90s chicago alternative bands

YouTube, in particular, has paved new beginnings for unsigned alternative bands. Suddenly, older, difficult, and even anarchic movements, as well . But when people found out the Ex weren't playing, they didn't just turn around and go home. Suffice it to say here that from those earliest post-Uncle Tupelo gigs on stage at Lounge Ax, the legendary club that Tweedys wife Sue Miller ran with Julia Adams, to the festival-headlining present, the group never has stopped evolving or holding a well-deserved spot among Chicagos greatest. Is Blake or [guitarist] Rick [Ness] there? And I was like, Get the fuck out! and hung up the phone. He was blatantly ambitious and blatantly wanted to be signed to a major label and blatantly wanted his songs on the radio. Of course, I had to consider massive commercial accomplishment, so the Pumpkins are here for the same reason Survivor was. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Where in L.A., theyd say, Id rather not work for two weeks, and wait for the right band. Whereas Billy Corganthat was his ambition all along and he made no bones about it and it was pilloried for it. Blake Smith: It was a drunken, wild time, everybody was out five, six nights a week until 4 in the morning, and we were always the band that took that further than you should. Langfords desire to fuse folk and punk in fascinating and confounding ways significantly influenced the Mekons direction away from a more straightforward post-punk route. My favorite tour was the Winter Dance Party tour, which was us, Smoking Popes, and Triple Fast Action. 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Alternative Rock, In the early 90s, the vibrant indie- and punk-rock underground of the preceding decade exploded into mainstream consciousness via what would come to be called alternative rock, though most musicians hated that term only slightly less than they despised grunge.. They eventually got signed to Capitol and David Yow was very transparent with me. I think our A&R guy was really busting his balls to make it happen. At least people like me. 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. A great time to be alive and own a guitar. But we never had a problem booking that room. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Formed by frontman Billy Corgan and James Iha, the band included D'arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin in its original incarnation. Who cares? I still have the original flyer. In the past couple of decades, Chicago became known for its alternative rock and pop punk scene, while also producing some of the most . For Chicago Week, The A.V. It was a bunch of opening tours, and then we got that Stone Temple Pilots tour. I certainly didnt have a plan B. 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. All the shows were early and all ages, which was actually really good for us, because sometimes those tours, up until 3 a.m. every night, its not good. A lot of great guitar music right now. Read my partner Greg Kots fine biography, In my other role as an assistant professor at, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Rock In The 80s, Milk It! I just love that song. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Cond Nast. Its easy, especially at that age, to become almost like a gang. We better be thinking about harmonies. With a barre chord structure making room for Liam Gallagher's expressive vocals and empowering lyricism, paralleled by Noel's classical guitar euphoric technique. Starting at. 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. You can't overstate how much that changed everything. Search. In fact, no Chicagoan since Hugh Hefner has so fruitfully pandered to the male hegemony or sent so many mixed messages about female empowerment. Chicago is going to explode this year, Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of Seattles influential Sub Pop Records, told me in August 93. Everybody just came out of the place just at once. He was just a misogynist. 2. 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? Limiting the series to 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music is completely arbitrary it could have been 100, or 1,000 and Im leaving other genres such as jazz and country to other critics and fans. But you know, it had been kind of weird up to that point anyway. People were kind of sniffing around for like a year, but nothing was really coming out of the town. Our first record had that whole sort of southern boogie thing going. It was all of our own soul brothers and we would share gear. So very 90s. 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. We did hire a lawyer, but it was absolutely overwhelming. 