The most comprehensive breakdown of "Modern Rock" ever!

From this amazing post at idolator:
http://idolator.com/5220851/what-are-the-ingredients-in-this-nasty-soup-we-call-modern-rock

College Rock (U.S. Division)
Key bands: R.E.M., The Replacements, XTC, The Pixies
Era of dominance: 1988-1992
Defining hit: The Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: R.E.M., “Supernatural Superserious”
By the time Billboard began publishing a Modern Rock singles chart in 1988, there was already a clutch of American bands getting consistent radio play. And for the first few years of the chart, jangle ruled the roost.

College Rock (U.K. Division)
Key bands: U2, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Love And Rockets, New Order
Era of dominance: 1988-1993
Defining hit: The Cure, “Wish”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Depeche Mode, “Wrong”
The divergent paths of U2 and R.E.M. since the early ‘90s kind of tell the story of how American college rock’s Brit equivalent was always better suited for stadiums and/or enduring cults.

The Last Gasp Of The Old Guard
Key bands: Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, Robyn Hitchcock
Era of dominance: 1988-1992
Defining hit: Lou Reed, “Dirty Blvd.”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Elvis Costello, “Complicated Shadows”
Yeah, there was a full year or two after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” when these guys were still charting consistently, but ultimately Nirvana’s ascent killed off more than just hair metal.

The Pre-Lillith Fair Chick Singer Boom
Key bands: Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega, Sinead O’Connor, Kate Bush
Era of dominance: 1988-1994
Defining hit: Tori Amos, “Cornflake Girl”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Paramore, “Decode”
Now, the only female singer-songwriters that can get Modern Rock airplay are M.I.A. and Katy friggin’ Perry, and all the girls with guitars and pianos and mainstream aspirations have fled to VH1.

Pre-Grunge Heavy Alt-Rock
Key bands: Jane’s Addiction, Social Distortion, Living Colour, Faith No More
Era of dominance: 1988-1992
Defining hit: Jane’s Addiction, “Stop”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Avenged Sevenfold, “Scream”
I’m glad that these bands all at least have one signature hit I hear on the radio every week, because it’s nice to be reminded that there wasn’t some kind of vast unfilled niche between R.E.M. and Poison before Nirvana showed up.

Seattle Grunge
Key bands: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains
Era of dominance: 1991-1995
Defining hit: Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Pearl Jam, “Brother”
After the last round of tracks from Vitalogy and Unplugged In New York ran their course, the hits kinda dried up, but those four years produced the biggest chunk of recurrent radio staples of any of these scenes. And Nirvana changed everything, y’know.

The Earnest Funkateers
Key bands: Red Hot Chilli Peppers, 311, Sublime, Incubus
Era of dominance: 1991-present
Defining hit: Red Hot Chilli Peppers, “Give It Away”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: 311, “Hey You”
Guitar bands that throw some combination of rapping, DJing, slap bass, and groovy good-vibes balladry into their sound may be the surest thing the Modern Rock format has ever known. The demand may fluctuate, but overall these kinda guys will never go out of style.

West Coast Punk-Pop
Key bands: Green Day, Offspring, Rancid, NOFX
Era of dominance: 1993-1995
Defining hit: Green Day, “Basket Case”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Rancid, “Last One To Die”
As a dedicated grunge kid, this stuff really got on my nerves at the time, but now I can admit Dookie was a pretty great record.

The Industrial-Rock Crossover
Key bands: Nine Inch Nails, Filter, Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills
Era of dominance: 1994-1997
Defining hit: Nine Inch Nails, “Closer”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Hollywood Undead, “Undead”
Après Reznor, le deluge, but most of them sucked and didn’t stick around for very long, so good riddance.

The Post-Grunge A-List
Key bands: Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Radiohead
Era of dominance: 1993-present
Defining hit: Smashing Pumpkins, “Today”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Weezer, “Troublemaker”
Once Cobain checked out and Pearl Jam set about becoming the world’s biggest cult band, there were a lot of guitar bands of widely divergent sounds and origins angling to fill the void, intentionally or unintentionally. But only a handful ended up with a sustained, successful run, and a large permanent fanbase, if not a Nirvana-sized legacy. Some of these bands are still chugging along like efficient hit factories; some of them could probably easily make hits again whenever they get their shit together to do so.

