Red Hot Chili Peppers. And Jodys all nice, hes like, Hey man, Alex is going to use your amps and everything. I didnt see Alex anywhere. I absolutely love Menthol. 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. We may earn a commission from links on this page. All these great bands. We were all into more of the Midwestern idea of what punk rock was, and that kind of stuff. It just got a little harder to book after [Veruca Salts] American Thighs came out. We walk off stage and Alex Chilton walks up to us and looks at us and says, Oh, you played You Cant Have Me, and were thinking hes going to say something nice to us, and he said, We used to butcher that fucking song, too. And then he just walked right by us on stage. But, at its best, so unexpectedly brilliant. 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. Its a little bit primitive, its a little bit lo-fi, but you listen to those records now and they still sound great. Luckily we got to tour with most of them. We got a gig at Lounge Ax early on, like a Tuesday night. Collected Musings on the Alternative Music Explosion of the 90s, The current lineup performed and talked about that long and rich career on Sound Opinions last April, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Rock In The 60s And 70s, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Soul And R&B, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Chess Records, Meet the artist whose bold portraits have dressed up Chicago bus shelters, 150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nations worst, Why were launching The Democracy Solutions Project, Linda Lenz, who kept generations of CPS parents informed through her nonprofit publication Catalyst, is dead at 77. So very 90s. I played it just a couple weeks ago, and ended up on a phone call with Brian trying to figure out how we recorded that acoustic guitar. Instead of just engineering. At least I did. I cant really get my head around that, and Im not sure I want to. We can go nuts, lets have a good time. And we wound up terrifying the label and everything and had a great time. He said, Hey, I can finally buy a house. Corgan was hated. And, at least for me, her best work came on albums two and three, not the much-lauded debut answer record to the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street, Exile in Guyville, which took its name for what Urge Overkill called Wicker Park. Yeah, I remember some of those Wednesday nights. What is there to say about the Pumpkins at this point in time, more than two decades after their heyday? Local Hs eighth studio album, Hey Killer, was released in 2015 on G&P Records. Thats no way to get into this biz; you just do it. There was everything before Exile In Guyville and then there was life after that. 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.. 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. Between the three of us, we pretty much did whatever we felt like. Joe Shanahan: My advice to bands was always the same: Record companies were banks. We were able to do what we wanted, and toured as much as we possibly could. It was a blast, because everybody was having fun, everybody was taking each other on tour. True, she often delivered them in a voice that was monotonous, to be charitable. Colins like, Sure. Even though we werent friends with him, I think he knew who we were. Sorry, one and all. That parts great. To tell you the truth, I think I did a really stupid mistake which a lot of people do, and now that I manage bands, I tell everybody not to do this: Once you sign a record deal, you kind of think, Oh, all these people know what theyre doing, and you kind of step back, which is the opposite of what you should be doing. It sort of pre-dated all that by just a few years. But you know, it had been kind of weird up to that point anyway. The apparatus now is a lot more complicated. And having a lawyer is even super fucked up. Theres not usually a need for input. Joe Shanahan: I remember calling Idful, I wanted to see Brad or Brian or Casey, who were all running that studio. It was a really Midwestern thing. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Official Music Video) Nirvana was formed by Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic in 1987 in the suburbs of Washington. Also, the industry was transitioning, too. That, to me, feels like the first time I actually produced something. In 1993, bands like Tortoise and the Jesus Lizard, venues like HotHouse and Lounge Ax, and labels like Touch and Go and Bloodshot turned Chicago into a bastion of musical adventurousness. May 8, 2017, 6 a.m. CT. From left, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco . These 20 underrated '90s bands should've gotten some Times Square love as well. 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. And other people did too, people were getting record deals, and were putting out records, and none of that happened before. Follow me on Twitter at @JimDeRogatis, join me on Facebook, and podcast or stream Sound Opinions. I did have Gene Simmons call. Athens, Georgia went through its moment. Singer Eddie Vedder was one of the leading figures of '90s alternative rock. Greg Kot: There was one of two disastrous Liz Phair gigs that I saw early on. There was a lot of in-fighting, especially the bands that made it really big. I remember when we put the New Years Eve show together, she wanted to do the flyer. 