MR

did alternative rock kill melodic rock?

you always read on discussion boards how alternative rock killed all the huge metal or melodic 80's bands?

what do you think....

mikemarrs wrote:did alternative rock kill melodic rock?

you always read on discussion boards how alternative rock killed all the huge metal or melodic 80's bands?

what do you think....

YES....!

Absolutely ended Mark's chance at a freakin' RECORD DEAL with his band, in 1989-90.....:roll:

**EDIT** Well, let me correct that....Mark's band was kinda Alt / New Wave-ish / they were going to be the "American Duran Duran"....



I would say that GRUNGE killed his chance, NOT alt.

Alternative is the label that they gave grunge...I would say that Alternative was what resulted from the stupid deaf-eared frenzy that resulted from people going gah gah over shit bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Both bands devoid of talent in all respective ways.

They weren't considered alternative.....the bands that copied their formula were labeled as such.

I know it's a semantic....but it's an important distinction....because I feel the two bands responsible for melodic rock's downfall in the early 90s, were Nirvana and Pearl Jam.....all of the alternative shit that followed was just the liverpool effect....and really, the glut of alternative bands between 93-95 jsut hastened the fall of alternative/grunge in the late 90s.

OH GOOD GOD..... LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!

http://www.myspace.com/kineticsect

"Kinetic Sect" ~ Mark is 2nd from the left:

Actually, I think what killed the melodic rock sound of the early 90's were the melodic rock acts themselves. Eventually, everybody started sounding like everybody else. People decided to flock to the next thing that comes along that is completely going against the grain of mainstream music and grunge was it. Don't get me wrong, I hated grunge. It took me a long time to appreciate the alt rock bands of the middle and late 90's, but I do nowadays.

If you look at it from a positive point of view, it was a blessing in disguise. The new rock music has given some new life in our melodic rock acts of today. It's given them a new sound to mix in with the old melodic rock sound. Loverboy's album is good example. It has the 80's Loverboy sound yet a touch of new rock in with it as well. It sounds fresh and new without having the "sold out" sound.

Greg wrote:Actually, I think what killed the melodic rock sound of the early 90's were the melodic rock acts themselves. Eventually, everybody started sounding like everybody else...

I agree with this to a certain extent. Alot of the hair rock of the 90s was really just rehashed crap from the late 80s.

However, I think that when that happens, a death blow is still necessary to finish the job. Which is what Pearl Jam and Nirvana represented.

Alt/Grunge began 'eating itself' by about 94-95. However, there wasn't a death blow that took it out of it's/our missery. (and this is where I agree with what you say, Greg) Alt/Grunge flopped like a dying fish between 96-2000....and no one ever took it out of its/our missery.

As a result, the genre is rather undesirable these days. Eddie Vedder couldn't get arested if he wanted to...and even jerkoffs like Nirvana's Drummer have to resort to sapping the influence of Queen and other 70s rock acts.....and shying away from the grunge thing. There's zero nirvana in the foo fighters these days...zero.....but there was alot of nirvana in the foo's back when they first started.

those last days of Hair Metal in 1990 might have helped to kill off what little Melodic rock music there
was.. or maybe MR turned into bad hair metal ... those last days were getting ridiculous..

Cameron Crowe may have killed off good rock with that horrible Singles movie...

TRAGChick wrote:OH GOOD GOD..... LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!

http://www.myspace.com/kineticsect

"Kinetic Sect" ~ Mark is 2nd from the left:

Holy youngness Nora!
Your Hubby Bub looks about 12 there.
I can still tell it's him though even with him looking down.
Thanks for sharing this with us.

