You could really see, here was a band that probably could have played a venue 10 times that size, but the atmosphere was just so electric in that place. Chicago Indie Rock | List of Indie Rock Bands From Chicago - Ranker It was solely about the music that we made and how we were live. The one thing about Chicago is that there were so many places for these bands to play that a lot of these got really good as live acts. Literally, how am I going to pay the rent? But thats neither here nor there. Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. But it was a great time. Microphones are the same. I tell all the bands I work with, Dont do what I did. I know a lot about what not to do. People took risks. All across the city there was asense of musical playfulness and a lack of desire to be pigeonholed. Like Eleventh Dream Day, Material Issue was ahead of its time, but it was as good as the ironically marginalized genre of power-pop ever has gotten. People would get drunk onstage, which they dont really do anymore. We wanted to continue to stay on a major, or at least have that kind of distribution and radio support and everything, but not necessarily stay on a major. I think the one night when we took a bunch of mushrooms and they realized that we were all on mushrooms, they all disappeared pretty quickly after that. I think the important thing about playing music or being in a band is be happy when youre there and dont cling to it afterward. Thats where everyone lived and worked. Most of us didnt have home phones. Brad Wood: Idful was busy pretty much right away in 1989. I was really always moved by his dedication to his band, his guys. Many of those bands are well-respected, well-loved, well-remembered, and well-thought-of if theyre still going. If you pick up a guitar and you get on stage, secretly you want people to like you. Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Post-Grunge, Punk Revival A New January 1990s - 2000s Who are we going to play with? Oh, youre going to open for Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens. And we fucking lost our shit, because thats Big Star. Next: The top alternative bands of all time list feature. And that was something about Idful that I had taken for granted for the 10 years. It was kind of just dumb. I still talk to Wes. And he grew up on a lot of the same music that we did. A number of emerging alternative acts are promoting their music in a big way on video streaming channels. I think at that point, all of us had put all of our eggs in that basket. THE MUSICIANS IN BLIND REALITY HAVE BEEN FRIENDS FOR OVER 30 YEARS WITH THE COMMONALITY TO LOVE TO PLAY MUSIC. But as with new-millennial Urge or everything Corgans done in this century, it just aint the same. I hadnt really had a lot of overly famous rock people contact me, to be honest. They look really happy. We werent shy about advertising our phone number. People kind of started paying attention, and we were slugging it out at some of the bars. He was the drummer for the band Shrimp Boat and on many of Liz Phairs recordings. Scott Lucas band since 1987, Local H, is playing Chicagos Empty Bottle on May 27 as part of that clubs 25th anniversary concert series. Not everybody was going to be playing and selling out the United Center like Corgan. But also, Ive got a good job, Im married and have got great kids. Now, like so many other alt veterans, the two have reunited. So he wasnt trying to turn us into something that we werent. I remember we did another show when I was at the New Music Festival in New York with them like two months later. That parts great. 3. But my point is this, all of those artists at that time were really intricately involved in their personal and their public persona. What is there to say about the Pumpkins at this point in time, more than two decades after their heyday? They looked great. Like the day before. Theres no Local H (mostly because, as with Cheap Trick and Rockford, the duo initially was so connected to Zion), and there are no second-wave faves such as Figdish or Loud Lucy. Though the dwindling and nostalgic few who still hold them dear disagree, the Pumpkins were best when they were paring back and giving us less, most notably on the less ironic, more heartfelt Adore in 1998. From left, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. 75 Best Rock Bands of the '90s (Greatest 90s Bands) This one's for all the pop-punk purists out there. Records, the storefront version of the iconic punk, new wave, and industrial imprint, formerly within spitting distance of Lounge Ax, moved to a much smaller space in '93 and finally shuttered in '96 following founder Jim Nashs death. Ultimately, you owe them that money, but only from things that you produce. July 15, 1991. It was all about getting radio songs. These major movements: Youve got house, youve got industrial, genre inventors who are living in this town, and then you have the noise-rock thing with [Steve] Albini. " Learn to Fly " remains one of their most enduring hits. 2. May 8, 2017, 6 a.m. CT. From left, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco . Thats punk rock and an entire do-it-yourself ethos, but it had a supported ecosystem of like-minded business. We were still a band, and we still loved it. Drag City wasn't particularly Chicago-centric but their Chicago crew was spectacular, Brise-Glace, anything with David Grubbs in it, Jim O'Rourke, all of Rian Murphy's endeavors., McCombs also cites Azita Youssefis theatrical no-wave group Scissor Girls as one of the most vital acts of the time. Then you add on top of it the whole house scene in Chicago. And that was anathema to a lot of Chicagoans, who said, Its not cool, youre not indie. So there was that tension in Chicago all through this, like, How much do we sell out? Jeff Parker remembers seeing Tortoise at the HotHouse before he joined the band. That was just crazy. They were in great form that night. But the songs were really good. Gold Star or something like that, because it was neighborhood. Brad Wood: I didnt intend to move to Los Angeles in 2000 and build a recording studio in my backyard. Special thanks to ace director and videographer Andrew Gill, online majordomo Tricia Bobeda, and former digital intern Jack Howard for all of their help. New York City's alternative-metal rockers Helmet seemed to constantly be on the . It was just a single recording studio, there wasnt a second control room. I think that that was the first time where I worked with somebody who was writing really great lyrics and great songs, but also was not encumbered with a band. We really didnt want to be one of those bands. Some nights, you had 10 people show up, and some nights you had 500 people show up. I think people confuse commercialism and ambition with a lack of talent. According to Margasak:Time has proven that the [underground bands] are the ones that people still care about, whereas no one remembersa lot of those major label bands.. And thanks to the international attention garnered by the Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Liz Phair and others, corporate talents scouts descended on Our Town en masse brandishing platinum credit cards and recording contracts. Greg Kot: There was one of two disastrous Liz Phair gigs that I saw early on. Jamila Woods. You layer that with Jimmy Chamberlinthe first time I saw him play drums I was slack-jawed. The Best 90s Alternative Songs: 100 Era-Defining Cuts - uDiscover Music The market got really small, the kind that I worked with dried up dramatically. But the strength of the music and its influence on the sounds that followed matter just as much, if not more. So I said, But it sounds exactly like Downed by Cheap Trick. He was just a misogynist. It was some band, then us, and Local H was opening. For a while, when Liz didnt have a phone, we would tell people from Matador and Atlantic in upper management, theyd try to get in touch with her, theyd call our studio. And also, out of all the bands in that scene, I think they were the best band. Split the difference between Courtney Loves Hole and Liz Phair, add a big dollop of Material Issues power-pop sensibilities, and you have Veruca Salt, which of course took its name from the bratty girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Meanwhile, Gordons solo bow Tonight and the Rest of My Life was a wretched attempt at bland Stevie Nicks. Most of those groups, and indeed most of the creative and independent music in Chicago, was still too off-map for mainstream consumption at that time. Independent labels and bands stopped being sidelines and became going concerns. Going through that process, you do learn a ton. As indie-rock ethicist Steve Albini long had warned, the business side of the story did not have a happy ending for most of these Chicago rockers. Joe Shanahan: Well, format changes. So many amazing people. We pay for tickets, and wed go to see Liz Phair. That night as back in the day, Naked Raygun was much, much better. Eventually, it was just her and her guitar and myself and eventually Casey Rice. Every neighborhood was different, and there were music scenes, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on here in the early- to mid-90s where you saw some cross-pollination between the jazz scenes and the indie rock scenes and the avant-garde noise scene. We wanted to be musicians, and we wanted to make a career out of it. We would play, and Veruca Salt would get on stage. They were hands down the best live band. We make these great records, but you wouldnt know how to sell it. Those kind of things. That was when I first met him, and after that, I said, All right, Ive listened to their records, theyre interesting. That started a relationship with him that lasted a couple years. She was just so loud and so pitch-perfect. Some of it was like, are you happy with playing Saturday night at Metro? Casey came on board and I think his schedule filled up. . The music, however, survives. But the ultimately under-appreciated band in that town is Naked Raygun, and that was way before that time. When we first got signed, we didnt even live in Chicago, we didnt know how to play the games. Wax Trax! Some of that stuff is specifically used, extensively, on Exile In Guyville. And thats the first time I was able to integrate what I had been doing alone by myself just for fun into a recording of somebody else. It meant that maybe this isnt going to go where you wanted it to go. Money changed everything, and one of the things it changed was the expectations bands hadsome bands saw this insane