One-Album Wonders
Key bands: Bush, Live, Third Eye Blind, Candlebox, Soul Asylum
Era of dominance: 1994-1996
Defining hit: Live, “Lightning Crashes”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Gavin Rossdale, “Love Remains The Same”
These are the bands that briefly joined the above described A-list, landing four or five huge hits off of one album (usually but not always their debut), but proving unable to hack it in the long run. They’re the ones with ‘greatest hits’ albums that are 60% comprised of songs from the same album.

Rappin’ Whitey
Key bands: The Beastie Boys, Beck, Everlast, Eminem
Era of dominance: 1988-present
Defining hit: Crazytown, “Butterfly”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Asher Roth, “I Love College”
One of the sturdiest constants in the history of Modern Rock radio: If a white guy decides to rhyme over guitars, one drop of airplay guarantees years of request line calls, whether it’s the Flobots or Dynamite Hack’s version of “Boyz In The Hood.”

The Indie Rock Bubble
Key bands: Sonic Youth, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., Meat Puppets
Era of dominance: 1990-1994
Defining hit: Pavement, “Cut Yr Hair”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Silversun Pickups, “Panic Switch”
I can remember very clearly in the summer of 1994 being inundated with Green Day and Offspring, and finding solace in the occasional spins of “Bull In The Heather,” “Feel The Pain,” “Backwater,” and Frank Black’s “Headache” that kind of pointed the way towards what I’d spend a lot of the next few years listening to.

The Birth Of Adult Contemporary Alternative
Key bands: Counting Crows, Collective Soul, Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20
Era of dominance: 1993-1996
Defining hit: Verve Pipe, “The Freshmen”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Counting Crows, “When I Dream Of Michaelangelo”
Like the female singer-songwriters that preceded them, these candy-asses ruled alt-rock airwaves for a few years; when got a little too schmaltzy, Hot AC was waiting for them with open arms.

Stealth Hippies
Key bands: Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Phish
Era of dominance: 1991-1996
Defining hit: Blues Traveler, “Runaround”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Dave Matthews Band, “Funny The Way It Is”
For a while they blended in with the alt-AC crowd, but eventually we heard the noodling and smelled the patchouli, and made them get their own Lollapalooza.

Britpop’s Failed Invasion
Key bands: Oasis, Blur, Elastica
Era of dominance: 1995-1997
Defining hit: Oasis, “Wonderwall”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Snow Patrol, “Take Back The City”
Cool Britannia came over here with a full head of steam, but other than a couple of ballads by the monobrowed Gallagher mooks, it never really translated to stateside success. Meanwhile, Damon Albarn’s shots at American radio recurrent immortality were a 2-minute blast of Big Muff riffage and some hooks he sung while dressed up as a cartoon monkey.

Alternapop
Key bands: Sugar Ray, Smashmouth, Fastball, Semisonic, Everclear
Era of dominance: 1996-1999
Defining hit: Smashmouth, “Walking On The Sun”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: The All-American Rejects, “Gives You Hell”
Former Idolator regular Anthony Miccio likes to throw around this term a lot, and it’s effective enough that I’m going to go ahead and nick it from him here. In the aftermath of arty collage-types like Beck and the Beastie Boys, we suddenly got a lot of goofballs in shades making shiny videos directed by McG, with clunky hip hop-inspired beats and laid back riffs. The summer of ’97 was pretty horrific if you ask me, but a few of these songs have aged well.

Third Wave Ska
Key bands: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris
Era of dominance: 1995-1997
Defining hit: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Uh…. none.
No Doubt only had one foot on board to begin with, so it was easy for them to jump ship to superstardom while everyone else more committed to skankin’ went down with the boat.

The Godforsaken Swing Revival
Key bands: The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The
Squirrel Nut Zippers, The Brian Setzer Orchestra
Era of dominance: 1997-1998
Defining hit: The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, “Zoot Suit Riot”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: …
Thing is, the ska bands didn’t seem that bad once these guys came along.

The “Electronica” Revolution
Key bands: Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim
Era of dominance: 1997-1999
Defining hit: The Prodigy, “Firestarter”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: another dead end here
Obviously, the last decade of car-commercial beats and critical love for minimal techno confirms that Americans weren’t actually afraid of this stuff–but the attempt to retrofit it for stadium rock that was a bit wrongheaded.

The Punk-Pop Resurgence
Key bands: Blink 182, Sum 41, New Found Glory, Yellowcard
Era of dominance: 1997-2004
Defining hit: Blink 182, “Dammit”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: All Time Low, “Dear Maria, Count Me In”
During the years when Green Day’s popularity waned and The Offspring briefly became a weird Alternapop novelty band, a new breed of slightly more goofball pop-punk took over, with increasingly nasal vocals that set the stage for emo’s bid for the mainstream.

