There’s just nothing going on…
jamie on October 17th, 2005
There is just nothing going on in commercial music this week. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I bought Ellie Lawson’s new disc at Barnes & Noble last week, it’s good, but the album as a whole doesn’t quite stand up to the single, Gotta Get Up From Here. This week’s new release list held zero interest for me, so I turned to Radio & Records’ “Going For Ads” to see what was going on in radio. First off, let me just say that the term “alternative” needs to be retired. There was a time, when it meant something- it was litterally the alternative to the glam-rock and synth-pop of the end of the century. It was the commercial realization that something that sounded different could sell records. With roots in the punk movement, it eventually became the descriptor for just about anything that was out of the mainstream- until the alternative became the mainstream. Even as early at 1995, “Alternative” was no longer alternative music, but rather just another hot word used to sell albums. The problem is, radio geniuses are still using it to try and sell music. Hell, even Atlanta radio station 99x likes to call themselves “Everything Alternative” (they used to say they were “New Music and Everything Alternative”, but they’ve dropped the “new” bit, probably because someone pointed out the fact that their playlist is the same twleve songs they were playing 9 months ago).
Even geting away from the historical meaning of the term, “Alternative” would seem to indicate a choice- something not on the regular menu, as it were. How is Blink 182 not on that “regular menu”? Or Staind? How about putting Ozzy Osbourne into the Alternative category- becuase, surely, nobody’s ever heard anything like that before. The idea that Alternative music should actually be an alternative choice to what everything else sounds like has obviously been lost on radio today.
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