Genre Coventions

Alternative Rock

The term alternative was originated in the 1980s as a description for the previously named ‘new music’ and ‘college rock’. The genre covers post-punk, indie, rock, punk rock, underground rock e.t.c. Alternative rock is widely known for its rejection in the mainstream charts and through commercial culture. Commonly bands from this genre played smaller venues and clubs and gained their popularity through word of mouth.

1980s

Independent record labels where signing a majority of alternative groups and by 1984 a variety of bands influenced by 1960s rock influences where holding the scene. Throughout the 1980s this scene was mostly an ‘underground phenomena’ where occasionally a song or album would receive critical acclaim in the mainstream and commercial publications such as ‘Rolling Stone’. Alternative bands throughout the 1980s included The Cure, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., The Feelies, Violet Femmes and Paisley Underground.

This is a screen shot from The Cure’s video ‘Friday I’m in Love’ throughout the video there is a lot of performance and a narrative, which shows the band performing on a backstage area. There is a lot of costumes used throughout the video. The shots used cut to the music and a lot of cantered angles are used. Also voyeuristic shots are used in this video.

1990s

Throughout the beginning of the 1990s the alternative music scene became more popular with bands such as Jane’s Addiction, Dinosaur Jr, Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. A particular breakthrough within the alternative genre through to mainstream was Nirvana’s album ‘Nevermind’ and the single ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. This album not only popularised grunge but also established a breakthrough for alternative music to commercial culture. However by the end of the decade the mainstream success alternative music had been enjoying began to slowly decline due to many factors including the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, Oasis’ third album ‘Be Here Now’ released 1997 which received poor reviews, Blur began to incorporate their influences from American rock. Also a large signifier of alternative’s recline was the hiatus of the popular festival due to the unsuccessful attempt to find a headliner in 1998.

This Nirvana video is very obscure, more so than the Cure video showing a development of alt-rock music videos. There is a lot of layering shots on top of each other to disfigure the imagery. The shots morph in time to the music and there is a lot of performance with the band used as well as symbolism with a gun showing impurity and water, which represents cleanliness and new life showing the integration between baptism and religion and most rock groups.

2000s

Several alt-rock bands emerged including The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and The Rapture. It was stated in Entertainment Weekly in 2004 "After almost a decade of domination by rap-rock and nu-metal bands, mainstream alt-rock is finally good again."

This music video is very graphical with shots and background imagery cutting to the beats. A lot of different shots are used with cantered angles and zoom in. The obscurity has developed further into obscuring the band and narrative into robotic-like dummies showing and even further development from The Cure and Nirvana.