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. But then I did. They admired bands like The Minutemen and Hsker D. He had that great Midwestern taste that we also had. So it was booked months in advance. DArcy was amazing. If you were Liz Phair, you werent feeling really communal. We were able to do what we wanted, and toured as much as we possibly could. The Goo Goo Dolls. Also, the industry was transitioning, too. This one's for all the pop-punk purists out there. Drag City wasn't particularly Chicago-centric but their Chicago crew was spectacular, Brise-Glace, anything with David Grubbs in it, Jim O'Rourke, all of Rian Murphy's endeavors.. Our first two entries here epitomize and to some extent were hurt by the shift from 80s indie-rock to 90s alternative. They were really one of the best things in that whole thing as far as I was concerned. There was never this sort of carpet and incense, Rolling Stones in the south of France vibe at all. The HotHouse moved out of Wicker Park in 1995 and has since become more of a non-profit organization for supporting musicians than a venue. Meanwhile, Gordons solo bow Tonight and the Rest of My Life was a wretched attempt at bland Stevie Nicks. The Lounge Ax closed in 2000 due to unfortunate pressures from neighbors who thought the scrappy rock club didnt belong in gentrified Lincoln Park, the difficulties of maintaining an alcohol license in a city that keeps changing rules and fees on bar owners, and a landlord who didnt truly support the clubs existence. And then we had just done a tour with Menthol and The Smoking Popes, which was a lot of fun, playing small clubs, and people actually showing up, and we had a blast with those guys. Kweku Collins. All of a sudden we had people coming to our shows that didnt before. Scott Lucas: Everybody had their own contract. Joel Spencer: Yeah, one of the things that happened was Gary Gersh, who was president of Capitol, left. Sadly, in the effort to hone to the arbitrary number of 50, there is no Tortoise (despite that groups huge influence on the art-rock underground), or Red Red Meat (a personal favorite for the way it forged a unique and psychedelic new sound from this citys great blues legacy). That parts great. Most of us didnt have home phones. Theres no Local H (mostly because, as with Cheap Trick and Rockford, the duo initially was so connected to Zion), and there are no second-wave faves such as Figdish or Loud Lucy. I gave up on that a long time ago. Very few people are mature enough at that age to know your way around the industry at all. That was a real, very important time. It's all the same bag., There was definitely a real interest in free jazz andother music outside of indie rock, says Chicago Reader critic Peter Margasak. Oh my god, what a great guy. I still talk to Wes. 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. It was all about getting radio songs. I am a feminist, and I define myself: Be yourself, because if you can get away with it, that is the ultimate feminist act.. I dont think you can be good in life without acknowledging the part of you that isnt good. Jeff Tweedy. It took me a while longer to find a way to integrate more of that personality into other peoples recordings. It just wasnt us, and we werent interested in that. Click here for Part Four in this series, Rock in the 60s and 70s. But, at its best, so unexpectedly brilliant. Do we sell out at all? That was always the struggle. You layer that with Jimmy Chamberlinthe first time I saw him play drums I was slack-jawed. He knew how to deliver singles. Joe Shanahan: Thats the way scenes come and go. It was just her and her guitar. We talked to some of the major playerslegendary Metro and Double Door club owner Joe Shanahan; Idful Musics Brad Wood, producer of Liz Phairs Exile In Guyville, Veruca Salts American Thighs, and too many other classic records to list; Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot; as well as many of the musicians themselvesto revisit the moment when Chicago became the home of a brief but vital alt-rock boom. It fucks with your head a little bit. A number of emerging alternative acts are promoting their music in a big way on video streaming channels. This was the Chicago legacy. McCombs says of the Rainbos magic: That's a place where all of us have worked and drunk for a long time. Sorry, one and all. Fox on Parkinson's: "I'm not gonna be 80", How Khris Davis became George Foreman - and why he really wants to do, Alex Borstein had quite a moment with Brett Goldstein at the Emmys. I know I didnt. Pages in category "Alternative rock groups from Chicago" The following 38 pages are in this category, out of 38 total. If someone wanted to do a show in a house or in some unconventional space, he would pull his PA system there on a skateboard and just set it up., That sense of freedom, improvisation, and playfulness carried over to the more rock-oriented Lounge Ax, which Albini calls the greatest live music club there ever was, and McCombs calls my favorite venue in the entire world. It's where lounge revivalists the Coctails had accomplished jazz improvisers sit in with them, and where Shrimp Boat played, according to McCombs, this totally skronky, weird, idiosyncratic music with pop songs on top of it. That was when I first met him, and after that, I said, All right, Ive listened to their records, theyre interesting. That started a relationship with him that lasted a couple years. Its been percolating for a long time, with Wax Trax and then Touch and Go, but things are really coming to a crescendo.. 