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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

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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