The line on Chicago’s 1993 contributions to the national pop firmament–Liz Phair, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Urge Overkill–is that they’ve in effect agreed to disagree on musical approaches, making for a fractured “scene” with little cohesion. This is true, but their stylistic differences mask the philosophical ground that unites them and seems likely to influence a second wave of bands from Chicago in 1994: an explicit rejection of much of the insularity that increasingly characterizes underground music and the fringes of underground music in America. Few would question what I guess would be called the artistic integrity of any of these acts: yet they’ve avoided (Phair), criticized (Pumpkins), or loudly abandoned (Urge) the harshness, vontrariness, and machismo of the underground in favor of a professed desire to sell records. Hence the reaction of certain fans, smaller record labels, college-radio DJs, and other scenesters: scathing attacks on Urge, gleeful, sexist whispers about Phair, the contemptuous dismissal of the Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan. Of course, the players have to varying degrees brought a lot of their problems on themselves, and at any rate they’re beginning to see the sort of bank balances that tend to put such problems into perspective. Yet each artist had to grapple with what’s supposed to be a dichotomy between being popular and beeing “alternative.” Once it became apparent that the line between the two was blurring, the rear guard from the underground–which I would define as deliberately nonpop, whereas I guess alternative would be relatively personal music that doesn’t necessarily exclude pop–tried not only to keep them clear, but to make a big deal about which side of the line you were on. This, of course, is bullshit, and these artists took a stand and the resulting heat to prove it.
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The Loop, one of the most famous and successful AOR stations in the U.S., abandoned rock music altogether this year. (Disclosure: Hitsville does a talk show on the Loop, but since none of the other papers in town have written about this subject, I figure it’s worth mentioning.) The Loop always had a notoriously tight playlist even by AOR standards; pinched by the heavy metal of the Blaze on the right and ‘XRT and Q101 on the left and seeing its own audience aging fast, the station took advatage of relaxed FCC ownership controls to buy the Blaze, turned its AM to sports talk, and gave up the ghost on AOR entirely in favor of all talk. Who could have predicted, just a few years ago, such a major shift in the configuration of rock radio stations in one of the largest markets in the U.S.? Could it be that–oh, nevermind.
Nirvana In Utero
Stereolab Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements