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. I think Jimmywine Majestic by Red Red Meat is probably one of my favorite albums of all time that I worked on. Studios were busy, clubs were busy. We just decided thats what we wanted to do. So we made the second record, and that was the one that we were about to get some traction on. Eventually, he got upset and he said, Go ahead, finish laughing. And so somehow he got that, and he flew out and saw us in Champaign, and basically right after the show was like, I want to sign you guys.. Going through that process, you do learn a ton. There would be no Green Day without Screeching Weasel. They deserved to be hits. It was very Midwestern, wake up, have your cup of tea, put your boots on and go to work. 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. But I heard their song on the radio, and it sounded immediately like [something Id known for a long time.] When we met, I knew it was something serious It wasnt like falling into it for me. 3. By 1991, Pearl Jam was signed to a label and recorded their iconic album Ten which had a . It almost like a full rehearsal. Menu. You could just kind of feel it. I hadnt really had a lot of overly famous rock people contact me, to be honest. Eventually, it was just her and her guitar and myself and eventually Casey Rice. alternative rock, pop music style, built on distorted guitars and rooted in generational discontent, that dominated and changed rock between 1991 and 1996. 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. I know how everything works. The canvas was Metro, it was a blank canvas for many bands, certainly for Billy and Liz. That, to me, feels like the first time I actually produced something. Lollapalooza was originally conceived as this outsider festival, and look what it became within a few short years. 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Alternative Rock. The Galacticas are giving us a much-needed dose of '90s-era punk with a classic sci-fi aesthetic to boot. Parker, who played in a soul-funk band called Uptighty at the time with Dan Bitney, who would also go on to be in Tortoise, and Leroy Bach, who played with Tortoises John Herndon in 5ive Style and, later on, in Wilco, emphasizes how much was going on at that time. Thats the reason I went with Capitol. But I mean, The Jesus Lizard was an incredible band, and Ill go my grave saying they were the best live band I saw in Chicago during that era. You could really see, here was a band that probably could have played a venue 10 times that size, but the atmosphere was just so electric in that place. It was great. Then you just pick one, find your deal, then you got to go make a record, and you dont know what youre doing. But you know something, everyone thought that was an overnight success, and it wasnt. And then, as the decade neared its end, just as quickly as the scene swept in, it was suddenly over. And all of a sudden people come in and theyre saying, Oh, were going to make you a star, and they fly you out to L.A., they fly you out to New York. And its corrupting. It becomes more than a professional position. Brad Wood: What I was trying to achieve was the ability to make a living. It was probably way too much fun. Wes Kidd: When I first heard Local Hs Bound For The Floor on the radio, we were on tour. Seattle was of course first and most famous. 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. That kind of bold ambition was frowned upon in Chicago, but at the same time, these are the guys that sort of broke out of Chicago and became huge. Blake Smith: As soon as the band felt like it wasnt going upwards, it was going downwards. When Guyville broke, he was a bit surprised to see that Phairs stage persona had changed significantly, but not at all surprised to see her success. We could draw six people to almost any club on Earth. But also, Ive got a good job, Im married and have got great kids. Chicago was the new capital of the cutting edge, proclaimed a front-page story in Billboard magazine, the Bible of the old music industry. When there's loose money around, everybody feels like a winner. Brad Wood: Guyville is the most important record of my career, definitely. Again, we got so drunk that at least two of us fell off the stage, and then that was the night I think that Triple Fast Action actually signed with Capitol. Tortoise, Mule, the Jesus Lizard, Mouse, and other animal-named-bands. Literally things that I had been doing six, seven, eight years earlier in my early 20s, in college, experimenting and pitching delays and making percussion out of countertops and water bottles, hitting things with mallets. Joe Shanahan: I remember calling Idful, I wanted to see Brad or Brian or Casey, who were all running that studio. 311 . Tortoise, Mule, the Jesus Lizard, Mouse, and other animal-named-bands. 