The Mutton Birds - The Heater

What does "Alternative" mean? Obscurity? No Top 40 hits? Musical experimentation…something else? Can a band have "mainstream" success in one part of the world but be considered "alternative" somewhere else? Probably.

What do you think?

In the case of The Mutton Birds, this song spent six weeks at number one in New Zealand and several other songs and albums hit the Top 40 during their career. Abroad, there was almost no chart action, and I suspect that any airplay was on less mainstream airwaves. This was definitely true here in Australia. An exception is the cover of Blue Öyster Cult's, '(Dont Fear) The Reaper', that was on the soundtrack of the film The Frighteners, hitting #48 in Australia.

Formed in Auckland in 1991 by Don McGlashan (ex-Blam Blam Blam, as seen in a previous post in this Community) and David Long (who went on to work on the music for a bunch of Peter Jackson movies). They were joined by ex-members of Sneaky Feelings and Garageland , amongst others , during their existence.

No matter what your definition of Alternative music is, their four studio albums and various compilations and live albums have some great songs on them. This is one of them.

Yewtube link