alt-rock

But Garbage put on an excellent performance — it was all smiles among those who had chosen the alt-rock group.

After a somewhat fallow period in the mid-’90s, the veteran Los Angeles alt-rock band resurged with 1999’s eight-times-platinum “Californication” and its 2002 follow-up, “By the Way,” which spawned the chart-topping single “Can’t Stop.”

This relationship between generations that grew up listening to the group and those now is all too apparent when it comes to festivals like Cruel World, which celebrates post-punk, new wave, goth and alt-rock.

Filmmaker Alex Ross Perry chose to explore the history of the unconventional ’90s alt-rock icons in an antifactual way, getting at something stubbornly true.

Rzeznik: It wound up working in our favor, but we didn’t fit into the grunge thing, we didn’t fit into the alt-rock thing, we didn’t fit into mainstream music.