Moon Beam wrote:

TRAGChick wrote:OH GOOD GOD..... LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!

http://www.myspace.com/kineticsect

"Kinetic Sect" ~ Mark is 2nd from the left:

Holy youngness Nora!
Your Hubby Bub looks about 12 there.
I can still tell it's him though even with him looking down.
Thanks for sharing this with us.

she married Ralph Machio..

larryfromnextdoor wrote:

Moon Beam wrote:

TRAGChick wrote:OH GOOD GOD..... LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!

http://www.myspace.com/kineticsect

"Kinetic Sect" ~ Mark is 2nd from the left:

Holy youngness Nora!
Your Hubby Bub looks about 12 there.
I can still tell it's him though even with him looking down.
Thanks for sharing this with us.

she married Ralph Machio..

Three words, ya'll...

Co-ordinated Chuck Taylors.

strangegrey wrote:Alternative is the label that they gave grunge...I would say that Alternative was what resulted from the stupid deaf-eared frenzy that resulted from people going gah gah over shit bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Both bands devoid of talent in all respective ways.

They weren't considered alternative.....the bands that copied their formula were labeled as such.

I know it's a semantic....but it's an important distinction....because I feel the two bands responsible for melodic rock's downfall in the early 90s, were Nirvana and Pearl Jam.....all of the alternative shit that followed was just the liverpool effect....and really, the glut of alternative bands between 93-95 jsut hastened the fall of alternative/grunge in the late 90s.

True enough, but ironically, Smells Like Teen Spirit was and remains a classic, the rest of it, Pearl Jam included was an unadulterrated pile of shit, that opened the door for loads of other piles of shit. Virtuosos, great singers and players need not apply after 1991. That one track I think paved the way for the grunge movement and the marginalisation of melodic rock. The whole one trick pony was built on that song. There was not one that compared at the time. Plus I think MR and hair rock had reached implosion point.

strangegrey wrote:

Greg wrote:Actually, I think what killed the melodic rock sound of the early 90's were the melodic rock acts themselves. Eventually, everybody started sounding like everybody else...

Alt/Grunge began 'eating itself' by about 94-95. However, there wasn't a death blow that took it out of it's/our missery. (and this is where I agree with what you say, Greg) Alt/Grunge flopped like a dying fish between 96-2000....and no one ever took it out of its/our misery.

Those are really good points. I wish Strangegrey's point applied to radio pop music, though. I can barely ever tell female pop singers apart anymore at all. In the 90's, you had all the Irish-sounding chicks -- even non-Irish girls copped that obnoxious twang and the hard pronunciation of "R's" in their style -- I called these the "Lilith Chicks". These days, and for the last several years, pop female vocalists seem to be divided into two categories, which I call the Britneys and the Whitneys. No need to explain further. Well, maybe there is a 3rd category -- the Mariah's (extreme warblers). Boy pop sucks even harder, and I really hate what I call "Suburban Punk" (rich kids that b*tch). Everything clones everything else -- remember all those bands with the number in the name (Sum 41, Blink 182, etc.) I know some wrote some good stuff, but it was like EVERYONE had to have a number in the name just to get signed, with so many 1-hitters that you never heard from again. Those guys won't even be able to play clubs in the future. What really sucks is that nothing will deal a death blow to these genres and bring back really good music, mainly written by the artists themselves, to radio. The music industry has just really dealt itself a horrible blow, IMO.

And so I keep hearing about the return of Melodic Rock, yet it keeps being ignored on the radio. It's about damn time for a musical revolution. I mean, CD sales are way down, radio blows harder than ever, and young folk are flocking in droves to hot, muddy venues like Rocktoberfest or whatever it was, wearing Motley Crue and RATT t-shirts. But the corporations won't budge.

Marc S wrote:Plus I think MR and hair rock had reached implosion point.

You know, melody did start returning to radio several years ago, but the problem was that the bulk of it was not fresh at all -- if anything, everything sounded like the same high-soaring choruses and hooks sung in the same keys. They would be catchy if they weren't so incredibly familiar.

