What do you think the "beginning of the end" was for alt rock? I've heard it said that it was Hootie and the Blowfish's album in 1994, which was arguably the first totally corporate alt rock release, though "alt rock" didn't really die until 1998 and continued to be popular to 2002.

Alternative Rock never really died.  It just morphed into a different form.  Emo and Indie Rock are technically "alternative" styles of music.  They're not called Alternative outright, but the influence of 80's Alternative (such as the Smiths) is quite prominent in many of these bands.  Alternative Rock is still alive and well in this incarnation, which is vastly different from it's 90's form.  Of course, it doesn't take much work to figure out that Alternative Rock is still around.  Why do you think they still have radio stations that call themselve "Alternative"?  It's because they changed their emphasis.  Hell, the local Alt Rock station played Hawthorne Heights yesterday.  

Now if you mean Grunge, that's a different story.  Grunge died in 1995 when Post-Grunge effectively took over.  Even then, Post-Grunge was still considered Alternative and played on "Alternative" radio (that's kind of an oxymoron) despite the fact that it was clearly a commercialized form of Grunge with no roots in the Alternative scene at all.

Alternative Rock never really died.  It just morphed into a different form.  Emo and Indie Rock are technically "alternative" styles of music.  They're not called Alternative outright, but the influence of 80's Alternative (such as the Smiths) is quite prominent in many of these bands.  Alternative Rock is still alive and well in this incarnation, which is vastly different from it's 90's form.  Of course, it doesn't take much work to figure out that Alternative Rock is still around.  Why do you think they still have radio stations that call themselve "Alternative"?  It's because they changed their emphasis.  Hell, the local Alt Rock station played Hawthorne Heights yesterday. 

Now if you mean Grunge, that's a different story.  Grunge died in 1995 when Post-Grunge effectively took over.  Even then, Post-Grunge was still considered Alternative and played on "Alternative" radio (that's kind of an oxymoron) despite the fact that it was clearly a commercialized form of Grunge with no roots in the Alternative scene at all.


Si...also, I think that grunge and the older, harder form of alt rock (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.), along with "college rock", that'd been around since the '80s took a nosedive in popularity for the newer '90s hipster sort of alt rock (Guided by Voices, Pavement, Liz Phair), stuff like Weezer and Ben Folds Five in the "nerd rock" category, singer-songwriters, alternative metal and industrial (The Smashing Pumpkins, NIN, Tool), etc. sometime in 1994. Not that the older stuff still didn't have legions of fans and was alive as a subculture of sorts even until 2002 in a big way, and in a smaller way today. But yeah, post-grunge coming out around 1994-1995 was the "end" of grunge.

I would say alt rock died in 1995, and popular music in general c. 1998.

Alt rock really finally had its last year in 1997-1998, even though Beck, The Flaming Lips, and Radiohead survived.

Your definition of 'alt rock' is probably different from the one I'm familiar with, which is anything that is supposed to be 'seperate' from 'pop-music', but since probably the Smashing Pumpkins many mainstream acts have become known as 'Alternative.' Anything from Ben Folds Five and Ben Lee, to college bands could be considered 'alternative' under that definition.