Alternative Music Resources

	Books
	Non-Book Resources
	Internet Sources
	Composers & Performers

Alternative music encompasses a wide variety of styles, political thought and purposes and has been recognized as a genre of music since the 1980's. As defined by the 2001 edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, alternative music is 'Music that may be defined in opposition to other musics'. Some groups originally identified as alternative have moved into the current popular music mainstream, so whether they can still be identified as alternative is up to the performer and the listener. Some of the better known styles are punk, grunge, riot grrrl, indie (independent), emo, and post-rock.

Books

Due to the shifting nature and definition of alternative music, most materials in book format will be chapters within a larger work or studies on smaller movements (e.g., grunge) or related social movements (feminism) as there hasn't been a large body of scholarly study published on the whole. Here are some titles to explore:

American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV
4th Floor Stacks ML3477 .S73 2003

New Grove Dictionary of American Music
Reference ML101 .U6 N48

Rockin' Out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock
4th Floor Stacks ML3918 .R63 S35 2002

Non-Book Resources

Videos and sound recordings may be included as part of your research. Our collection can be keyword searched, and then limited to type of media (video or music recording). If you search under GENRE/FORM for music, you will note two different listings for 'music video recordings' and 'music videos'. Music videos are normally performances of music while the video recordings can be recorded interviews or instruction on music. The world of alternative music is moving so quickly that the subject heading labels created by the Library of Congress (the classification system used by most academic libraries) can't keep up. The most successful searches will be for particular performers or groups.

Journals devoted specifically to alternative music are mostly found on the Internet and consist of album and performance reviews, rarely presented in the objective and scholarly sense that you will need for a research paper. Some full-text sources available to CSUSM users are:

Billboard (available through Academic Search Elite, although articles are generally not scholarly)

Popular Music (in Periodicals 1991-on, or online 2000-on through CSUSM catalog)

Popular Music & Society (available through Academic Search Premier for materials older than 6 months, paper subscription for current articles will begin in 2004)

Postmodern Culture (available through Project Muse)

Rolling Stone (Recommend using the hard copy in Periodicals 1967-on to get the images as well as text. Online material older than most recent 4 weeks is available through Academic Search Premier)

Internet Sources

Alternate Music Press
Online journal for the genre, with lots of opinion-based text, but offers good resource lists to the independent labels, book and CD reviews and some interviews with artists. Some copyright-compliant downloads are offered.

Alternativ Rock
From DMOZ, the Open Directory Project, a short list of sites for bands and artists, genres, e-zines and more.

BBC Radio 1-Alternative
Alternative music, recorded interviews, charts and more about the British indie scene.

Grammy Awards: Alternative Music Album
While this site is not the official Grammy site, the authors have listed each year's winning album (starting with 1991) with links to brief information about the group/artist and a timeline of their work.

Composers & Performers

Look for the musicians home page--but be sure it is the authorized site and not one put up by a fan. Frequently, the home page will be hosted by the record label of the artist.

Artists and Bands
Provided by About.com, this site provides links to a variety of alternate performers' sites, but since the page is viewed within the About.com frame, it is difficult to tell where you are or get the accurate citation information for your paper. 

Individual Musicians (All Genres) and Popular Groups
Assembled by Indiana University, this covers a broad range of musical artists with alternative artists mixed in with pop and classical.

List of Alternative Music Artists
Provided by Wikipedia, the most useful part of the entry on alternative music is this list of artists, leading to entries discussing the group's history, influences and recordings.