inflation as their birthright. And then we did some really weird tours. While a few artists, like Urge Overkill and Eleventh Dream Day, were plucked out of Chicagos DIY scene, others, like Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair, werent well-known regulars in that small, tight-knit world. It sort of pre-dated all that by just a few years. We were really close to getting dropped. I remember singing with Louise, sharing a mic. Its like when we went to Australia, getting off the plane, I was like, Okay, nobody knows us here. They sent us down to one of the very first South By Southwests from there. We would pretty much try one interval for a song, and maybe switch to another one, but that was about it. Easily the most unique and diverse sounding band of the 90s if not of all time, with . Some bands thought that was the best. When we stopped getting the support from Capitol, and we were still trying to keep it together in Chicago. Material Issue, I thought they got so much stick for being so blatantly ambitious, but at the same time, he backed it up with a work ethic and wrote really good songs. Technically, it hasnt changed very much at all, as far as how I record, it hasnt changed in 30 years, really. And so our big homage to them was we learned how to play You Cant Have Me by Big Star. I am so bad at that. Theres whole bands that I dont know who worked there, who have their own memories of their time at Idful. It was early on, they had just put out their first EP, and that was the first time I had seen The Jesus Lizard and I went, Holy shit, who is this man? Ever since then, it was just a cavalcade of darkly comedic entertainment every time David Yow is on a stage. Josh from the Popes left the band for a little while. And they all flew in, and our rider was like 50 Little Caesars pizzas and two kegs of beer. I got busy first, Brian [Deck, of Red Red Meat] left in 1992 and did his own thing. They probably played like two shows a week and it felt like they were doing a completely new set of material each time they played., McCombs describes the first ever Tortoise show, at the Lounge Ax, in 1994: We were supposed to be opening for the Ex but they didn't make it because they had problems at the border of Canada. The A&R guy would show up and literally say, Well, I just dont hear a hit. Could you be any more stereotypical? We can go nuts, lets have a good time. And we wound up terrifying the label and everything and had a great time. It was a different role than I had traditionally been doing, which is more or less a glorified engineer, where a band hires me to come into a studio, set up microphones, and record. If someone wanted to do a show in a house or in some unconventional space, he would pull his PA system there on a skateboard and just set it up., That sense of freedom, improvisation, and playfulness carried over to the more rock-oriented Lounge Ax, which Albini calls the greatest live music club there ever was, and McCombs calls my favorite venue in the entire world. It's where lounge revivalists the Coctails had accomplished jazz improvisers sit in with them, and where Shrimp Boat played, according to McCombs, this totally skronky, weird, idiosyncratic music with pop songs on top of it. I think it was very much a fear of success for a lot of bands in the Midwest. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. It just was that time. Blake Smith, founding member of Fig Dish and Caviar, is Director Of Entertainment for Virgin Hotels and lives in Chicago. Urge Overkill, all the time. WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. We opened for Alanis Morrisette one day at Grant Park. Menu. They deserved to be hits. Patrick Monaghan, who founded Carrot Top Records in 1993, remembers seeing Phair for the first time at a small Polish bar not long before, There was a lot of amazing music in our circles at the time, Albini says. Its my place. But it was also, the context was not, they wanted the next Nirvana, essentially. We just decided thats what we wanted to do. There are more than a few songs on that second record that were definitely influenced by touring and touring with other bands and seeing what works and what doesnt. And they were telling stories about Minneapolisthis is in the 2000sand they were like, This band fucking sucks, and that guys a dick, and this guys an asshole, and asked us, Did you guys go through this? And were like, No, we all barbecued at each others houses and got drunk together. Maybe one of the reasons that seems really good is the whole rising tide lifts all boats thing. Greg Kot: Obviously these bands crossed paths a lot and shared bills, but to me, there were so many great bands in that era that nobody paid attention to, bands that just slid under that radar and were never really appreciated for what they were, because they were deemed uncommercial. But I was probably hitting 30 or close to 30, you start to think about stuff. I think at that point, Eleventh Dream Day actually was about as big of a band as there was in the city. You know, we really loved that record too, and they had to keep re-recording it, and it was just kind of heartbreaking. Ah, Urge. 90's Alternative Songs - Top 100 - YouTube Click here to listen to Wilco on Sound Opinions in 2007, or here