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While the term "alternative" has been retroactively applied to a huge swath of artists stretching back to the Velvet Underground and others in the 1960s, most people became aware of the term in the early '90s, when it was plucked out of the underground and began to receive a lot of mainstream media coverage. From the bands of Seattle to such popular tours as Lollapalooza and HORDE, alternative in the literal sense began to have a shorter and shorter shelf-life, as yesterday's alternative to the mainstream would become tomorrow's mainstream itself.

The seeds for the '90s alternative explosion were sown in the '80s, when the music was better known as "college rock," named for the demographic to which it initially appealed. Some of these bands, such as REM, U2, and Talking Heads, crossed over into the mainstream, while others, like The Replacements, The Pixies, The Minutemen, and Husker Du, were known more for their influence on later bands than for being very popular during their lifespan.

In the '90s, enough fans from the '80s had grown up and started their own bands, record labels, and other creative small businesses to warrant serious attention to the changes that were taking place. Add to this a rock audience that was beginning to grow weary of hair band excess and the plasticity of Phil Collins style over-production, that was eager for what they perceived as more "honest" music, and one can see the mainstream success of alternative taking shape.

The first branch of alternative music to really break into the public consciousness was that of the bands from the Seattle, WA, scene, popularly labeled "grunge," who rose from independent record labels like Sub Pop and an overall do-it-yourself culture to become MTV staples, stadium touring juggernauts, and questions on Jeopardy! The commercial success of such bands as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains brought every major label A&R representative up to the great northwest for a long weekend to find the next breakthrough success.

Running concurrent to this development were many local music scenes throughout the country that began to gain attention due to the growing emphasis on community and artistic diversity within the alternative movement. The first Lollapalooza tour laid the groundwork for many of the conventions that would come after, uniting such disparate bands as organizer Perry Farrell's Jane's Addiction, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails, and Ice T. In later years, the tour

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