The month alternative rock took over in 1983
Alternative rock didn’t exist in 1983. The name didn’t mean anything because, up until that point, there wasn’t very much to be an “alternative” to. There was underground rock, college rock, and outsider music, but rock and roll was still very much a mainstream entity in the early 1980s. Joan Jett was even singing about how much she loved rock and roll with the number one song in America. But April of 1983 was a sea change: alternative rock was about to come into its own.
That month, albums by Bad Brains, The B-52s, Pulp, Sparks, Minor Threat and Madness all changed the way American audiences saw guitar-based music. But there were three albums that put alternative rock squarely on the map, and two of them happened to come out a day apart. In one week, you could have picked up both R.E.M.’s Murmur and Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut. In fact, while you were there, you could also get David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Two weeks later, another meteoric addition to the alt-rock canon was released: The Replacements’ Hootenanny.
R.E.M. had only been an extant band for less than three years when they entered Reflection Studios to record their debut album. Pairing up with producers Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, the latter of whom helped produce their debut EP Chronic Town a year before, the four members of R.E.M. set about putting all their best original compositions to tape. With little in the way of overdubs and no synthesisers, R.E.M. aimed for a more immediate and timeless quality to the recordings.
“They were really committed to that ethos, too,” Easter later told MusicRadar. “They felt like there was a moral quality to getting your shit together fast. I mean they weren’t slapdash about it; they were picky, but they weren’t neurotic at all. They were excited about their band. It was glorious. I think they rehearsed a lot just because they liked to play together. Everyone in the band was kind of a one-take-wonder.”
Unless you were a devotee of I.R.S. Records, the legendary new wave/alt-rock label founded by Miles Copeland III, or had scoured small rock clubs along the eastern seaboard, there was a very slim chance that you would have heard of R.E.M. in 1983. But after Murmur was named ‘Album of the Year’ by Rolling Stone, the band received a major boost in visibility. The album landed inside the top 40 on the American album charts, and eventually, Murmur would be certified gold. It was a ways away from R.E.M.’s future multi-platinum albums, but it was a start.
If R.E.M. were one of America’s best-kept secrets, the Violent Femmes were one of the country’s worst-known secrets. Whereas R.E.M. was able to flourish in the artistic college town of Athens, Georgia, the Violent Femmes were struggling to make any kind of noise in their hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You’d have a better chance of seeing the band play on street corners than in clubs. In fact, that’s exactly where the Violent Femmes got their big break: playing on the street.
In the summer of 1981, the trio were busking outside of the Oriental Theatre before a concert by The Pretenders. Guitarist James Honeyman-Scott was impressed by the band, and they were invited to play a short acoustic set at that night’s show. From there, the Femmes had an in. More club dates followed, and by July 1982, they were ready to enter the studio.
Coming complete with most of the band’s best-loved songs, including ‘Blister in the Sun’, ‘Add it Up’ and ‘Gone Daddy Gone’, Violent Femmes wasn’t an immediate success. In fact, the album wouldn’t even land on the Billboard 200 until nearly a full decade after its initial release. By that point, the album had already sold in excess of 500,000 copies. Not bad for a trio of folk punks who were literally walking the streets a few years prior.
While R.E.M. and Violent Femmes knew their established sonic signatures from the very beginning, The Replacements weren’t quite as ready out of the gate. Initially one of the many hardcore punk bands to emerge out of the Twin Cities in the early 1980s, The ‘Mats were as notorious as any band could be. Drunken shenanigans, sloppy shows, and general debauchery seemed to follow them everywhere. Their bass player was still a teenager. If any band was doomed to fail, it was The Replacements.
Perhaps in spite of themselves, The Replacements got themselves together in 1983. Paul Westerberg began tip-toeing around his songwriting talents, Bob Stinson refined his razor-sharp lead guitar, and the rhythm section of Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars began to gel. Hootenanny, somewhat paradoxically, found The Replacements going all over the map just as they were focusing in.
While the band was still ripping off other acts (in this case, parodying The Beatles on ‘Mr Whirly’), tracks like ‘Color Me Impressed’ and ‘Within Your Reach’ showed off a more refined version of The Replacements. Of course, a “refined” version of the band was still raucous, snotty, and sophomoric, but even The Replacements themselves would soon begin to tire of the breakneck tempos and immature lyrics. By the following year’s Let It Be, the group would finally shed their anonymous punk guise for something genuinely unique and exciting, but those elements could easily be felt (or at least guessed at) on Hootenanny.
If you were an especially keen college rock fan, there’s a chance that you could have pulled three of the most foundational alt-rock albums of all time off the shelf within a three-week span. Of course, R.E.M. never coordinated with the Violent Femmes or The Replacements. All three occupied unique spaces in the rock world, but all three would be important evolutionary figures when it came to forming the identity and legacy of alternative rock in America.