Rap Metal
Key bands: Rage Against The Machine, KoRn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Linkin Park
Era of dominance: 1996-2002
Defining hit: Rage Against The Machine, “Killing In The Name Of”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Linkin Park, “Bleed It Out”
The earnest white rappers and alt-funk bands are still going strong, but I think this scene can be safely called over. Rage reunited, but just to play shows; KoRn and the Bizkit are irrelevant; and Linkin Park and Kid Rock are still making hits, but with as little rapping (or metal) as possible.

Grunge, the Second Coming
Key bands: Creed, Nickelback, Puddle Of Mudd, Seether, Staind, Godsmack
Era of dominance: 1998-present
Defining hit: Creed, “Higher”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Shinedown, “Second Chance”
This lot has a cockroach-like resilience that their Seattle forebears never had, which is a shame for the rest of us.

The Return Of Sunset Strip Decadence
Key bands: Hinder, Buckcherry, Saving Abel, Theory Of A Deadman
Era of dominance: 2005-present
Defining hit: Hinder, “Get Stoned”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Theory Of A Deadman, “Bad Girlfriend”
Motley Crue hasn’t quite reached the Modern Rock chart yet, but it’s filled with bands who tour with them and who, for all intents and purposes, have just updated their whole style for the wallet chain era.

”The” Bands
Key bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives, The Vines
Era of dominance: 2001-2002
Defining hit: The Strokes, “Last Nite”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Kings Of Leon, “Sex On Fire”
Rock came back! And then it went away again, except for the White Stripes.

Crossover Emo
Key bands: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Dashboard Confessional, The Used, Jimmy Eat World
Era of dominance: 2002-2007
Defining hit: Fall Out Boy, “Sugar, We’re Going Down”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: My Chemical Romance, “Desolation Row”
At one point, it seemed like emo–or at least a bunch of bands who get called emo but inevitably deny the charge–would take over. But Fall Out Boy went pop, MCR went classic rock, and most of the other bands that landed a few hits are ice cold now.

The 21st-Century Indie Bubble
Key bands: Modest Mouse, Death Cab For Cutie, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Arcade Fire, Interpol
Era of dominance: 2004-present
Defining hit: Modest Mouse, “Float On”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: The Airborne Toxic Event, “Sometime Around Midnight”
It’s hard to tell whether this bubble will last longer than the one that Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement benefited from a decade earlier, but the Pitchfork-to-KROQ farm team system seems to be getting only stronger over time.

The New VH1 Wuss-Rock Vanguard
Key bands: Coldplay, The Fray, The Killers, Maroon 5
Era of dominance: 2002-present
Defining hit: Coldplay, “Clocks”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: The Killers, “Spaceman”
Unlike Oasis and the Goo Goo Dolls, Coldplay and the Killers have found the trick to Modern Rock longevity: A palatable amount of U2-style artiness.

Hard Rock Dinosaurs Sneaking In The Back Door
Key bands: Metallica, AC/DC, Guns N Roses
Era of dominance: 2008-present
Defining hit: AC/DC, “Rock’n’Roll Train”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Metallica, “Cyanide”
The once-thick line that divided alternative stations from “active rock” stations officially went from blurry to nonexistent last year, when these bands all showed up on the Modern Rock chart, most of them for the first time. If the chart doesn’t exist a few years from now, this will be why.

fuck off usa

this is v. helpful and i understand music better because of it

Defining hit: The Cure, “Wish”

yes i liked that song too

oh wait sorry "some dude" i did not know you wrote this piece, my rough words were a gag reflex at seeing the words "alternapop" and "smashmouth" in the same ballpark

There ya have it.

But since I'm a petty little man on matters of musical categorization, I must say that the Gin Blossoms deserve mentioning in the Birth Of Adult Contemporary Alternative. I'd go as far as saying that the genre's defining hit is Hey Jealousy.

I was always amazed that Peter Gabriel managed two #1 hits at the end of '92, before he went on eternal exile.

it kinda bums me out to see soul asylum marked down as a one-hit wonder since they made quite a few awesome records in the 80s...i would put them more on line with the meat puppets or buttholes....a "one hit wonder" because the new audience had no idea they existed before

Yeah, seeing Soul Asylum in there with Candlebox, though I get the sentiment, is still a little o_O for me. I'd still stick 'em in a weird The Replacements/Uncle Tupelo/Jayhawks category.

