Underground Music

Back in the early 90s when Guns n Roses were my favourite band I told a fellow Guns n Roses fan who was a few years older than me that I too was a Guns n Roses fan. This prompted him to ask me if I liked any of the other bands he listed. The first band he said was Metallica, but after that my response to every band he listed was "never heard of them".

This was perhaps my first realisation that listening to bands nobody else has heard of is cool. Around this time my school mates were also getting into Guns n Roses and other Rock/Metal bands that I was being introduced to. A few months later I had another conversation with the fellow Guns n Roses fan and once again he started listing off other bands he liked asking whether I liked them. This time I'd heard of pretty much all of them. I felt like I was now a man in the know.

However one day I went into WH Smith and started to read the latest British Hit Singles book which went up to 1992 (I owned the one which went up to 1990). I thought I'd look at the bands who were now in my music collection and to my horror found that pretty much all of them had Top 40 hits to their name. The only exceptions as I recall were Pantera who had just a number 73 single at the time and Sepultura who hadn't had any, but they would both have Top 40 hits beyond 1992. It seemed this so called underground music I was listening to wasn't very underground at all.

When I got into Rave it definitely seemed more underground. Although you got the odd compilation in Our Price or HMV, the main way to acquire music was to send a cheque to the promoter to buy the latest tapepack. The DJs were just names on tapes, I didn't know anything about them apart from the music. Even the music was a bit of an unknown entity at times as the tapepacks had no track listings. Virtually none of it reached the Top 40 either and most people I knew hadn't heard any of the people I listened to.

Then one day in 1998 I was at the counter in Our Price where they had a list of the Top 75 and on there I saw a new entry from Force & Styles with "Heart of Gold" at number 55. I wasn't happy seeing a tune only me and my fellow ravers knew in the charts.

The reality is though it wasn't as obscure as I'd like to have thought. Several of the Happy Hardcore DJs/Producers have had some chart success at some point. Slipmatt had been in SL2, Seduction had a couple of Top 40 hits in 1992, Eruption was in Ruff Dirverz, Ham had a Top 40 hit as part of Powerhouse, Luna C and Bang! were part of the Smart E's, Scott Brown was part of Q-Tex. Beyond the 90s, UK Garage act Trick or Treat were Happy Hardcore DJs SY and Unknown, Styles and Breeze had Top 40 hits.

Also in 1998 I picked up a flyer for a Hysteria event which had Underground Garage in the 2nd room. The DJs included EZ who is perhaps the best known UK Garage DJ ever and Pied Piper who went on to have a number one single in 2001. Maybe it was underground then, but by 2000 most Underground Garage had become commercial.

On the flip side I used to detest the likes of Pete Tong and Judge Jules back in the 90s for being so commercial with their Radio 1 shows. However when I got over it and started listening to their shows I found a lot of the music they'd play was music I'd never heard before so I guess on that basis it was just as underground as the Helter Skelter tapes I listened to. Some of it would end up in the charts, some of it wouldn't.

I've since come across several people who have the attitude of only listening to underground music and hating everything commercial. I briefly knew a big Metal fan who absolutely hated Limp Bizkit, Slipknot and Papa Roach for being so commercial, calling them "Wannabe Goths". At the same time she always (and I mean always) wore a Korn top and her favourite band was Rammstein, both of whom have had Top 40 hits. In fact of all of those bands Korn are the ones with the most Top 40s.

Another person I once knew was a Hip Hop fan, but not any of the Hip Hop acts who got into the Top 40. His favourite act was the Wu Tang Clan who made the Top 40 in 1998 collaborating with Texas.

Then you have the bands themselves who claim to be underground despite the fact most people have heard of them. For example you have NOFX who wanted MTV to stop showing their videos because being on MTV isn't cool. Bearing in mind this was pre YouTube days my question to that would be why make music videos in the first place if you don't want music channels to show them?

Overall though the question is what exactly is underground music? is there a limit to the number of units you sell? or number of people to play to? or number of people who have heard of you?

Maybe it's a question of whether you cater to fans of your genre or not. As a Dance Music fan I like Mylo and can see how even the more underground crowd could like him. Then you have Cascada who I think are rubbish and can't imagine too many Dance Music fans liking them either. Those into completely different genres may not see the distinction, in the same way I never understood why so many Indie Music fans hated the Stereophonics when to me they sounded just like the bands they listened to.

I do still like the thought of listening to someone I discovered that nobody else has heard of, but the end of the day music is music, you like what you like, a given tune will be the same if only a handful of people have heard it as it would be if the whole world has heard it.