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! Those tours that they were booking us on were strange. Who cares? We were arrogant enough to think that we were making art. Pearl Jam performing at Club Babyhead, Providence, Rhode Island. Click here for Part Six in this series, House Music. 9. I was able to find a manager as a result of that, and that was really helpful, too. I remember Billy saying, You dont have to introduce me that way, Im just Billy. And so there was definitely this idea. So that was a big motivation. 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. 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. 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. It was still about getting a single on commercial radio. Useful links. And I tried to enjoy it for what it was. 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. We really didnt want to be one of those bands. The Idful stuff is timeless. Not everybody was going to be playing and selling out the United Center like Corgan. If you think about it, what we grew up on were records that we were big that wouldnt have been big had they been released at that time and certainly would never even be recorded now. There were certain DJs and certain program directors and certain music directors that lost their jobs. Youre in the room with 800 people. Bands that had been playing garages a few months previous were thrown five- and six-figure signing bonuses. It was very, very workaday type of stuff. Everybody was into it. And its corrupting. I have the things that I want. There was no band that could touch them. It can be hard. 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. Drag City was founded in 1990; Skin Graft started putting out records in '91; Bloodshot Records began in '92. A great time to be alive and own a guitar. And the majority of Chicago bands who signed major-label deals soon found themselves dropped when those debut releases failed to make much of an impact. . Eventually, it was just her and her guitar and myself and eventually Casey Rice. We fought with them to get control over it. As indie-rock ethicist Steve Albini long had warned, the business side of the story did not have a happy ending for most of these Chicago rockers. 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. 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 loved The Poster Children and The Bowery Boys and Titanic Love Affair, all those bands. 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. Local booking agencies became international players. People were really supportive at the time.. But I dont know who I thought was going to hit it. I just want to rock. Jim Ellison. . 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. I often look for bands that don't sound like anyone else, and Scissor Girls were kind of like that. Blake Smith: [Bassist] Mike Willison and I produced a band from Minneapolis while we were in Caviar when we were getting major label interest. That event still is so painful that many in Chicagos music scene cant talk about it to this day. We cant afford to give it away. For a short while, spurred on by an August 1993 Billboard cover story called Cutting Edges New Capital, that scene was based in Chicago. Once you saw that begin to happen, you knew, Oh, the bean counters got a hold of it. Its just not unlike the sort of inversion of well, why art and commerce can really be adversaries. Grohl et al blended refined, complex instrumentals with eminently catchy chords. It was, for a lack of a better termit was a music industry. And thinking, when were playing Madison Square Garden, This is never going to happen again. We got a lot of phone calls from major labels, but I dont know if that much ever came of it. 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. Studios were busy, the rehearsal spaces were busy. Independent labels and bands stopped being sidelines and became going concerns. 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.. I remember, one of my first big pieces was about Eleventh Dream Day, in 87, 88. She was just so loud and so pitch-perfect. Im not one of those Pumpkins nay-sayers. But I heard their song on the radio, and it sounded immediately like [something Id known for a long time.] And I think that thats what makes the difference. But thats neither here nor there. I got busy first, Brian [Deck, of Red Red Meat] left in 1992 and did his own thing. Who are we going to play with? Oh, youre going to open for Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens. And we fucking lost our shit, because thats Big Star. It was just as robust and quite honestly, Scott still plays here. 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. So I said, But it sounds exactly like Downed by Cheap Trick. Next: The top alternative bands of all time list feature. 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. So it was nice to have some normalcy. We just blew it up. Photo: user uploaded image Ranked by All voters People kind of started paying attention, and we were slugging it out at some of the bars. We werent shy about advertising our phone number. Independent labels and bands stopped being sidelines and became going concerns. He linked up with bassist Ted Ansani at Columbia College Chicago, and together with drummer Mike Zelenko, forged an exuberant sound that won its biggest success with the debut album International Pop Overthrow, released by Mercury Records in 1991. The A&R guy would show up and literally say, Well, I just dont hear a hit. Could you be any more stereotypical? Joe Shanahan: Its interesting, because we did so many Pumpkins shows, we think theyre so synonymous. Whereas Billy Corganthat was his ambition all along and he made no bones about it and it was pilloried for it. I remember hearing, when I lived with Wes from Triple Fast, hed come home and played rough mixes that they had just done in the studio. 