruca Salt, Material Issue, and many other bands that were just as good, but for whatever reason are now only remembered by diehard fans. It was all supportive. Look at Screeching Weasel in the suburbs. And thats the first time I was able to integrate what I had been doing alone by myself just for fun into a recording of somebody else. So that was a big motivation. I just want to rock. Jim Ellison. I remember when we put the New Years Eve show together, she wanted to do the flyer. The Idful stuff is timeless. We liked what he did. He said, Hey, I can finally buy a house. Independent labels and bands stopped being sidelines and became going concerns. All these great bands. You start out and you suck and you practice and your songs suck and they get better and they get to a certain level and you go up and more people go to your shows and at a certain point you peak and then you start going down. We cant afford to give it away. Theyre really good at moving around and changing intervals and stuff. Its a Chicago thing that all these U.K. DJs appropriated. To understand why, we need to rewind to 1986, when the Near Northwest Arts Council (NNWAC) formed in the then-somewhat bleak neighborhood of Wicker Park, an area with a good deal of unused industrial space. Blake Smith (Fig Dish, Caviar): Material Issue had kind of hit and then their subsequent records werent fading. Not everybody was going to be playing and selling out the United Center like Corgan. Looking back, I think maybe it was a pretty quick rise. So enjoy yourself. I think that was one of the few instances in that whole thing when we were able to take it for what it was. So it can come out of a basement, it can come out of the back room of a small bar like Czar Bar or Phyllis, and then on its way to bigger, more established places like Lounge Ax. What made it great was, and Im talking about basically music rooted in the punk and post-punk eras that sort of grew into adulthood in the 80s and early 90s, was that it was rebellious, and it was different, and it was sort of underground, and it had this vibe that it spoke to misfits and outsiders. It was a guys club. $ 1,000 per event. Though the dwindling and nostalgic few who still hold them dear disagree, the Pumpkins were best when they were paring back and giving us less, most notably on the less ironic, more heartfelt Adore in 1998. That was one of the big things. Nothing says Florida sun like weird Anglophile off-kilter new-wave music in weird time signatures on the beach. . It was, for a lack of a better termit was a music industry. The boom spread to clubs, recording studios, and indie labels as well as the bands themselves. I remember being at Lounge Ax and Jeff Tweedy showing up with his son, and we were sound-checking, and he came up and asked [drummer] Colin [Koteles] if he could let his little boy get behind the drums for a second. This one's for all the pop-punk purists out there. Jan. 14, 2023 9:00PM Evenflow Music and Spirits Geneva, IL . What was it about these certain bands? Best Alternative Bands of the '90s - Top Ten List - TheTopTens It was such an explosive time creatively for the city of Chicago, whether it was the producers, the bands themselves. We would just go out. Everybody was into it. The groups latest album, the appropriately titled Works for Tomorrow in 2015, is every bit as strong as its first. McCombs also cites Azita Youssefis theatrical no-wave group Scissor Girls as one of the most vital acts of the time. For me, their music has aged far worse than the sounds of everyone else in this installment, for the same reasons it was troubling at the time: the often flatulent bombast of the grand musical constructions; the annoying whine of Corgans voice; the sophomoric solipsism of many of his lyrics, and the messianic, rock-star attitude that permeated nearly everything he ever did, which was and still is very un-Chicago. It just wasnt us, and we werent interested in that. And those bands all took the money, kind of knowing that this isnt going to last but Im going to take this advance and play with it. Thats it. Brian and I both figured the best thing to do was to just make records and then hopefully the bands put the albums out and the singles out and just got the name out. They deserved to be hits. Then you just pick one, find your deal, then you got to go make a record, and you dont know what youre doing. The crossover between the DIY scene and the avant-garde jazz scene in Chicago in the early '90s led to bands like the Flying Luttenbachers and Tortoise, and the scenes at the HotHouse, where saxophonist Ken Vandermark had a weekly residency, and Lower Links, a club in Wrigleyville that spotlighted underground hip-hop, avant-garde jazz, and experimental music. And wed listen to all these people in the audience, like, Aw, shes not that good, and its just kind of like, Why the fuck are you here? Full of people who just wanted to be seen they wanted to be a part of it, but they wanted to pretend they were above it. And he said, Alex wants to use your amps, is that