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40-606: The first issue of Alternative Press was distributed at concerts in Cleveland, Ohio beginning in June 1985 by AP' s founder, Mike Shea to advocate for bands playing underground music . The name of the magazine, Alternative Press , was not a reference to the alternative rock genre, but referred to this fanzine being an alternative to the local press. Shea began working on his first issue in his mother's house in Aurora, Ohio . Shea and

80-460: A dialectical approach to such political stances by avant-garde artists and the avant-garde genre of art. Sociologically, as a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists, writers, architects, et al. produce artefacts — works of art, books, buildings — that intellectually and ideologically oppose the conformist value system of mainstream society. In the essay " Avant-Garde and Kitsch " (1939), Clement Greenberg said that

120-415: A devoted following over the years (most notably for bands such as Kino ). However, most underground music is readily accessible, despite most performances being located in unmarked, industrial venues. Avant-garde In the arts and literature , the term avant-garde (from French meaning ' advance guard ' or ' vanguard ' ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art , and

160-429: A friend, Jimmy Kosicki, targeted the Cleveland neighborhood of Coventry. Financial problems plagued AP in its early years, and by the end of 1986, publication had paused due to its financial problems, only resuming until the spring of 1988. With the growth of alternative rock in the early 1990s, its circulation began to increase. Notable AP covers included bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Soundgarden . By 1994,

200-585: A multitude of bands that kept heavy metal music alive and where it spread in the underground scene during the period of the mid 70's to the early 80's. Some underground styles eventually became mainstream, commercialized pop styles, such as the underground hip hop style of the early 1980s. In the 2000s, the increasing availability of the Internet and digital music technologies has made underground music easier to distribute using streaming audio and podcasts. Some experts in cultural studies now argue that "there

240-549: A post-modern time when the modernist ways of thought and action and the production of art have become redundant in a capitalist economy. Parting from the claims of Greenberg in the late 1930s and the insights of Poggioli in the early 1960s, in The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks (1983), the critic Harold Rosenberg said that since the middle of the 1960s the politically progressive avant-garde ceased being adversaries to artistic commercialism and

280-414: Is an example of what was an important New York City underground music venue in the 1960s and 1970s. CBGB was another famous New York City underground music venue claiming to be "Home of Underground Rock since 1973". There are examples of underground music that are particularly difficult to encounter, such as the underground rock scenes in the pre- Mikhail Gorbachev Soviet Union , which have amassed

320-525: Is another definition of "Avant-gardism" that distinguishes it from "modernism": Peter Bürger, for example, says avant-gardism rejects the "institution of art" and challenges social and artistic values, and so necessarily involves political, social, and cultural factors. According to the composer and musicologist Larry Sitsky , modernist composers from the early 20th century who do not qualify as avant-gardists include Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky; later modernist composers who do not fall into

360-638: Is facilitated by mechanically produced art-products of mediocre quality displacing art of quality workmanship; thus, the profitability of art-as-commodity determines its artistic value. In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord said that the financial, commercial, and economic co-optation of the avant-garde into a commodity produced by neoliberal capitalism makes doubtful that avant-garde artists will remain culturally and intellectually relevant to their societies for preferring profit to cultural change and political progress. In The Theory-Death of

400-539: Is free media", because by working "independently, you can say anything in your music" and be free of corporate censorship . The genre of post-punk is often considered a "catchall category for underground, indie , or lo-fi guitar rock" bands which "initially avoided major record labels in the pursuit of artistic freedom, and out of an 'us against them' stance towards the corporate rock world", spreading "west over college station airwaves, small clubs, fanzines , and independent record stores." Underground music of this type

440-597: Is no underground" because the Internet has made what was underground music accessible to everyone at the click of a mouse. A current example of an underground internet music genre is Vaporwave . One expert, Martin Raymond, of London-based company The Future Laboratory, commented in an article in The Independent , saying trends in music, art, and politics are: ... now transmitted laterally and collaboratively via

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480-546: Is not reducible to a kitsch style or reactionary orientation, but can instead be used to refer to artists who engage with the legacy of the avant-garde while maintaining an awareness that doing so is in some sense anachronistic. The critic Charles Altieri argues that avant-garde and arrière-garde are interdependent: "where there is an avant-garde, there must be an arrière-garde ." Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term

520-517: Is often promoted through word-of-mouth or by community radio DJs. In the early underground scenes, such as the Grateful Dead jam band fan scenes or the 1970s punk scenes, crude home-made tapes were traded (in the case of Deadheads ) or sold from the stage or from the trunk of a car (in the punk scene). In the 2000s, underground music became easier to distribute, using streaming audio and podcasts . The NWOBHM movement emerged which created