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. And he said, Alex wants to use your amps, is that cool? I said, Yeah, thats great.. We got all that money, and we didnt sell shit for records. Some of it was like, are you happy with playing Saturday night at Metro? Ive got Polaroids of bands who I still dont know who they are. But I think that we thought we could do it, and I think that we were not, I mean, part of the thing with that Midwestern ethic was that we really were not going to compromise. He just seemed, culturally, he made a lot of sense. Joel Spencer: Yeah, one of the things that happened was Gary Gersh, who was president of Capitol, left. You layer that with Jimmy Chamberlinthe first time I saw him play drums I was slack-jawed. And thats how we did that first demo with those guys. Starting at . It had nothing to do with art, and had everything to do with making money. 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. Joel Spencer (Menthol): We picked Brad. 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! Alice in Chains (reunited 2005) 4. The live musical experience had a real pulse, and it was supported by the music fans and the people like myself going out every night. Then it exploded. If you think the best Chicago indie rock band is missing from the list, then feel free to add it at the bottom so it's included with these other great acts. It was all supportive. They sent us down to one of the very first South By Southwests from there. Corey and Lisa Rusk had moved their Touch and Go Records operation to Chicago in the mid-'80s. Not that there werent dicks in bands, but for the most part, everybodys friends. DArcy was amazing. But you somehow mesh in a way thats creating something new. 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. I guess thats what production would be for me. It was fertile, it was experimental. While alternative rock raged in the 1990s, the softhearted sound of bands like Heavenly, Tiger Trap, and the Pastels welcomed listeners into their own . I just love that song. Phair still sparks endless debate for the few who care about all that, fueling endless culture studies term papers. Menu. It was $300 a day or whatever it was, and you went in, and theyd just record anybody. For my money, the trios next two albums, 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, 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, True, she often delivered them in a voice that was monotonous, to be charitable. 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. In 1993, if you loved underground music, Chicago was a special place to be. 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. The Galacticas. Everybody just came out of the place just at once. 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. People took risks. And also, out of all the bands in that scene, I think they were the best band. Its actually sort of an homage, is it not? And he grabbed me by the shirt and said, Theres only so many chords on a guitar neck, man! We adored Material Issue and The Slugs and Green. And they were telling stories about Minneapolisthis is in the 2000sand they were like, This band fucking sucks, and that guys a dick, and this guys an asshole, and asked us, Did you guys go through this? And were like, No, we all barbecued at each others houses and got drunk together. Maybe one of the reasons that seems really good is the whole rising tide lifts all boats thing. 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. Abrasive post-punk and indie rock crossed paths frequently with the citys vital free jazz scene. Period. There was a certain amount of that. 311 . But then I did. Chicago 90s Alternative Rock Cover Band. 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 remember meeting Billy Corgan at the height of their fame, and Louise [Post] from Veruca Salt introduced us, and she said, This is Billy from Smashing Pumpkins. As if we didnt know. I think certainly that Capitol thought that Jesus Lizard was the next Nirvana. I was in line at a grocery store and he ran up out of nowhere and paid for my groceries. There were six people there. So it was hard to wade through that shit, and we probably didnt do a great job if it, I dont know if anybody could do a great job of it, you just kind of get lucky. Then we made our own 7-inch that got put on a compilation. The citys got Twin Peaks and The Orwells and Ne-Hi. The indie rock bands and artists below have played their music all over the world, but they all were formed in Chicago. The market got really small, the kind that I worked with dried up dramatically. It was probably way too much fun. There was nothing free about it. The Galacticas are giving us a much-needed dose of '90s-era punk with a classic sci-fi aesthetic to boot. Scott Lucas: I think we all thought the first Menthol record was the shit. In an effort to find Nirvanas successor/gold mine, major record labels then knocked themselves out in an attempt to sniff out the next big scene. I hadnt really had a lot of overly famous rock people contact me, to be honest. Pearl Jam, led by frontman Eddie Vedder, is the last unforgettable entry from the Seattle Grunge scene that dominated half of 90s rock. 