And yeah, "Lake of Fire" and "Backwater" were hits in 1994, but c'mon, their best two albums were released ten years before that. Maybe Curt Curtwood is the Neil Sedeka of the grunge movement, I dunno.

sorry, much as i strongly doubt this inevitably reductionist and false-metanarrative-imposing exercise, i should either interact with it constructively or stfu :(

louis i feel like i'm an amputee veteran and yr trying to tell me what "really" happened in 'Nam

but dammit i've seen apocalypse now AND the quiet american and hey i've read some reviews of full metal jacket

College Rock (U.S. Division)
Key bands: R.E.M., The Replacements, XTC, The Pixies
???

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SEE SOUL COUGHING, SEMISONIC AND CHERRY POPPIN DADDIES AT AN ALT ROCK STATION'S 'JINGLE BALL' XMAS CONCERT???!?! HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE SHIT??"

"HAVE YOU BEEN IN A HALF-HEARTED MOSH PIT AT WHILE THE CRANBERRIES PLAYED 'ZOMBIE'???"

dope shit al

"HAVE YOU BEEN MOONED BY THE DUDE IN SPACEHOG????"

Blech what an unpleasant read. I'm glad I'll never have to listen to "modern rock" radio again.

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SEE SOUL COUGHING, SEMISONIC AND CHERRY POPPIN DADDIES AT AN ALT ROCK STATION'S 'JINGLE BALL' XMAS CONCERT???!?! HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE SHIT??"

― 4,000 hoes in blackburn, lancashire (M@tt He1ges0n), Friday, April 24, 2009 4:30 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

lolllllll

The Punk-Pop Resurgence
Key bands: Blink 182, Sum 41, New Found Glory, Yellowcard
Era of dominance: 1997-2004

this is my fav shit ever for all time if you include green day singles

LOL

Back in my day, musicians didn't have myspace pages, or blogs. Nobody Tweeted. If we wanted to know what Belly was up to, we had to wait till Spin, or Alternative Press would come out. Do you have any idea what that was like? DO YOU!?!?!?!?!?

Why would he want to know what it was like?

Seriously.

College Rock (U.S. Division)
Key bands: R.E.M., The Replacements, XTC, The Pixies
???

LOL that's exactly what I thought when XTC was mentioned in there! o_O

http://proserpine.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/roy_batty_tattoo.jpg

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Soul Asylum at RibFest; I’ve watched a shirtless Gibby Haynes dick around with a space echo at Lollapalooza… All those moments will be lost… …in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.

louis i feel like i'm an amputee veteran and yr trying to tell me what "really" happened in 'Nam

tell me about it ... I'm having Martin Sheen-in-the-hotel freakouts remembering having to play a lot of those on the radio between 92 and 95. PTSD hits whenever I hear Sarah McLachlan or that Blind Melon song ...

xp Matt: Cranberries "mosh pit" ... that's what happens when you get out of the boat!

Never get out of the boat!!!

fuckin' tiger, man!

When you've seen the sweat stains from Urge Overkills matching turtleneck pullovers, then you'll never be able to look at anything the same way again.

try seeing the UO reunion tour with nash + a studio drummer with bleach blond dreadlocks!!!

shouldn't there be a wilco/ryan adams/pete yorn alt-country entry?

or did none of those folks have radio hits

I think the Industrial-Rock is off by a bit. It started with Pretty Hate Machine in 89/90 ... Ministry's "Jesus Built My Hodrod" was 1991 ... kinda subsided when the Rage Against the Machine/Tool group took over around 95/96.

I hate this list fyi

I mean its pretty spot on

The Earnest Funkateers

Kinda wanna start a band called this

this is great all my only beef is this lack of 'alt-country' and no place for OG guns-n-roses

I approve of this.

The Earnest Funkateers

Kinda wanna start a band called this

Would write off/pointedly ignore because of name.

we would be a folk band

maybe skiffle

freak people out

would only listen if you change your first name to "earnest"

still regretting the fact i was allowed to get a lame-zing not-as-aggressive-as-it-sounds first response in having glanced peremptorially through the list and without knowing it was written by an ilxor

can a mod delete it?

no its a good post dude

trust me I post too

Okay, this list has me confused. Is College Rock (UK Division) supposed to refer to the Brit bands that were popular on US modern rock radio or in Britain? Because in the US those dates are off and the defining hit is totally wrong. In US that category started at least as early as '86.

xp Chizzy: no, it would remove the reference for our Vietnam jokes.

