Yesh, I used to like that group, you know before they went mainstream".

"But they've only made one major album."

"Yeah but, you know, it's, like, the attitude. They've totally sold out now that everyone knows about them."

Such is the logic of alternative rock. It goes something like this: A really cool "alternative" band is somehow presumptuous enough to sign a record contract with a major label. Now everyone can buy their tapes. They get some radio play. They make a video. They tour. Bingo. "Mainstream. "Sellout. Q.E.D.

The definition of "alternative" has really been a negative one--not top 40 heavy metal, not popular. Perfect music for the post-yuppie "Not" Generation (a tip of the hat to Wayne and Garth). We define ourselves by what we are not--the products we will not buy for various ethical reasons, the foods we will not eat, and the music we will not listen to. We go looking for the alternative--or at least the lesser evil--in politics (if we vote at all), in the supermarket (unless we're too hip to shop at them) and on the record store shelves.

No problem, except that the music industry (The Establishment ! Aaaarrrgh!) has discovered the "alternative" market and the edges are starting to blur. Nirvana, an alternative band (we thought), has a number one album on the Billboard charts. Record companies have whole divisions devoted to the "alternative" sound. If there was ever a time of a truly "underground" alternative scene, it's long over.

On top of this, we don't anything musically definitive to say about alternative music. It is a garb bag of everything from blissed-out synthetic psychedelia redux to grundge guitar bands and thrash. Truth be told, it's pretty ad hoc. The closest we can get to a description bears a striking resemblance to the Army Crops of Engineers' definition of a wetland: We'll know it when we see it.

The good news is that at least some of this music is innovative, not just a kowtow to the blues progressions of 70s rock nor an insipid imitation of punk. If we are confronted with a smorgasbord of styles, it may be because Rock peaked in the seventies and frayed in the eighties in the face of gum-snapping pop mall music from hell. Rock is resurfacing in the 90s like a groundhog scared of its own shadow, and many musicians claim they'd rather be dead (or unsigned) than be imitators of their predecessors or of each other. So we're left with a load of musicians scrambling desperately not to resemble anything, with mixed results.

From within as well as from without, alternative rock is an interesting jumble or a total mess, depending on your point of view. There is constant infighting among musicians as to who is really alternative and who is merely posing. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, quoted in Rolling Stone, says he feels the "duty to warn kids of false music that's claiming to be underground or alternative," while his band itself is roundly criticized for selling out. Rampant accusations of cheesiness from all sides give this kind of continuous conflict a kind of Maoist tone--no one is ever revolutionary enough. Nothing sticks together.

This wouldn't be disturbing expect that the only thing that does tie this music together is the way it's marketed, especially in cities like Boston, which has lots of college students and pervasive college radio. Alternative becomes a section of the record store or a way to advertise the latest nightclub. The alternative rock fan discovers that he is, horror of horrors, part of a target market. We eat the music they feed us, just like the people who buy tapes at K-Mart. It just takes us less time to digest it.

Which brings us to be paradox of how something can be alternative and mainstream at the same time. The answer is: Easily, once it becomes profitable to produce music that sounds as if it is somehow against the grain. If the music-buying public has a taste for amplifier feedback, singers in plaid, nuns with guitars, whatever , odds are they'll get it. Because despite this wonderful vision we have a musical subculture, pretty much all music in America is pop music. Popular, as in we the people who crew it up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Let's not kid ourselves--this is a consumer culture, and music gets listened to because it gets bought. It may be art, but distributors don't call it product for nothing . Music listeners eat the stuff, and the alternative fan is particularly finicky about the faintest touch of staleness.

Indeed, the typical alternative rock fan (never mind the oxymoron) tends to go through bands like nobody's business, ever on the rampage for the novel and always primed to roust a sell-out. Some divide alternative rock fans into two groups--those who have been at this game for years and those who have only just begun to put bands in the same category as kleenex--use them up and throw them away. The latter are accused of posing; the former, of snobbery. Everyone is, of course, up-to-the-minute hip. Novelty obscures quality sometimes, and it's creepy.

Sometimes I wish there was an alternative to alternative (a thorny pipe dream, kind of like, "What comes after post modern?") There could be, too, and without changing a single tune or reshelving a single CD. All we need to do is change the way we listen. Pay attention to what a song is rather than what it's not. Find a tune you like and have faith in it.

A little Zen, maybe, but it beats disposable rock.