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Alternative Rock. I think really between Lounge Ax, Metro, I suppose Schubas, that was all in the mix there. There was this cross-pollinationto me, that was a really interesting scene. Openness and curiosity that fed into it. Free jazz and indie rock mixed frequently at the HotHouse, where Berman remembers seeing the George Freeman Trio, Gastr Del Sol, and Tortoise on one bill in 1994. It was a different role than I had traditionally been doing, which is more or less a glorified engineer, where a band hires me to come into a studio, set up microphones, and record. This is the dream of my life. BLIND REALITY IS CHICAGO'S ALTERNATIVE ROCK BAND. We couldnt go out there anymore; it was their fucking show for sure. 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. It came and went almost as quickly as it arrived. If it wasnt fun, we wouldnt do it. Rick Rizzo. And they all flew in, and our rider was like 50 Little Caesars pizzas and two kegs of beer. I think that Brad helped us with that a lot, too. Balty [DeLay, the guitarist] and I would do vocal practices without our instruments, or with our instruments turned way down, because the Veruca Salt ladies, their vocal harmonies were just insane, and it inspired us to try. ADVERTISEMENT. 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. Suddenly, older, difficult, and even anarchic movements, as well . It was just a single recording studio, there wasnt a second control room. It was kind of just dumb. Material Issue, I thought they got so much stick for being so blatantly ambitious, but at the same time, he backed it up with a work ethic and wrote really good songs. The [Seattle band] Sunny Day Real Estate record [Diary] sounds great. You realize that everybody was doing it just because the guy next to him was doing it. Again, coming out of bowling alleys like Fireside. When the final product isnt desired, the price of it goes down, then the budget to record that diminished product also go down, and Ive had to deal with that. We didnt really have much trouble. And that was kind of cool. Urge Overkill, all the time. Michael J. And then that second record went through so many problems. 2 . 3 Doors Down . So we were all versed in Cheap Trick. You know, we really loved that record too, and they had to keep re-recording it, and it was just kind of heartbreaking. If you stayed around long enough, you had to pay them back. 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. I think to this day hes still one of the best songwriters that Chicago has produced, and I think hes made a bunch of really great records that people seemed to care less and less about as the years go on, but he still does really strong work. We were playing the Rosemont Horizon, playing where I saw my first concert; it was freaky. Brad Wood: I didnt intend to move to Los Angeles in 2000 and build a recording studio in my backyard. And we had just barely enough songs to get by, and it worked out. I dont know why they would. They were in great form that night. But it didnt work out that way. 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. It was incredible. Archers of Loaf (reunited 2011) 6. Hes had a very strong two-decade career that I think has flown largely under the radar. Greg Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune since 1990, and co-hosts WBEZs Sound Opinions with Jim DeRogatis every Saturday. The Cranberries. Everything was pretty much guitar bands and gritty, great melodies, great Cheap Trick- and Urge Overkill-influenced bands. Because they had such a young crowd, I remember Colin saying they were the Richard Scarry of rock n roll. We said, Sure, get us out of the apartment for a couple days, go to Austin, thats great. I love that band signed to Sub Pop and I love that Sub Pop took a chance on that band, and I love that that band has morphed and changed and become Califone and continues to make music. We all had to get jobs and I was taking the L and working in a deli. I do have that philosophy that there wasnt anything else that I had in mind. For a brief period in the mid-90s, the city famous for blues but not much in the way of rock was swarmed by A&R reps looking for talent to sign. Josh from the Popes left the band for a little while. I was like, Wait a second, how did he do that? Then it goes, [James] Iha, with his beautiful ability to layer in quiet soft kind of lyrical guitar, and the juxtaposition of that was great. Once we got a better handle on that, it ended up being something completely different. Literally, how am I going to pay the rent? With a barre chord structure making room for Liam Gallagher's expressive vocals and empowering lyricism, paralleled by Noel's classical guitar euphoric technique. We can be whoever we want to be. I used an old sampler that I found in college and used samples that I recorded of a musician in the music department and I was recycling that stuff, pitching it and changing it and putting it on that record. But when people found out the Ex weren't playing, they didn't just turn around and go home. They admired bands like The Minutemen and Hsker D. It was pretty incredible. alternative rock, pop music style, built on distorted guitars and rooted in generational discontent, that dominated and changed rock between 1991 and 1996.