10 ways to get your music on alt-rock radio!

November 12th, 2009 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

radial I’ve been listening to alternative rock stations for over fifteen years now, sometimes a lot more consistently than others. If we’re being honest, I took a ten year break from radio once I started purchasing CDs, and it was only after my own car died and I had to drive my girlfriend’s (which has no CD player) that I came back to the black box.

One thing I’ve noticed is that things aren’t that different from when I was in sixth grade, smuggling my Walkman into class so I could hear a new Smashing Pumpkins song the first time it was played. The top 10 tips for you struggling bands trying to get on Q101… I mean… alt-rock radio are below:

1. Be Kurt Cobain

Unrealistic? Sure. Foolproof? Definitely! These guys play Nirvana like 97.9 plays Led Zeppelin. And it’s not just “Smells Like Teen Spirt,” either; I recently heard their acoustic cover of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World.” Not exactly a deep cut, as it appeared on the band’s “Unplugged in New York” record, but still – the only other band that consistently gets non-singles played on these stations is Pearl Jam.

2. Be an ex-member of Nirvana.

This worked wonders for Dave Grohl; Foo Fighters just released their first greatest hits compilation, although that disc is kind of unnecessary for anybody with access to their local alt-rock station.

3. Take your cues from Pearl Jam’s first two albums..

Don’t try anything new, in other words, because that’s not what radio is all about. Although that wasn’t always the case: Remember that weekend, right before PJ’s Vitalogy came out, when radio stations were giving away free copies (on vinyl, no less) and playing every single track from the record (at the band’s request)? That would never happen now. You can catch “Even Flow” or “Daughter” on an almost daily basis, but don’t expect to hear “The Fixer” or anything else from Pearl Jam’s new record. The venerable tastemakers in their ivory alt-rock towers are only interested in stuff that sounds like OLD Pearl Jam.

4. Be metal, but not TOO metal.

Programmers will allow a little metal now and again, but it’s never fun (like Motley Crue) or intense (like Slayer). It’s always mid-tempo nu-schlock with chunky riffs and a really angry white guy screaming about his indestructability. Or something. (The only real exception to this rule is Metallica; they’ve proved commercially viable enough for so long now that even easy-listening stations won’t hesitate to drop “Enter Sandman” into rotation.)

5. Hang in there!

Although rock radio shamelessly ignores new artists, if you wait around long enough, toiling in mediocrity, you might make it on to a playlist. How else to make sense of airplay for perpetual non-starters like 30 Seconds to Mars? Their music hasn’t approved in any appreciable way, yet their new single gets to rub elbows with alt-rock’s elite.

6. Get pissed.

From Rage Against the Machine to Rise Against, rich guys railing against something, anything, is big business. “Guerilla Radio,” for instance, still gets a ton of spins, usually sandwiched between ads for penis enlargement pills and strip clubs.

7. Write a self-reflexively goofy novelty song.

No joke: I was sitting in traffic the other day and I actually heard “Pepper” by The Butthole Surfers. I couldn’t even drive a car when that song was released, and it was a weak knock off of Beck’s “Loser” then, too. Don’t hold your breath waiting for any rock station to play the Surfers’ truly incendiary ’80s work.

8. Smooth out your kinks.

Punk vets AFI have become a mainstay on mainstream rock radio in the last few years, but do you think they ever got spins when they played fast-paced, horror-influenced pop punk? No. They had to start wearing make-up and imitating the fake grandeur of late period Green Day.

9. Layer some blips and bleeps in there.

The programmers at alt-rock stations hate the sounds that guitars make naturally, so get your “electronica” mojo working and try to get everything sounding like our future dystopia’s national anthem. This is called the Nine Inch Nails Effect, and it fucking works!

10. Keep it boring.

It’s difficult, I know, but you need to maintain the illusion that bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam wrote the Book Of Real Rock ‘n’ Roll. Emulate bands that were famous in the ’90s – don’t worry about what’s happening now, or what might happen in the future. Your real role model should be the band Bush – four guys that never had an original idea but capitalized on radio’s need to embrace what’s already been done. They may have been from across the pond, but that’s a real American success story.