560-615: Is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. By this definition, some avant-garde composers of the 20th century include Arnold Schoenberg , Richard Strauss (in his earliest work), Charles Ives , Igor Stravinsky , Anton Webern , Edgard Varèse , Alban Berg , George Antheil (in his earliest works only), Henry Cowell (in his earliest works), Harry Partch , John Cage , Iannis Xenakis , Morton Feldman , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Pauline Oliveros , Philip Glass , Meredith Monk , Laurie Anderson , and Diamanda Galás . There

600-520: The Warped Tour . At the time of its 20th anniversary in 2005, AP had grown to an average size of 112 pages per issue, eventually averaging between 198 and 220+ pages a month. AP sponsored a radio show which aired on XM Radio , a podcast featuring in-depth discussions on various topics with people such as Fall Out Boy 's Pete Wentz and Kevin Lyman , and a compilation CD. Nearing the end of

640-428: The artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus,

680-428: The extreme metal is considered underground music for its extreme nature. Gothic and industrial music are two other types of underground music originating in the late 1970s and mid-1990s with gothic rock centering around vampires , black magic and the occult and industrial music using primarily computer generated sounds and hard driving beats. In a CounterPunch article, Twiin argues that "Underground music

720-458: The moral obligation of artists to "serve as [the] avant-garde" of the people, because "the power of the arts is, indeed, the most immediate and fastest way" to realise social, political, and economic reforms. In the realm of culture, the artistic experiments of the avant-garde push the aesthetic boundaries of societal norms , such as the disruptions of modernism in poetry, fiction, and drama, painting, music, and architecture, that occurred in

760-626: The psychedelic music movement of the mid-1960s, but the term has in more recent decades come to be defined by any musicians who tend to avoid the trappings of the mainstream commercial music industry . Frank Zappa attempted to define "underground" by noting that the "mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground." In the 1960s, the term "underground" was associated with hippie counterculture and psychedelic drugs , and applied to journalism and film as well as music, as they sought to communicate psychedelic experiences and free love ideals. The Fugs have been described as "arguably

800-415: The 2000s AP would venturing into hosting tours with AP Tours, documenting musicians day-by-day on the publications YouTube channel, and working with large scale music events. In the fall of 2020, Alternative Press was sold to MDDN, owned by Good Charlotte members Benji and Joel Madden . In the 2020s, AP 's digital and print content has shifted toward highlighting rising artists and introducing them to

840-533: The Avant-Garde ( Theorie der Avantgarde , 1974), the literary critic Peter Bürger looks at The Establishment 's embrace of socially critical works of art as capitalist co-optation of the artists and the genre of avant-garde art, because "art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work [of art]". In Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (2000), Benjamin H. D. Buchloh argues for

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880-697: The Avant-Garde (1991), Paul Mann said that the avant-garde are economically integral to the contemporary institutions of the Establishment, specifically as part of the culture industry . Noting the conceptual shift, theoreticians, such as Matei Calinescu , in Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987), and Hans Bertens in The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (1995), said that Western culture entered

920-463: The army. In 19th-century French politics, the term avant-garde (vanguard) identified Left-wing political reformists who agitated for radical political change in French society. In the mid-19th century, as a cultural term, avant-garde identified a genre of art that advocated art-as-politics, art as an aesthetic and political means for realising social change in a society. Since the 20th century,

960-484: The art term avant-garde identifies a stratum of the Intelligentsia that comprises novelists and writers, artists and architects et al. whose creative perspectives, ideas, and experimental artworks challenge the cultural values of contemporary bourgeois society . In the U.S. of the 1960s, the post–WWII changes to American culture and society allowed avant-garde artists to produce works of art that addressed

1000-458: The artistic vanguard oppose high culture and reject the artifice of mass culture , because the avant-garde functionally oppose the dumbing down of society — be it with low culture or with high culture . That in a capitalist society each medium of mass communication is a factory producing artworks, and is not a legitimate artistic medium; therefore, the products of mass culture are kitsch , simulations and simulacra of Art. Walter Benjamin in

1040-593: The artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times. As a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825), Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues 's political usage of vanguard identified

1080-416: The category of avant-gardists include Elliott Carter , Milton Babbitt , György Ligeti , Witold Lutosławski , and Luciano Berio , since "their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience." The 1960s saw a wave of free and avant-garde music in jazz genre, embodied by artists such as Ornette Coleman , Sun Ra , Albert Ayler , Archie Shepp , John Coltrane and Miles Davis . In

1120-514: The essay " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction " (1939) and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) said that the artifice of mass culture voids the artistic value (the aura ) of a work of art. That the capitalist culture industry (publishing and music, radio and cinema, etc.) continually produces artificial culture for mass consumption, which

