Quote of the Day | July 16, 2008: The Alternative Revolution?

From Chuck Klosterman's 2001 Fargo Rock City:

The death of '80s heavy metal is sometimes compared to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and that's a perfect analogy, even though most of the people who make this argument don't understand why.

. . .

The historical reality is that the dinosaurs died quickly in terms of the planet, which is a hard concept for modern man to relate to. Hair metal's demise happened in much the same way: It died quickly, but only in terms of how society consumes pop culture. Retrospectively, the decline of the glam rock empire seems to have happened so rapidly that it already feels like it's been unpopular for twenty-five years; in truth, metal was still the biggest genre in rock as late as 1991. When Guns N' Roses released Use Your Illusion I & II in September of that year, it momentarily seemed like the defining moment for an entire generation. At midnight, thousands of people lined up at record stores to buy GNR's much-awaited follow-up to Appetite for Destruction as soon as it went on sale that Tuesday. At the time, this was a legitimately unique deal; although the concept of opening stores at midnight soon became commonplace for marquee records (which would include everything from Pearl Jam's Vs. to seemingly workmanlike releases from Green Day and the Wu-Tang Clan), no one in their twenties could ever remember this happening before.

. . .

And what I remember most is that the majority of these people were clearly not "metal kids." Judging from their appearance, these conservatively dressed frat boys and sorority girls could have been fans of anything, or -- more likely -- fans of nothing. It may have been the first time I ever consciously took part in a cultural event.

But that was just the state of music in 1991. Heavy metal was the predominant music of the era, and Guns N' Roses was the genre's best band. Tower Records in Los Angeles sold 23,000 copies of those Illusion albums in twenty-four hours, and that made perfect sense. What most of us did not know (especially those of us in Middle America) was that 46,251 copies of some wacky little record called Nevermind had been sent to stores across the country for a September 24 street date. A new world had already been recorded; we just didn't know it yet. By Thanksgiving, I had a copy of Nevermind, as did all the people I knew who followed rock with any seriousness. By Christmas, it was filtering down to anyone who bought music in general (although that phenomenon seemed more tied to the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video than it did to any sort of philosophical revolution). . . .

The sad irony is that most metal fans looked at Nirvana as a metal band. It seems crazy now, but -- for a few fleeting moments on the cultural calendar of early '92 -- the band that many casual rock kids compared (and sometimes even confused) with Nirvana was Ugly Kid Joe. The distinction between grunge and metal was initially unclear: Soundgarden opened for GNR; Alice in Chains originally called themselves "Alice N Chainz." The first time we heard someone mention the idea of an emerging "Seattle Sound," I recall my roommate mentioning he was happy because he liked Queensryche.

The biggest myth about the whole "alternative revolution" was that it happened overnight, and that it swept the commercial insincerity of the 1980s off the map on the strength of a few catchy, grungy guitar riffs from Aberdeen, Washington. That's not true. We live in an accelerated culture, but its acceleration is increased retrospectively. It would be almost three years before the world heard its second most important Gen X anthem, Beck's "Loser." For a college student, three years is a long time.

What made it seem so sweeping is that for people born in the early 1970s, the transformation was all too clear. I was able to become a major rock fan at a time when cock rock was thriving and growing (the summer of 1984) and exit college on the heels of Kurt Cobain's death, the ultimate example of how absolutely everything about rock 'n' roll (and its audience) had changed.

Tags: Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City, music