to hear the offshoot band Tweedy in 2014. In an effort to find Nirvanas successor/gold mine, major record labels then knocked themselves out in an attempt to sniff out the next big scene. I add to it, but I think Im pretty much doing the same thing now that I was doing in 1991 or 1993. So it was hard to wade through that shit, and we probably didnt do a great job if it, I dont know if anybody could do a great job of it, you just kind of get lucky. Thats no way to get into this biz; you just do it. But you somehow mesh in a way thats creating something new. In 1993, if you loved underground music, Chicago was a special place to be. After a year or two of this, we wanted to make another demo, and Brad Wood was getting hot. Drag City was founded in 1990; Skin Graft started putting out records in '91; Bloodshot Records began in '92. I love that band signed to Sub Pop and I love that Sub Pop took a chance on that band, and I love that that band has morphed and changed and become Califone and continues to make music. The union propelled the 1994 debut, My money went with Post, who released another great post-Nina Veruca album in 2000 called, You want the history? We can be whoever we want to be. I was like, Oh yeah, wait a second, its not about the music anymore, its about those fucking ratings. But you know, its about those Arbitrons and Neilsen and all that stuff. I dont know why they would. Instead, we have cultivated the following list of our favorite alternative rock bands of all time: 1. Listen, that aint an easy road, but what is? Wes Kidd: When I first heard Local Hs Bound For The Floor on the radio, we were on tour. I remember hearing, when I lived with Wes from Triple Fast, hed come home and played rough mixes that they had just done in the studio. But they failed to win mainstream success, the label dropped the group, and the band came to an end as tragic as Nirvanas when Ellison committed suicide in 1996. 345+ bookings! The live musical experience had a real pulse, and it was supported by the music fans and the people like myself going out every night. Id be reading about these bands in the Reader, and wed go to see these shows, and wed be in the audience; we werent on anybodys list or anything. That event still is so painful that many in Chicagos music scene cant talk about it to this day. Brown Betty, Fig Dish, Liz Phair, Local H, Menthol, Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, and there was the Red Red Meat kind of scene. Colins like, Sure. Even though we werent friends with him, I think he knew who we were. I used an old sampler that I found in college and used samples that I recorded of a musician in the music department and I was recycling that stuff, pitching it and changing it and putting it on that record. Tortoise, Mule, the Jesus Lizard, Mouse, and other animal-named-bands. It was pretty incredible. The music that Azita's made since then has totally followed suityou can still see this thing that's totally her own and totally personal., There was definitely a real interest in free jazz andother music outside of indie rock, says, Things have changed since then, of course, and Albini reflects on what the current landscape means for independent music in Chicago: , The thing we've lost is the influx of cash that the profiteers enabled. These 100 bands and artists' music helped define the "alternative" rock era of the '90s and influenced the next generation of indie rock this century. That was always the struggle. We played a lot of shows with Veruca Salt. I saw them headline a show at Metro with Nirvana as the opening band. In comparison to smaller cities such as Nashville, Memphis, Detroit and Austin, Chicago pays woefully little attention to its musical history, doing little to trumpet the past or celebrate the present for residents or tourists. That said, there still was such great local labels and regional labels that supported the chemistry of all the Midwest bands, which I thought was so exciting, and really has never been repeated again. Its a Chicago thing that all these U.K. DJs appropriated. Brad Wood: We definitely got more phone calls. Who cares? Formed by frontman Billy Corgan and James Iha, the band included D'arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin in its original incarnation. Of course, I had to consider massive commercial accomplishment, so the Pumpkins are here for the same reason Survivor was. Click here for Part Seven in this series, Rock in the 80s. Suffice it to say here that from those earliest post-Uncle Tupelo gigs on stage at Lounge Ax, the legendary club that Tweedys wife Sue Miller ran with Julia Adams, to the festival-headlining present, the group never has stopped evolving or holding a well-deserved spot among Chicagos greatest. The Best 90s Music: 200+ Songs From Alternative, Hip-Hop, And More. Watch the latest episode of Pitchfork.tv's new series "Yearbook," which chronicles important years in Chicago music history. We came back to the city after college and started playing again. Wed do that with Triple Fast. In my other role as an assistant professor at Columbia College Chicago, I was asked in the fall of 2015 to develop one of several Big Chicago classes intended to introduce first-semester students to the rich and diverse culture of Chicago.