1160-430: The first underground rock group of all time". The Velvet Underground and Mothers of Invention later followed suit and are also regarded as the earliest underground rock groups. In modern popular music, the term "underground" refers to performers or bands ranging from artists that do DIY guerrilla concerts and self-recorded shows to those that are signed to small independent labels . In some musical styles,

1200-436: The hosts were Alex Gaskarth and Jack Barakat of All Time Low . In 2016, the show was hosted by Andy Biersack of Black Veil Brides . As of 2022, another event has not been announced. Underground music Underground music is music with practices perceived as outside, or somehow opposed to, mainstream popular music culture. Underground styles lack the commercial success of popular music movements, and may involve

1240-403: The internet. You once had a series of gatekeepers in the adoption of a trend: the innovator, the early adopter, the late adopter, the early mainstream, the late mainstream, and finally the conservative. But now it goes straight from the innovator to the mainstream. A music underground can also refer to the culture of underground music in a city and its accompanying performance venues. The Kitchen

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1280-559: The late 19th and in the early 20th centuries. In art history the socio-cultural functions of avant-garde art trace from Dada (1915–1920s) through the Situationist International (1957–1972) to the postmodernism of the American Language poets (1960s–1970s). The French military term avant-garde (advanced guard) identified a reconnaissance unit who scouted the terrain ahead of the main force of

1320-431: The magazine was doing cover stories on Beastie Boys , Henry Rollins and Love and Rockets . By the early 2000s, after resisting attempts to reform and design the so called "fanzine," Shea and Bobby Crist breathed new life into the publication and sought new avenues for its survival, revamping the magazine and marketing it in many venues. They shifted the focus of Alternative Press to the newer punk music associated with

1360-755: The magazine's audience. Cover stars include artists such as Waterparks , Rina Sawayama , Chase Atlantic , Willow Smith and more. The editorial shift has expanded their coverage to broader avenues that touched on lifestyle, culture, and style conversations within the alternative sphere. By 2022, the brand had formed new franchises to symbolise the shift in direction, such as Gen AP, and AP&R. In January 2022, Alternative Press closed its offices in Cleveland , Ohio and relocated to Burbank , California. 2022 saw Avril Lavigne debut on their March Issue, and other notable cover stars that year included Demi Lovato , Louis Tomlinson , Spiritbox , and Arctic Monkeys . Upon

1400-646: The matters of the day, usually in political and sociologic opposition to the cultural conformity inherent to popular culture and to consumerism as a way of life and as a worldview . In The Theory of the Avant-Garde ( Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia , 1962), the academic Renato Poggioli provides an early analysis of the avant-garde as art and as artistic movement. Surveying the historical and social, psychological and philosophical aspects of artistic vanguardism, Poggioli's examples of avant-garde art, poetry, and music, show that avant-garde artists share some values and ideals as contemporary bohemians . In Theory of

1440-535: The mediocrity of mass culture , which political disconnection transformed being an artist into "a profession, one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing [the profession of being an artist]." Avant-garde is frequently defined in contrast to arrière-garde , which in its original military sense refers to a rearguard force that protects the advance-guard. The term was less frequently used than "avant-garde" in 20th-century art criticism. The art historians Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris argue that arrière-garde

1480-465: The release of their Demi Lovato cover, the print publication announced it would be moving to quarterly releases, as opposed to its monthly roll-out. The Alternative Press Music Awards was an annual music awards show in the United States, founded by the music magazine Alternative Press . The inaugural awards show in 2014 was hosted by Mark Hoppus , bassist and vocalist of Blink-182 . In 2015,

1520-593: The rock music of the 1970s, the "art" descriptor was generally understood to mean "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive". Post-punk artists from the late 1970s rejected traditional rock sensibilities in favor of an avant-garde aesthetic. Whereas the avant-garde has a significant history in 20th-century music, it is more pronounced in theatre and performance art, and often in conjunction with music and sound design innovations, as well as developments in visual media design. There are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to

1560-471: The term "underground" is used to assert that the content of the music is illegal or controversial, as in the case of early 1990s death metal bands in the US such as Cannibal Corpse for their gory cover art and lyrical themes. Black metal is also an underground form of music and its Norwegian scene is notorious for its association with church burnings , the occult , murders and Anti-Christian views . All of

1600-536: The use of avant-garde or abrasive approaches. Underground music may be perceived as expressing sincerity and creative freedom in opposition to those practices deemed formulaic or market-driven. Notions of individuality and non-conformity are also commonly deployed. The term has been applied to artists in styles such as psychedelia , punk , alternative rock , electronica , industrial music , and wider strains of experimental music . The term "underground music" has been applied to various artistic movements, for instance

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