Review: 'Alternative for the Masses: The '90s Alt-Rock Revolution '

2025 has been a pretty good year for acknowledging that the nineties alternative rock scene was something that actually happened. In previous years (and this year) publishers couldn't pump out enough pages about sixties rock, seventies rock, and Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. Meanwhile the era of Nirvana mostly boiled down to, well, Nirvana. But what about Shudder to Think? What about Helium? What about Belly and Urge Overkill and Primus and Arrested Development and Throwing Muses and Pixies, Pixies, Pixies?

Review: 'Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s'

I'd always wanted to read a book like Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s. The nineties alternative scene is one that hardly gets as much attention as the British Invasion of the sixties, the hard rock scene of the seventies, or the new wave of the eighties, but for a lot of gen x'ers, it was just as important. But most contemporary discussions of nineties rock would lead you to think it was a scene of one, and that one was Nirvana. I loved and love Nirvana, but grunge was largely a dead end of samey sounding records by guys who couldn't write a pop melody if their favorite flannel was being held for ransom. 

Review: 'Alternative Anthems' LP

The alternative scene feels like the great forgotten era in rock history. Although it was the most potent period in my own "coming of age"--the only rock movement I fully embraced as it was happening (although I lived through the new wave era, I didn't fully appreciate it until the eighties were a fart in the breeze), there are scant references to it today. There are no jukebox musicals that feature the songs of Pavement, no Belly biopic. They won't even put the goddamn Pixies into the idiotic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even though nineties rock would have been nowhere without their influence. 

Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Songs of the 1990s!

Wow. A list of Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Songs of the 1990s. That’s so cool. It’s totally not like everyone else in the entire universe hasn’t already listed their 100 favorite songs of the nineties. Like anyone cares. Whatever. Lists are wack, but I don’t know… music is pretty cool. I mean, not when they’re like “Oooh, look at me! I’m a big rock star! My hair is so big and I screw so many groupies!” That is so eighties. But when they…I don’t know… kind of don’t care so much, I guess I’m kinda like, “That’s pretty cool. I don’t care so much either.” It’s like sometimes I think Kurt Cobain is singing about my life, you know? I don’t know what the fuck Bob Pollard is singing about half the time, but Guided by Voices rock so hard because Bob is like a forty-year-old schoolteacher or something, so it’s so ironic that he’s a rock star. And then there’s all the “Women in Rock” (I put that in quotes to show what I really think of the mainstream media’s “labels”) like Liz Phair, Tanya Donelly, Mary Timony, Juliana Hatfield, PJ Harvey, and like, all the others. They are sincerely hella cool. Sincerely! I’m not even being ironic about how totally dope they are. Don’t think I’m not being ironic? Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind. Then here’s your mom’s 100 favorite songs of the nineties.

100. “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” by Guided by Voices

So we get started the way every party must get started…with a chant of “GBV! GBV! GBV!” Then Bob Pollard is all like, “Rock and Roll!” Then he’s like “This song does not rock,” which is so cool, because sincerely admitting that you rock is so lame! But the real irony is that “Over the Neptune” really does rock! It rocks like Cheap Trick (and not lame Cheap Trick, like “The Flame”). Then “Over the Neptune” morphs into “Mesh Gear Fox” like that cop in T2 morphs into water or whatever, and guess what…it stops rocking but it remains awesome as Guided by Voices get all psychedelic. It sounds like your dad’s best records… and Uncle Bob is like your dad’s only cool friend.

99. “I Wanted to Tell You” by Matthew Sweet