College Rock (U.S. Division)
Key bands: R.E.M., The Replacements, XTC, The Pixies
???

Sub in 10,000 Maniacs.

^good call

truesay the 'Nam jokes are roffles

I guess my primary beef is that it's just so unashamedly America-centric and chart-centric but heyho that's what's being aimed for here I guess

actually sub in Crash Test Dummies even tho' they're Canadian

Uh that's exactly what's being aimed for, no you guess about it.

I third the motion to replace XTC with 10,000 Maniacs.

10,000 Maniacs seem more pre-Lilith Fair to me.

Modern Rock was the name of a radio format in the US that later became Alternative Rock and then splintered some time in the late 90s into several different formats.

10,000 Maniacs seem more pre-Lilith Fair to me.

Purely because they had a female singer, I presume. Not good enough of a reason.

thanks, sarahel

You're right. Wouldn't want to mess with this totally well-reasoned list.

alex i know this is your schtick but instead of just being a dick why don't you make some suggestions to improve this totally well-reasoned list

I made a suggestion to improve this well-reasoned list. It was just shot down by the Earl of Dorkington Manor.

yeah that was a good post

lololol

Also, U2 looks a little weird on the College Rock (U.K. Division) list, not because they're technically Irish, but because they don't have the same Anglophile cachet as the others in the category. Fans of College Rock (U.K. Division) were girls who wore Doc Martens with fishnets. Maybe Psychedelic Furs belong here.

Jesus Jones, EMF have to belong somewhere on here, right?

What this list is omitting is the very influential category of:
adolescent angst movie soundtrack bands - (1986 - 1991)
Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, The Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen, OMD, INXS, Concrete Blonde

Plus lesser hitmakers (in the US) like the Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Inspiral Carpets, et all.

Sarahel, re those dates, I'm assuming that Al is talking about when these subgenres made waves on the Modern Rock chart, which didn't exist before 1988.

i'm not sure if sublime really fit into the earnest funkateers category tbh

TALK HARD!

oh wow, i just heard "Supernatural Superserious" in the car yesterday and was thinking about how hard it was trying to sound like a remnant of the 80s US college rock sound

^that song is kinda dope IMO...plus they invented the shit so why begrudge them?

I think both Alex and Bimble are correct -- earlier 10k Maniacs were in the same category as REM, latter day Maniacs were pre-Lilith Fair

i agree with all the maniacs comments....but natalie had her lilith game proper on tigerlily

xp jaymc - Live 105 in San Francisco started as Modern Rock radio as far back as at least 1986.

Baggy Rock (U.K. Division)
Key bands: Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Jesus Jones, EMF
Era of dominance: 1988-1992
Defining hit: Jesus Jones "Right Here, Right Now"
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Beats me
This stuff was much bigger in the UK, but this stuff dominated the modern rock airwaves pre-Nirvana.

xp M@tt: Tigerlily! Oh the memories ... that album pwned the nine to noon shift ...

XTC should be in a category with Lightning Seeds and Tears for Fears or something.

Yeah, I think that's a good suggestion, Alex.

still trying to figure out where new radicals fit in with all of this

^that song is kinda dope IMO...plus they invented the shit so why begrudge them?

Where did I say that it wasn't dope?

This thread reminds me of a thread I started 5+ years ago:
15-year-old Jaymc rants about the increasing homogeneity of alt-rock radio

Our Modern Rock Heritage
Key bands: The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Ramones, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, Buzzcocks, Joy Division

Who are you talking about?

Cuz any list that doesn't have Talking Heads front and center is flawed.

This is also a good read by Nabisco:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2099-just-say-sire/

xp Alex: Talking Heads should be on there, too.

Oh yeah, that Nabisco thing slayed me. Great stuff.

Also, I don't get the VH1 umbrella. Coldplay + The Fray + Snow Patrol makes sense. But the Killers and Maroon 5?

By the time Billboard began publishing a Modern Rock singles chart in 1988, there was already a clutch of American bands getting consistent radio play. And for the first few years of the chart, jangle ruled the roost.

Excluding REM, here are the first two years' worth of Modern Rock chart #1s:

Souxsie and the Banshees
Big Audio Dynamite
Psychedelic Furs
U2
Julian Cope
Lou Reed
The Replacements
Elvis Costello
XTC
The Cure
Love and Rockets
PIL
B-52's
Hoodoo Gurus
Tears for Fears
Ian McCulloch
Camper Van Beethoven
Kate Bush
JMC

So, neither particularly American, nor particularly jangly, but hey, you know, nice premise.