That is a real challenge for melodic rock these days, is simply coming up with fresh melody (or at least, songs that sound fresh). I think it takes much more than the vocal line, though -- the musicians can help out tremendously, making a song with a good but familiar melody very catchy. This is how Lenny Wolf from Kingdom Come seems to always put out great stuff -- his vocal lines are dang near the same in half the songs he writes, but he somehow scrapes by and keeps the songs catchy thru the instrumentation (my opinion). JSS soars and excels with his melodies -- they are truly melodies that stand on their own.

One of the best, freshest melodic rock CD's I've bought in the last few years was TNT's "My Religion" (closely followed by "All The Way to the Sun"), and I've played both of those discs to death. CATCHY!

RipRokken wrote:

Marc S wrote:Plus I think MR and hair rock had reached implosion point.

You know, melody did start returning to radio several years ago, but the problem was that the bulk of it was not fresh at all -- if anything, everything sounded like the same high-soaring choruses and hooks sung in the same keys. They would be catchy if they weren't so incredibly familiar.

That is a real challenge for melodic rock these days, is simply coming up with fresh melody (or at least, songs that sound fresh). I think it takes much more than the vocal line, though -- the musicians can help out tremendously, making a song with a good but familiar melody very catchy. This is how Lenny Wolf from Kingdom Come seems to always put out great stuff -- his vocal lines are dang near the same in half the songs he writes, but he somehow scrapes by and keeps the songs catchy thru the instrumentation (my opinion). JSS soars and excels with his melodies -- they are truly melodies that stand on their own.

One of the best, freshest melodic rock CD's I've bought in the last few years was TNT's "My Religion" (closely followed by "All The Way to the Sun", and I've played both of those discs to death. CATCHY!

I'd agree with that and its probably why we have ended up with a great deal of output over the last few years in drop D, Db or E along with other odd tunings, which take it somewhere else. The vocal lines are often that stock early Whitesnake-esque bluesy feel to them but are sung over much more contemporary riffs. Often new stuff that is in standard tuning with 'heard-it-before' riffs sound exactly like that, old and tired. Perry over newer tunings would be interesting....

mikemarrs wrote:did alternative rock kill melodic rock?

you always read on discussion boards how alternative rock killed all the huge metal or melodic 80's bands?

what do you think....

Actually, I think it preserved and strengthened it. Grunge allowed for Melodic Rock to go away for awhile. Because of that, it was missed. Over the last few years, the resurgence has been amazing. You see bands like The Eagles, Genesis, The Police, Van Halen and others reuniting to huge fan fare. You can't miss something unless it's gone and the garbage of the mid-nineties allowed this to happen. Rather than MR fizzling out, it was forced out, and allowed to return when people finally figured out they were listening to shit. Do you honestly think a Smashing Pumpkins or Bush reunion tour would sell even a fraction of what the current MR acts are selling? Fuck no.

As much as I would love to see these bands come back and surge...it aint going to happen. VH will fade away, if they dont implode before the end of this tour. The police thing is a fad..as well.

There was an article, Ican't remember if it was here or elsewhere, that stated that adult rockers are releasing new music, but the radio stations that play them, refuse to play anything but their old stuff. Bruce Springsteen was the focus, I believe. His new album came out a few months ago, and classic rock radio wont touch it with a ten foot pole. Instead, they're playing Born to Run until we're all blue in the face.

The fact of the matter is that new music isn't really being supported AT all, by anyone....except the pop crap.

No different in MR. Hell, whenever I hear Night Ranger on the radio, it's NEVER from any album later than Dawn Patrol. The chance that rock radio is going to play styx later than Mr Roboto is about as good as the river styx becoming a hockey rink (to quote that horses ass JY).


Seriously, and this isn't anything more than a fact, if you want to follow a genre where new music is encouraged....start listening to Country music. At least a portion of the artists in the format, write their own music and it gets supported and played by country radio. Granted, thats a rosy picture....there's plenty of country artists that dont write shit and let a small group of preferred writers do all of their writing. But the point I'm trying to make is that new music *is* supported in that genre....and it's real instruments, with real singers...