cool? I said, Yeah, thats great.. It was just a single recording studio, there wasnt a second control room. The one thing about Chicago is that there were so many places for these bands to play that a lot of these got really good as live acts. To me, Chicago has always been a city of neighborhoods, and the music scene sort of reflected that diversity. The boom spread to clubs, recording studios, and indie labels as well as the bands themselves. But I heard their song on the radio, and it sounded immediately like [something Id known for a long time.] Killing Me Smalls - Chicago 90s Alternative Rock Cover Band Ansel Pereira. Which is why I think Jim Ellison, like, Material Issue and Urge Overkill, people either loved them or hated them, because for a lot of people, it was like, These guys are cocky and confident and clearly want stardom, and people mistrusted that. If you pick up a guitar and you get on stage, secretly you want people to like you. But it was a great time. So it just turned into a free show, but people didn't know that until they got to the door, because there was no way to spread the news that the Ex hadn't made it. Joe Shanahan: My advice to bands was always the same: Record companies were banks. Some bands thought that was the best. Blake Smith: [Bassist] Mike Willison and I produced a band from Minneapolis while we were in Caviar when we were getting major label interest. She did a really nice job, except she didnt put the important information on it. These 100 bands and artists' music helped define the "alternative" rock era of the '90s and influenced the next generation of indie rock this century. I look at Scott and I see Scott as like a bluesman. The Best 90s Music: 200+ Songs From Alternative, Hip-Hop, And More And so our big homage to them was we learned how to play You Cant Have Me by Big Star. In order to celebrate Winnetka-raised, Wicker Park-championing Phair today, we have to separate the avalanche of hype that hailed her as a post-feminist heroine at the time, all of which she gleefully embraced. In 1993, if you loved underground music, Chicago was a special place to be. Alternative rock | Definition, Bands, Songs, & Facts | Britannica Artists and bands from Chicago, IL - AllMusic We better be thinking about harmonies. Drag City was founded in 1990; Skin Graft started putting out records in '91; Bloodshot Records began in '92. I think it has more to do with my lack of business mind than anything else. And then they start talking numbers with your lawyer and with you. Rock Band from Chicago, IL. In one of those silly insider feuds so ubiquitous in the 90s, Albini turned from best buddy to mortal enemy after Urge split from the local indie Touch and Go and took a boatload of money to sign to Geffen Records. New York City's alternative-metal rockers Helmet seemed to constantly be on the . Joel Spencer (Menthol): We picked Brad. It had nothing to do with art, and had everything to do with making money. And thats really funny because if you go back and listen to those records, like the Butch Vig stuff, I think his stuff is amazing and honestly very important, but it sounds very 90s. Lunches, dinners. That band ruled. We were really close to getting dropped. By Jim DeRogatis. I have a strong connection to those guys, even though I havent recorded them in 20-plus years, and I havent seen any of them much at all. Studios were busy, clubs were busy. Its like, wow, two guitars, thats so cool. Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. Its not to say there werent good people working for these labels, but these were such big corporate machines used to working in a certain way. Because we werent from Chicago. That said, there still was such great local labels and regional labels that supported the chemistry of all the Midwest bands, which I thought was so exciting, and really has never been repeated again. Greg Kot: I remember walking into a club and being cornered by Jim Ellison right away. You layer that with Jimmy Chamberlinthe first time I saw him play drums I was slack-jawed. Very few people are mature enough at that age to know your way around the industry at all. If you stayed around long enough, you had to pay them back. Chicago Indie Rock | List of Indie Rock Bands From Chicago - Ranker We just decided thats what we wanted to do. Like the day before. Some of the most popular alternative pop-rock bands of the 1990s include The Cranberries, Green Day, The Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox 20. Support Free Mobile App Guitarist Rick Rizzo and drummer Janet Beveridge Bean moved to Chicago from Louisville in the mid-80s, and here they linked up with bassist Doug McCombs and early guitarist Baird Figi to forge a sound best, The groups latest album, the appropriately titled, After moving to Chicago from Addison, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Jim Ellison became an important mover and shaker in the citys indie-rock scene in the mid-80s, booking the club Batteries Not Included. The music that Azita's made since then has totally