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. The music, however, survives. This overview also is entirely subjective: Every reader and listener can and should have their own list. They werent playing by the rules, the pay-your-dues model that had existed in Chicago for so long. I got that plus more. The Popes sounded exactly the same every night. There was a learning curve for sure. But as with new-millennial Urge or everything Corgans done in this century, it just aint the same. I was really always moved by his dedication to his band, his guys. You were just borrowing the money. WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. We came back to the city after college and started playing again. Josh from the Popes left the band for a little while. But it wasnt all that different from Kanye West giving me a cassette tape of his music at the House Of Blues. Blake Smith: [Bassist] Mike Willison and I produced a band from Minneapolis while we were in Caviar when we were getting major label interest. We werent going to be Silverchair, we werent going to try to sing like Kurt. But the difference between a Smashing Pumpkins and a great band like Eleventh Dream Day is that Corgan knew how to play the game. In my other role as an assistant professor at Columbia College Chicago, I was asked in the fall of 2015 to develop one of several Big Chicago classes intended to introduce first-semester students to the rich and diverse culture of Chicago. Some of that stuff is specifically used, extensively, on Exile In Guyville. And thanks to the international attention garnered by the Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Liz Phair and others, corporate talents scouts descended on Our Town en masse brandishing platinum credit cards and recording contracts. Dovetail . The assistant said, Can I get a copy of the Shrimp Boat album? I said sure, but I dont give the record away. I think it has more to do with my lack of business mind than anything else. 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. The day, the date, you know. They looked fucking kickass, they sounded even better. The record label people and bands and managers contacted me all the time. 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. Those tours that they were booking us on were strange. 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. I play it at least once a month, which is a miracle. 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. We got a lot of phone calls from major labels, but I dont know if that much ever came of it. It came and went almost as quickly as it arrived. Apr 30, 2023 9:01 PM EDT. I'd say the core of active individuals is still there, though there are fewer freeloaders and people of naked ambition. She always was an embarrassingly amateurish act on stage. And then all of a sudden you had Triple Fast Action and Local H and Loud Lucy and Menthol and all of these bands, and Jesus, a fucking hundred others I cant even remember right now. And even if you are, its a hard road. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21). 2 Sets of 90s Rock. Joe Shanahan: I have lots of fond memories of Jim showing up at Metro on Wednesday nights. So Chicago had this rep as being this incredibly fertile music territory with really incorrigible artists that couldnt be tamed by major labels. Drag City wasn't particularly Chicago-centric but their Chicago crew was spectacular, Brise-Glace, anything with David Grubbs in it, Jim O'Rourke, all of Rian Murphy's endeavors., McCombs also cites Azita Youssefis theatrical no-wave group Scissor Girls as one of the most vital acts of the time. I think at that point, Eleventh Dream Day actually was about as big of a band as there was in the city. Last summer my editors at WBEZ said, Hey, we should highlight your overview of Chicago music here!. They had multiple drummers, including Chad Channing and Dave Grohl. Corgan was hated. 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. Click here for Part Six in this series, House Music. I think the important thing about playing music or being in a band is be happy when youre there and dont cling to it afterward. He may have been the great young hope at one point, but what he was basically doing was kind of a pseudo-grunge kind of thing that was briefly commercially popular, but hes evolved and gotten so much better since then. Oasis. We still have a laugh about it. The groups latest album, the appropriately titled Works for Tomorrow in 2015, is every bit as strong as its first. We fought with them to get control over it. If you stayed around long enough, you had to pay them back. