Who Was the Quintessential 1997/98 band?
It’s not unusual for me to get musically stuck somewhere in my own past. I turned 15 in 1997 and am fascinated with the comet’s tail of alt rock that was the 97/98 time frame: the diffuse remnant of the core event that was the Nirvana alt rock phenomenon.
It can be difficult to really pin down one band to represent this time. Partially because it was so brief. I have learned that a lot of people who weren’t really there for it, say, the elementary and middle school kids of the time, tend to lump it in with the Aggro/Nu Metal wave of 98/99. But if you were between fifteen and seventeen and really absorbing the alt rock that was happening at both moments you know they are separate and distinct.
Fuel, Our Lady Peace, Ben Folds Five, Marcy Playground, and Semisonic are not to be mixed with (nor mistaken for) Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, Godsmack, or Korn.
That roughly 18 month period from Jauary 1997 to Summer 1998 was characterized by big production and a sense of striving drama. Its spiritual parentage was Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins and Throwing Copper by Live. Those two albums spawned enormous hit after enormous hit for nearly two years and really set the tone for what got recorded, released, and advertised in my early high school years.
I have realized though, among the time’s crop of albums from established artists (Bush, Green Day, Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins etc) and the new artists previously mentioned (plus others like Harvey Danger and Eve 6) one band in particular lingers as emblematic of that exact moment.
Our Lady Peace released their big hits at the start of this time frame and became ubiquitous. Plus, their sound could not have arrived and succeeded to this level before. They had more production sheen and self conscious drama than was cool in the first and second phases of alt rock. It took the successes of an album like Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness and a band like Live to pave the way for this quintessential ‘97-‘98 band. And then they really didn’t have a place after the rise of the ‘Break Stuff’ contingent in late 1998 into ’99. Thus they remain pinned in that liminal phase where my friends and I were listening most closely.
Here’s a Spotify playlist that seeks to capture the moment I am talking about.