followed suityou can still see this thing that's totally her own and totally personal., There was definitely a real interest in free jazz andother music outside of indie rock, says, Things have changed since then, of course, and Albini reflects on what the current landscape means for independent music in Chicago: , The thing we've lost is the influx of cash that the profiteers enabled. But Veruca Salt broke up soon after its second album was released. Its always propelled by the music itself and the cultivation of a music community and the businesses and arteries that support it. Thats where everyone lived and worked. It can be hard. The 25 Best Indie Pop Albums of the '90s | Pitchfork There were certainly other bands that were part of it and around it, like Triple Fast Action, Material Issue, Urge Overkill. It was great. Perhaps because I covered this period in-depth as a journalist and critic with much of my work compiled in the 2003 book Milk It! Triple Fast broke up right around then and Wes moved to New York. They really evolved very quickly, as bands that could deliver a good entertaining show. Sometimes thered be a band from Minneapolis and then thered be a band from Chicago and maybe a band from St. Louis or Champaign, a lot of the Champaign bands. Brad Wood (Idful Music Corporation): Idful opened officially [in Wicker Park] in 1989. 25 Best 90s Alternative Bands - Music Grotto Pearl Jam, led by frontman Eddie Vedder, is the last unforgettable entry from the Seattle Grunge scene that dominated half of 90s rock. And having a lawyer is even super fucked up. And then that second record went through so many problems. Joe Shanahan is the founder and owner of Metro Chicago and Smart Bar in Chicago, and was part-owner of the recently closed Double Door. This was immediately after the Nirvana explosion, so everybody in Hollywood was trying to figure out where the next Seattle was going to be, and at that point, also the next Minneapolis, I guess, too. And the Smoking Popes, those guys, I still listen to them all the time. 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Alternative Rock That was our peer group, but there was also a predatory layer, big labels sending scouts to shows with a buzz around them, labels like Matador and Sub Pop becoming imprints for major labels and just fucking burning their money., While a few artists, like Urge Overkill and Eleventh Dream Day, were plucked out of Chicagos DIY scene, others, like Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair, werent well-known regulars in that small, tight-knit world. And it just didnt make sense, in a town like Chicago. And then at the end of that, we were all like, Are we really going to do this again? I cant even remember of there was an official, Hey, are we all just gonna stop meeting, or if we just stopped calling each other, but it just kind of faded. Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Think about Chess Records. We were arrogant enough to think that we were making art. I remember singing with Louise, sharing a mic. Ive got Polaroids of bands who I still dont know who they are. I absolutely love Menthol. Blake Smith: Every music scene goes up and down in every town. They asked if we wanted to play South By Southwest, and nobody knew what that was. There was a lot of in-fighting, especially the bands that made it really big. But the difference between a Smashing Pumpkins and a great band like Eleventh Dream Day is that Corgan knew how to play the game. Category:Alternative rock groups from Chicago - Wikipedia How do I put it? Or not so secretly. We came back to the city after college and started playing again. "The top alternative songs of the '90s helped usher in a major cultural shift, as serious-minded, image-free bands blew hair metal and pop off the airwaves a. People say, Oh, thats not really Chicago. Thats totally Chicago. Click here for Part Five in this series, Soul and R&B. We were playing the Rosemont Horizon, playing where I saw my first concert; it was freaky. They werent cool enough. I think at that point, Eleventh Dream Day actually was about as big of a band as there was in the city. Special thanks to ace director and videographer Andrew Gill, online majordomo Tricia Bobeda, and former digital intern Jack Howard for all of their help. I think I was the worst of the three in terms of not wanting to stop. Formed by frontman Billy Corgan and James Iha, the band included D'arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin in its original incarnation. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication (Official Music Video) [HD UPGRADE] Red Hot Chili Peppers was formed in 1983, but they hit their stride in the 90s with their Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. Wes Kidd (Triple Fast Action): I think our first show was at Cubby Bear, and we told our bass player that if he screwed up, if he had to restart a song, he had to smash his bassand that actually ended up happening. We got a gig at Lounge Ax early on, like a Tuesday night. It just got a little harder to book after [Veruca Salts] American Thighs came out. Alternative rock band The All-American Rejects scored a string of arena rock anthems in the '00s with their romantic lyricism and punk-influenced sound that often found them added to . Urge Overkill also dissolved after the Saturation followup Exit The Dragon, and drummer Blackie Onassis eventually entered rehab. I'd say the core of active individuals is still there, though there are fewer freeloaders and people of naked ambition. Chicago was the new capital of the cutting edge, proclaimed a front-page story in Billboard magazine, the Bible of the old music industry. All rights reserved. How I approach recording drums and guitars and vocals hasnt changed much at all. There was things that would be happening, little splinter bands of some of the more established artists that would slide up and people would come and check them out. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. But as a songwriter, I thought Scott Lucas really stepped up and just kept getting better and better. Fueled by a wicked horn lineup, powerful rhythm section, and multiple vocalists, the band covers a great mix of 80s & 90s music in their own upbeat s. Learn More. We would pretty much try one interval for a song, and maybe switch to another one, but that was about it. Last song we play is You Cant Have Me by Big Star, thinking this is a great tribute to this guy. Wes Kidd: There were so many good bands. People were kind of sniffing around for like a year, but nothing was really coming out of the town. Split the difference between Courtney Loves Hole and Liz Phair, add a big dollop of Material Issues power-pop sensibilities, and you have Veruca Salt, which of course took its name from the bratty girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So reviled as careerists. A list made up of bands like Wilco and Andrew Bird. While a few artists, like Urge Overkill and Eleventh Dream Day, were plucked out of Chicagos DIY scene, others, like Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair, werent well-known regulars in that small, tight-knit world. Last summer my editors at WBEZ said, Hey, we should highlight your overview of Chicago music here!. Joel Spencer: There was definitely almost like a punk rock ethos, even though we werent really making hardcore punk or whatever. Still, the auteur his sometimes friend Courtney Love called the pear-shaped boy burst out of the western suburbs with an enormous chip on his shoulder, linked up in the shadow of his beloved Wrigley Field with often marginalized guitarist James Iha, bassist DArcy Wretzky, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, and proceeded to sell a ton of records. Youre first class, and the limo picks you up, and youre walking around and famous people are walking around the hallways. Fig Dish is not going to make you a ton of money, being the kind of band that they were. Shop. Urge is our baby and we are its parents, and we want our baby to grow up to be as healthy and happy as it can be. Blackie Onasis. It sort of pre-dated all that by just a few years. Their sound reads . These 10 modern alternative bands sound straight out of the '90s They were making records. Its not focused on that sort of commercial, lets get a song on the radio wave of major label signings that occurred in the early 90s. They werent playing by the rules, the pay-your-dues model that had existed in Chicago for so long. Liz Phair was exactly the same way. I really liked that about Seagrass. I remember Liz took soundcheck really seriously. Greg Kot: Obviously these bands crossed paths a lot and shared bills, but to me, there were so many great bands in that era that nobody paid attention to, bands that just slid under that radar and were never really appreciated for what they were, because they were deemed uncommercial. To understand why, we need to rewind to 1986, when the, You can't overstate how much that changed everything. It was still about getting a single on commercial radio. They were in great form that night. I certainly didnt have a plan B. I remember Billy saying, You dont have to introduce me that way, Im just Billy. And so there was definitely this idea. Yearbook: Beyond RockThe Heyday of Chicago's '90s DIY Scene Chicago is going to explode this year, Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of Seattles influential Sub Pop Records, told me in August 93. So, working with Liz was the first time where I was doing things musically that I had been thinking about for a long time, or that I hadnt done since I was in college with my cassette four-track and a delay line and a couple of microphones, just goofing around. I remember when [Chicago alt-rock radio station] Q101 all of a sudden was Mancow. perfectrx, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons/Photoscape. We pay for tickets, and wed go to see Liz Phair. I hated that kind of attitude where rock was pass, all that nonsense. That might have been in the back of my mind, that this should be something I want to do for the rest of my life.