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Alternative musicians are a far cry from the strutting, white-male rockers of decades gone by. They tend to be antisexist, pro-tolerance and pro- underdog, whether it's animals or humans. The same goes for female rockers. When Chicago hyperintellectual singer Liz Phair, 26, played her explicit debut album Exile from Guyville for her parents, she was surprised at the reaction. "The first time my mother heard it, she wept," says Phair. "Not because she was shocked, but because she was so moved at hearing something so revealing from her daughter."
Many alternative rockers have tried as well to broaden the demographic reach of their music to be more inclusive. The annual traveling rock carnival Lollapalooza, which helps bring regional acts to a national audience, has made a point of including rap acts such as Arrested Development and Ice Cube. "A lot of white kids will not go to a black show," says Ted Gardener, producer of Lollapalooza. "They'll buy the records, but they won't go see the band. They're afraid they might get killed. And some black kids feel the same way about white shows. Our attempt is to try to bring new styles of music together." The sound track to the movie Judgment Night features collaborations between rappers and rockers, including one by Seattle rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot and local band Mudhoney. "Alternative and rap grew out of the same thing," says Sir Mix-A-Lot. "We both did our thing in a basement, and it grew and grew until the major labels took notice."
Yet any movement that pays so much homage to purity and anticommercialism is bound to be divided by charges of hypocrisy, especially when the lure of big bucks is at hand. The movement now finds itself drifting from the ideals that gave it birth: to express anti-Establishment ideas and make music for misfits. "It appealed to me and my friends because our generation is so dead to the world. There's nothing waiting for us when we get out of school," says Bonnie O'Shea, 21, a student disc jockey at the State University of New York at Oneonta. But when 5 million people buy an album, they can't all be outcasts. Some of them are going to be Rush Limbaugh fans who just like the beat. "I don't think all of these new fans know what they're listening to," says O'Shea. "I hope it's a short-term thing. I want my music back."
Whose music is it anyway? Adults are always trying to find out what kids are up to, replicate it, and then sell it back to them. The kids like rap? Let's give them Vanilla Ice! Usually the youth-oriented products that adults come up with are all too obviously a grownup's conception of what a young person wants. The suits are, after all, suits. Getting a handle on youthful culture is like trying to hold onto one's adolescence. It slips away -- it's meant to.
As a result, the debate over who's fake in the alternative world rages on. The following exchange took place on MTV's cartoon series Beavis and Butt-head:
Beavis (watching Stone Temple Pilots' video Plush): Is this Pearl Jam?
Butt-head: This guy makes faces like Eddie Vedder.
Beavis: No, Eddie Vedder makes faces like this guy.
Butt-head: I heard these guys, like, came first and Pearl Jam ripped them off.
Beavis: No, Pearl Jam came first.
Butt-head: Well, they both suck.
Members of the indie community are wary, almost paranoid, about the movement's being copied or co-opted by the mainstream. "One of the things that I think has really affected the underground negatively," says Bill Wyman, columnist for a Chicago alternative newspaper, "is this whole idea that this is 'our' little scene, it's for us, we play really loud music, we don't want fans, we don't want major record deals, it's uncool to be popular and to publicize your band."
Nirvana's Cobain once wrote a song called School; ridiculing the alternative world: "You're in high school again! No recess!" Just as in school, certain styles and viewpoints are considered "cool" in the alternative scene; those that don't fit in are derided. This year the critically acclaimed band Smashing Pumpkins had a hit single called Cherub Rock, an attack on alternative dogmatism: "Stay cool/ And be somebody's fool this year."
"A lot of these parameters that are bandied about in the alternative-music community are ways of criticizing people," says Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan. "And again, it goes back to high school. You know, I don't like the clothes that you wear. That just becomes what alternative music is rebelling against."
If alternative bands keep flooding into the mainstream, then the word alternative may go out of style, just as "progressive rock" became passe in the 1980s. "Alternative" has become a marketing tool. "Five minutes ago, I saw an ad for Bud Dry: 'The alternative beer with the alternative taste,' " says Jim Pitt, who books musical acts for NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien. "Pretty soon you'll see an ad where they're moshing, 'Out of the mosh pit and into a Buick.' It's the cycle of American pop culture. Things get absorbed."
Pearl Jam is now on probation, forced to prove that success hasn't spoiled it. The group and its record label have responded by promoting the new album very little and even holding off on making rock videos for the time being. Some critics of the band claim its members have handled their fame poorly. "I've heard Eddie Vedder complain about MTV, as if he had been bound and gagged to make the video for Jeremy and forced to sign a record contract with a major label," gripes Alternative Nation's veejay, who goes by the name of Kennedy. Her advice: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you, and if you're not hungry, get the hell out of the kitchen."
Yet in most respects, Vedder is showing a surfer's balance. His only visible excess is that he has taken to lugging a bottle of wine around stage when he performs. He has the same girlfriend, Beth Liebling, that he's had for nine years. Even the spat with Nirvana is patched up. "That's all been taken care of now, that whole relationship," he told Melody Maker.
On Pearl Jam's first album is a song called Release, for which no lyrics are given, perhaps because the subject matter is too painful for Vedder to see in print. It captures the feeling of embracing the past, with all its hurt and controversy, and setting out on a new course. "I'll ride the wave/ Where it takes me," Vedder sings, imagining he is singing to his lost father, dreaming that he is uniquely himself but still somehow an amalgam of his father and his past. "I'll hold the pain/ Release me." It's a healthy attitude in a music genre ruled by high school passions. If he keeps it, the dropout who became a rock star may be ready for the head of the class.