The 1990s saw musical genres collide like never before. Different classifications were often rendered obsolete before they were even fully assimilated by your sub-conscious. Which brings us to this guide, and to what we’re calling ‘college rock’.
For our purposes, we’re talking about the type of rock that never quite makes it onto the UK’s radio stations’ playlists (unless, of course, you’re listening to Bob Harris at midnight); the kind of bands who write solid, rootsy, often acoustic-lead melodic rock (and we’re not talking about the type of melodic rock that’s drenched in wimpy keyboards), but who often have something of an indie vibe or edge to them. These bands also often have the tendency to be a touch on the earnest side. Oh, and they know their way around a ballad or two, too.
We'll use the Goo Goo Dolls to make our point. In the United States, they're absolutely massive. Here are a band who have sold millions and millions of records and are on the covers of magazines; they traverse the country playing to packed out superstadiums. Yet it’s highly likely that if you saw guitarist Johnny Rzeznik in Tesco on your lunch-break you wouldn’t recognise him. Or, if bass player Robby Takac was sitting next to you on the bus, you’d never know.
Ultimately, they’re bands who don’t have an image or a gimmick. They wear blue jeans and T-shirts and look just like your mate or the average Joe Bloke; they rely on the power of their songwriting and performance to get their job done. Switch on the radio in the States (college or otherwise) and you’ll hear them. But it seems that here in the UK we don’t like that ethic very much. Here, if you want radio play you have to have a cool haircut, an X Factor leg up, or have a famous actor, actress or model as your significant other; just writing a great rock song is seldom enough.
The bands collected here are all ones that you are unlikely to hear on the radio in Britain in the near future, but they’re bands who came to our attention in the 90s – and should come to yours too. Of course, we could be wrong, because had I been writing this guide in the mid-80s rather than today, then no doubt REM and probably even U2 would have made the cut, and, god knows, we hear those bands on the radio these days.
So you never know. By paying attention now, it could be that in 10 years time you’ll be able to say that smug and oft-repeated phrase music fans love to say when a band finally makes it big: “Oh yeah, them. I’ve been into them for years.”
Goo Goo Dolls - Dizzy Up The Girl (Warners, 1998)
Live - Throwing Copper (Radioactive, 1994)
Soul Asylum - Grave Dancers Union (Columbia, 1992)
Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mining (Columbia, 1990)
Buffalo Tom - Big Red Letter Day (Beggars Banquet, 1992)
Seven Mary Three - American Standard (Atlantic, 1995)
Matchbox Twenty - Yourself Or Someone Like You (Atlantic, 1996)
Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind (Atlantic, 1997)
Vertical Horizon - Everything You Want (RCA, 1999)
Collective Soul - Disciplined Breakdown (Atlantic, 1997)