It's a sad, cold hard fact....Rock music is sabotaged by itself....Radio wont support it....Hell, back in the 70s, artists had to bribe radio DJs with cash or blow just to get em to play shit.....Someone should ask BJG whether or not that kind of payola happens in COuntry music...and i'm sure it does to some extent....but the fact of the matter is that if Tommy Shaw walked into one of the current Rock stations here in NYC and said here's our new single and a suitcase filled with singles and cocaine, please play it....the radio DJ is going to go "Where's Dennis?" LOL

Music is in a sad state right now...it really is....MR isnt the only format that's either suffering or suffered...

Blue Radio Girl wrote:

larryfromnextdoor wrote:

Moon Beam wrote:

TRAGChick wrote:OH GOOD GOD..... LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!

http://www.myspace.com/kineticsect

"Kinetic Sect" ~ Mark is 2nd from the left:

Holy youngness Nora!
Your Hubby Bub looks about 12 there.
I can still tell it's him though even with him looking down.
Thanks for sharing this with us.

she married Ralph Machio..

Three words, ya'll...

Co-ordinated Chuck Taylors.

....and Mark is just SOO FREAKIN' HAPPY I found this....heehee....

Marc S wrote:I'd agree with that and its probably why we have ended up with a great deal of output over the last few years in drop D, Db or E along with other odd tunings, which take it somewhere else.

There is a lot of great drop-tuned stuff out there, but a lot of it that isn't inventive at all... some of it to me is the rock version of Hip-Hop... just chords and a beat, but no melody.

The odd tuning or off-chord stuff can be great if done well, but there is a lot of it that just sounds like B-side or filler material to me. I know people kinda rebelled against standard chord progressions, and were looking for something that sounded different, but it's not the most pleasant sounding stuff to the ears. Again, if done well, that's awesome. Much of the time (to me), it just sounds like they are trying to hard to come up with something different.

i think hip hop and country bit into the sales going down also.

in my opinion, there's a big difference between alternative and grunge, both labels which were co-opted by the corporations and twisted into marketing strategies that removed any true significance from the original source material.

i tend to think of alternative as running parallel to the mainstream in the early to mid eighties, when bands like journey and van halen and debbie gibson and wham were selling tons of records, bands like REM, the smiths, the pixies, the sugarcubes, bad brains, fishbone, red hot chili peppers (before the LA riots) & others were on underground labels and being played all over college radio stations...eventually the best of that crop was co-opted by the major labels and you wound up with REM, RHCP, and Bjork being used to sell credit cards and hamburgers.

grunge was another label put on guys like soundgarden, nirvana, pearl jam & others which was again co-opted and came to meant nothing at all....truly when nirvana hit, it put a sudden stop to hair/glam metal and blase pop music from the early 90's, but melodic rock was truly out of the mainstream consciousness long before that. even bands in the early 90's like tesla and mr big, and bad english, i think were closer aligned with pop and hair metal than bands like toto, journey, or hagar-era van halen.

what killed melodic rock in my opinion? i think to some extent, like all genres, it devoured itself by being watered down with record companies trying to find the next big band...creatively, a lot of those bands had been around since the late 70's, and the creative lifespan of any band starts to wind down after about 6-8 years. as far as one genre superceding another - i would say it was hair metal that squashed true melodic rock on the airwaves....bands like twisted sister, quiet riot, motley crue, and poison truly took the pop music mantle from melodic rock acts in the mid to late 80's.

anyway, just my opinion...

Jeremey wrote:in my opinion, there's a big difference between alternative and grunge, both labels which were co-opted by the corporations and twisted into marketing strategies that removed any true significance from the original source material.

