For some strange reason, I’ve been thinking about bandwagon jumpers a lot this month. “Bandwagon” is usually used as a derogatory term for sports fans who don’t show up for what they profess to be their “favorite team” when that team stinks, but come dressed head to toe in team colors during a deep playoff run (see Tampa Bay Lightning fans), or those who seem to have a new “favorite team” every couple of years based on who just won a championship (see all of those new Golden State Warriors fans). But there are bandwagon jumpers in popular culture too. People who are continually shifting their personas to match what is hot today.
When I was in my teens and early 20’s, I was a big fan of what was then called “College Rock” or “Underground Music”. I’ve mentioned before relying on small record shops like the Exclusive Company or Imports Plus to find new albums from the bands I liked. This didn’t make me particularly popular in the general student body of Bay Port High School (the old one, not the Taj Mahal of Wisconsin Schools where the kids go now). I never had a mullet, I didn’t wear acid-washed torn up jeans, and I didn’t like “Hair Metal”. And I was fine with that, because I had a small group of friends that shared the same interests and we didn’t feel like being fake and pretending to really be into something that we were not.
But in late 1991, everything changed, and what my friends and I were into suddenly became the most popular thing in the country. After Nirvana started getting MTV airplay for its “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, what used to be our small scene became everybody’s scene–and it was rebranded as “Alternative”. All of a sudden the mullets were far less common–replaced by what can be best described as “bed hair”. Bands we loved for decades that everyone turned their noses up at before were all over the radio and MTV. There were females actually showing up at concerts, and getting into the mosh pits or stage diving.
Being “Alternative” was red hot. One of the more popular shirts of the time simply had LOSER on it. Converse Chuck Taylors were everywhere (and suddenly more expensive too). All the fashion stores couldn’t stock enough flannel and Doc Marten boots. Actresses stopped using entire bottles of hairspray to pump up their fake blonde hair and started wearing it long and coloring it dark. Movies were being made about the “Seattle music scene”. Every movie soundtrack had to have a bunch of grunge or ska punk in it. TV shows were filled with angsty teenagers and troubled young adults angry at the world and seeking to “just fit in”. Advertisers even used the term “Alternative” as a marketing position–all because they knew that is what the kids thought was hot.
And so many of these new “converts” swore they loved ” being Alternative” because it made them feel “authentic”. You would see cars covered in bumper stickers promoting the Sub Pop record label, or bands like NOFX, or clever ones like “Your Favorite Band Sucks”, and “Skating is Not a Crime”.
My friends and I just looked at each other and asked “what are all of these people doing here now?” Sure, we appreciate you thinking that what we are into is cool and everything, but don’t try to pretend like this has been “your thing” forever–and that even though you were all about what was cool last year, deep down you “knew that wasn’t the real you”.
Of course, not everyone changed. My grandparents in their 70’s at the time didn’t start railing against the establishment. My parents in their 40’s then didn’t start wearing grubby clothes and sleeping until noon and moping around complaining about how everything sucked. It was pretty much everyone in my generation loading up on the bandwagon.
And then just as suddenly as everyone decided they were going to be “Alternative”, nearly all of them moved on. Many went to the Hip Hop lifestyle–and the flannels were replaced by baggy pants, Nike basketball shoes, and splashes of very bright colors. All those bands that had for years been playing the old-time theaters to small groups of hardcore fans–then started playing arenas and stadiums to huge crowds of “new fans”–went back to the old-time theaters, because it was just the old-school fans that were still interested in seeing them. Angsty teens were replaced in cinema and TV by the kids that spoke the “language of the street”. Rappers became movie stars and having a big butt was suddenly the goal of all females. Meanwhile, being “Alternative” went back to being the milieu of the “uncool” again.
And that is the way it will be for generation after generation: looking for the next “thing” to define who they are. I’m not sure why, but there is just something about this month that makes me think of bandwagon jumpers.