Here's the earliest Modern Rock chart available on Google Books (from mid-1992).

1988 year-end countdowns for KROQ, 91X, Live 105, WLIR.

wow I didn't know the woodentops were that big

I wonder if you picked four year-end countdowns for last year if there would any level of diversity.

Check for yourself -- that site has countdowns through 2007.

Seems like a lot of work. I'll let someone else do it.

i think the "The 21st-Century Indie Bubble" category should really include the shins. although i really have no idea if they charted, so like alex, i'll let someone else figure that out.

all i'm saying is that the bubble would not be possible without zac braff.

DO I HAVE TO GO GET MY CERTAIN DAMAGE SAMPLERS?

(From back when CMJ meant something, man…)

And I realize this marks me as someone who grew up on Nirvana, but I can't ever hear "modern rock" without thinking of "moderate rock."

"The Earnest Funkateers"

lol guys i totally never saw this thread! ironically i think i was so busy in the idolator comments section that i didn't look at ILM much that day. anyway i'm gonna revive and maybe respond to some stuff super-late.

btw i sheepishly apologized for the really obvious errors on idolator (lol "wish" was an album not a song lol xtc were not american) but yeah i wrote most of this really late at night and at times my brain gave out on me, my bad

10k maniacs was totally what i would've put in place of xtc, also

Is College Rock (UK Division) supposed to refer to the Brit bands that were popular on US modern rock radio or in Britain?

I assume the former as Love and Rockets were about as popular as syphillis in the UK

Okay, this list has me confused. Is College Rock (UK Division) supposed to refer to the Brit bands that were popular on US modern rock radio or in Britain? Because in the US those dates are off and the defining hit is totally wrong. In US that category started at least as early as '86.

― giving a shit when it isn't your turn to give a shit (sarahel), Friday, April 24, 2009 5:56 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the intro wasn't c&p'd in this thread but basically the piece (and the column it was an installment of) are specifically about billboard's modern rock chart that started in '88, so that's basically the whole point of the timeline...obviously the roots of a lot of the bands go back way way earlier.

xpost and yeah it's all from a U.S. perspective w/r/t to Brit bands (hence the tiny perfunctory Britpop entry)

Are you forgetting something, some dude?

The Not-So-Earnest Quasi-Funkateers
Key bands: Soul Coughing, Eels, Cake, Geggy Tah, Bran Van 3000
Era of dominance: 1995-1998
Defining hit: Beck, “Loser”
Vestigial reminder in a recent hit: Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pop - "Thou Shalt Always Kill"
The dorkier stepbrother of funk-rock that loves the grooves of funk and hip-hop but is too self-aware to go all in, wearing its stiffness on its sleeve like David Byrne's giant suit. Usually accompanied by lyrics that are pseudo-intellectual revisions of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" or really sad songs spoken in the matter-of-fact tone of a telemarketer.

You can leave my check under the door, thanks homie

lol

yeah i had some vague idea of an entry in that vein (along w/ alt-country) but scrapped it because i was trying to limit it to things where i could name at least 3-5 bands with several sizeable hits, or was otherwise impossible to ignore (nu-swing, britpop)

Cake are probably the biggest band I completely neglected to mention in the whole thing

hahaha that's what my girlfriend said (Cake is pretty much her favorite band) (not mine)

Cake would have been great if they were just that one song

soul coughing seemed like they were really big, not sure how many records they sold but daaaaamn there are dudes that are INTO m. doughty/soul coughing.

though i think i have a weird perception cuz they were always huge in mpls, like i guess a large portion of their record sales were strictly in the twin cities.

Oh, c'mon, Cake had like two good songs per album.

You can put them in an entry with Harvey Danger.

Re: Soul Coughing

When I was in high school, I put a Soul Coughing song on a mixtape because my dad had just bought Ruby Vroom, and this girl really liked it. So she assumed I was way into Soul Coughing too, and wanted to play their albums all the time, and I quickly realized that no, I just kinda liked that one song and only really in the context of that mixtape (Chicago Is Not Chicago or something).

Then I started dating her friend, like five years later, and she was also all into Soul Coughing and I thought it was the dumbest shit ever and that was one of the things that helped me get over her dumping me—Well, at least I don't have to listen to that Soul Coughing bullshit anymore.

yeah Soul Coughing were from everything i've heard much bigger there than anywhere else...they were pretty popular, i think all their albums went gold or almost did. kinda unfashionable now but i thought they were a genuinely great band at their best. xpost haha