Excellent point, and it always happens. Only really underground music (a lot of it too polarizing to be of use) seems to be immune from corporations. To me, the perfect example of a band themselves becoming a corporate puppet is Nickelback. I'm not incredibly familiar with their music, nor have I ever bought a Nickelback album, but I really liked a few of their earliest singles. Now, anytime I hear a new Nickelback song, I just cringe. Sing-songy, cheesy (to me, anyway), corporate rock -- they've just been neutered or spayed, whichever applies The shame of it in my experience is that now I equate the singer's voice with this crap, so it's kinda ruined Nickelback altogether for me -- the same happened to me with James Hetfield of Metalica ("Unforgiven Too", anybody?), as I can't hear Hetfield's voice and not think of cheese anymore.

lots of factors killed the MR sound during the late 80s and 90s...
1. too many of the hair bands sounded the same at the end.
2. Nirvana
3. groups like and Styx Kansas were tiring... jouorney was nowhere durning this time.
4. radio changed...
5. hip hop was getting more mainstream.
6. garth brooks and cournty music were more rock than country...

Jeremey wrote:in my opinion, there's a big difference between alternative and grunge, both labels which were co-opted by the corporations and twisted into marketing strategies that removed any true significance from the original source material.

i tend to think of alternative as running parallel to the mainstream in the early to mid eighties, when bands like journey and van halen and debbie gibson and wham were selling tons of records, bands like REM, the smiths, the pixies, the sugarcubes, bad brains, fishbone, red hot chili peppers (before the LA riots) & others were on underground labels and being played all over college radio stations...eventually the best of that crop was co-opted by the major labels and you wound up with REM, RHCP, and Bjork being used to sell credit cards and hamburgers.

grunge was another label put on guys like soundgarden, nirvana, pearl jam & others which was again co-opted and came to meant nothing at all....truly when nirvana hit, it put a sudden stop to hair/glam metal and blase pop music from the early 90's, but melodic rock was truly out of the mainstream consciousness long before that. even bands in the early 90's like tesla and mr big, and bad english, i think were closer aligned with pop and hair metal than bands like toto, journey, or hagar-era van halen.

what killed melodic rock in my opinion? i think to some extent, like all genres, it devoured itself by being watered down with record companies trying to find the next big band...creatively, a lot of those bands had been around since the late 70's, and the creative lifespan of any band starts to wind down after about 6-8 years. as far as one genre superceding another - i would say it was hair metal that squashed true melodic rock on the airwaves....bands like twisted sister, quiet riot, motley crue, and poison truly took the pop music mantle from melodic rock acts in the mid to late 80's.

anyway, just my opinion...

Pretty much spot on analysis, especially for the US. Whereas you did still have some proper rock bands in the 90s we generally had some dire stuff over here. It was truly dreadful. 'Rock' still had its core fans who ironically put on the largest gigs but it was very marginalised by the press. Even when Bon Jovi reinvented themselves for Keep the Faith era, they looked like a boy band. No Elvis in them whatsoever.

RipRokken wrote:

Jeremey wrote:in my opinion, there's a big difference between alternative and grunge, both labels which were co-opted by the corporations and twisted into marketing strategies that removed any true significance from the original source material.

Excellent point, and it always happens. Only really underground music (a lot of it too polarizing to be of use) seems to be immune from corporations. To me, the perfect example of a band themselves becoming a corporate puppet is Nickelback. I'm not incredibly familiar with their music, nor have I ever bought a Nickelback album, but I really liked a few of their earliest singles. Now, anytime I hear a new Nickelback song, I just cringe. Sing-songy, cheesy (to me, anyway), corporate rock -- they've just been neutered or spayed, whichever applies The shame of it in my experience is that now I equate the singer's voice with this crap, so it's kinda ruined Nickelback altogether for me -- the same happened to me with James Hetfield of Metalica ("Unforgiven Too", anybody?), as I can't hear Hetfield's voice and not think of cheese anymore.

lol,same here.i get sick of hearing nickelback 'rock star' being played 30 time a day and now its everyones ring tone.nickelback is very corporate.they've made the same album over and over since 2001.