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Studios were busy, the rehearsal spaces were busy. To understand why, we need to rewind to 1986, when the, You can't overstate how much that changed everything. Larry Marano/Shutterstock. It had nothing to do with art, and had everything to do with making money. But my point is this, all of those artists at that time were really intricately involved in their personal and their public persona. American rock legends Blink 182 were one of the most commercially successful pop-punk bands of the late 90s and noughties. Nirvanas Nevermind came out in 1991 and became a veritable sensation, selling millions of albums and signifying to labels, music fans, and the world, that there was much success to be found in alternative rockmusic that until that time was not heard much on the radio. That band played, I dont knowId have to say [counts in twos] 18 times. Gary Gersh, when he was Head A&R at Geffen, his assistant called. BLIND REALITY IS CHICAGO'S ALTERNATIVE ROCK BAND. Pearl Jam performing at Club Babyhead, Providence, Rhode Island. You also meet a ton of people, so I was able to go into the other side of it knowing a ton of people, A&R people and publishers and radio people and everything else, so that was good. Jim Ellison was hated by a lot of people in this town. The Top Ten. Some nights, you had 10 people show up, and some nights you had 500 people show up. Material Issues Jim Ellison committed suicide in 1996, only two years after Kurt Cobain did. There was everything before Exile In Guyville and then there was life after that. They were in great form that night. The same with Veruca Salt; I remember them playing Double Door on New Years, and they just took a really generous amount of time to make sure that everything sounded and everything was going to be right. But the best music they produced endures and deserves recognition on our list. Liz Phair was exactly the same way. The market got really small, the kind that I worked with dried up dramatically. It sort of pre-dated all that by just a few years. Monaghan describes Phair at the time as a nervous performer, a shy girl with an acoustic guitar who was largely ignored due to her lack of stage presence; he could tell, however, that there was something special about her regardless. People would get drunk onstage, which they dont really do anymore. The citys got Twin Peaks and The Orwells and Ne-Hi. I cant really get my head around that, and Im not sure I want to. Abrasive post-punk and indie rock crossed paths frequently with the citys vital free jazz scene. I mean, its weird to me that that stuff is as long ago as it is. 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. Grohl et al blended refined, complex instrumentals with eminently catchy chords. Bringing to the alternative table the sound of the Manchester derived subgenre, Britpop, Oasis channeled an aggressive Beatle-esque overdrive sound. I think that when youre that age, then of course youre over your head. And sometimes, people dont want that. 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! Not then, not now. July 15, 1991. McCombs remembers Ken Vandermark booking musicians from the legendary Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a hub for avant-garde jazz since the '60s. In contrast, Wilco, like Eleventh Dream Day, remains a vital and ongoing concern, at its best when it takes the most risks, but never exactly veering into the dad rock detractors claim when playing things straight, thanks to the strength of bandleader Tweedys songwriting. And definitely, especially on my part, a certain amount of arrogance, which I think you kind of have to have to think that youre going to be able to operate on a stage like that. I think people confuse commercialism and ambition with a lack of talent. It was an amazing time. I put all the blame on myself, allowing the obvious things to happen. The address of the club, the name of the club. He now manages bands like The Damnwells, Old 97s, and Soul Asylum at Red Light Management in New York. If it wasnt fun, we wouldnt do it. Rick Rizzo. We may never see that again, and in some ways, I hope we dont, because I thought it did put this artificial layer on Chicago that in some ways was antithetical to what Chicagos artistic scene has been all about for so many years. 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. Wes Kidd: There were so many good bands. Greg Kot: The Pumpkins were percolating for a long time. But it was a great time. We had some people at Island that really believed in it, but they also kind of shielded us. I was like, Oh yeah, wait a second, its not about the music anymore, its about those fucking ratings. But you know, its about those Arbitrons and Neilsen and all that stuff. She always was an embarrassingly amateurish act on stage. Bookers became booking agents and managers. And the Smoking Popes, those guys, I still listen to them all the time. Instead of just engineering. Greg Kot: I always thought that Local H was a great band. That was just crazy. But the ultimately under-appreciated band in that town is Naked Raygun, and that was way before that time. They were just super tight. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. Everybody was into it. Rocking out in Chicago. It just happened to be what happened with Lizs record. Next: The top alternative bands of all time list feature. All across the city there was asense of musical playfulness and a lack of desire to be pigeonholed. You realize that everybody was doing it just because the guy next to him was doing it.

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