The idiosyncratic but rewarding Barbara Manning is a little too spiky and odd to fit comfortably in the Lilith Fair crowd, but her best work outshines those of her bigger-selling peers. Manning's artistic restlessness and her tendency to jump in and out of bands and recording situations makes it difficult to follow her career -- her discography... [+] Read More

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In local corner store while purchasing a sixer.
“I moved to San Francisco and into the Mission district in 1997. There is an agreeably artistic quality here for sure. Living in a **** apartment with bum roommates, people crashed everywhere, mice running around digging in bags of chips, garbage, rotting food, beer cans, chew mold, and... [+] Read More

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San Francisco's Donner Party released one self-titled album in 1987 before they were brought to the attention of then-Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery, who signed them to his Pitch a Tent label for their second and final recording in 1988. The power trio played shrewd pop executed naïvely, mainly because singer Sam Coomes delivered his... [+] Read More

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Fetchin Bones missed the boat. Grungy years before grunge became an international phenomenon, Fetchin Bones wrote the blueprint for loud, metal-fueled, and female-led alternative groups like L7 and Hole to eventually reconstruct and take to the masses. Once college-radio all-stars, Fetchin Bones became forgotten left-of-the-dial pioneers,... [+] Read More

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Few of punk rock's founding fathers could have anticipated the extreme to which Half Japanese took the music's do-it-yourself ethos. Founded by brothers Jad and David Fair, Half Japanese was quite probably the most amateurish rock band to make a record since the Shaggs, all but ignoring musical basics like chords, rhythms, and melody. However,... [+] Read More

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Evoking the nightmare world of childhood trauma with insight, humor and surprising heart, the duo of ex-Landlords members Mr. Anus (guitarist Charlie Kramer) and Mr. Horribly-Charred Infant (vocalist John Beers) teamed as the Happy Flowers in their native Charlottesville, Virginia in 1983. They debuted the following summer with a pair of EPs,... [+] Read More

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After goth pioneers the Birthday Party called it quits in 1983, singer/songwriter Nick Cave assembled the Bad Seeds, a post-punk supergroup featuring former Birthday Party guitarist Mick Harvey on drums, ex-Magazine bassist Barry Adamson, and Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist Blixa Bargeld. With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his... [+] Read More

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One of the most popular bands in the alternative country movement's rock & roll wing, Old 97's hailed from Dallas and drew their inspiration from classic country, bar band rock, the raw sound of early punk, and -- especially on their later records -- the tight songcraft of power pop.

The band was formed in 1993 by singer/guitarist... [+] Read More

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R.E.M. mark the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock. When their first single, "Radio Free Europe," was released in 1981, it sparked a back-to-the-garage movement in the American underground. While there were a number of hardcore and punk bands in the U.S. during the early '80s, R.E.M. brought guitar pop back into the underground... [+] Read More

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Even within the eclectic world of alternative rock, few bands were so brave, so frequently brilliant, and so deliciously weird as the Flaming Lips. From their beginnings as Oklahoma weirdos to their pop culture breakthrough in the mid-'90s to their status as one of the most respected groups of the 2000s, the Lips have ridden one of the more... [+] Read More

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A deluge of critical hype -- and a cool name -- couldn't convince music fans that the Jack Rubies were doing anything original. Formed in London, England, in 1987, the Jack Rubies consisted of vocalist Ian Wright, guitarist Stephen D. Ineson, bassist Steve Brockway, and percussionist Lawrence Giltnane. Wright and Ineson were also the group's... [+] Read More

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Combining a knack for infectious melodies with a quirky, bizarre sense of humor and a vaguely avant-garde aesthetic borrowed from the New York post-punk underground, They Might Be Giants became one of the most unlikely alternative success stories of the late '80s and early '90s. Musically, the duo of John Flansburgh and John Linnell borrowed... [+] Read More

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The textbook American cult band of the 1980s, the Violent Femmes captured the essence of teen angst with remarkable precision; raw and jittery, the trio's music found little commercial success but nonetheless emerged as the soundtrack for the lives of troubled adolescents the world over. The group formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the early... [+] Read More

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Ween was the ultimate cosmic goof of the alternative rock era, a prodigiously talented and deliriously odd duo whose work traveled far beyond the constraints of parody and novelty into the heart of surrealist ecstasy. Despite a mastery for seemingly every mutation of the musical spectrum, the group refused to play it straight; in essence, Ween... [+] Read More

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Yo La Tengo was in many respects the quintessential critics' band: in addition to its adventurous eclecticism, defiant independence, and restless creative ambition -- three qualities that virtually guarantee music press acclaim -- the group's frontman, Ira Kaplan, even tenured as a rock scribe prior to finding success as a performer. So... [+] Read More

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