The kids of the 90s rebelled against the bright and puffy sounds of 80s music by listening to more grune heavy bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Thus was born Generation-X. To understand how Gen-X laced the soundtrack to Clerks is, all one really needs to know is that the famous theme, Can't Even Tell, from the movie is by Soul Asylum. You may need to Google the band if the 90s don't provide many childhood memories for you. Clerks was so cheap that it didn't have a professional musical score like other movies. Kevin Smith had a few alternative songs and musical themes created by one of his schoolmates, but the rest of the music in the movies was from popular 90s bands like Alice in Chains and Girls Against Boys. The licensing for the songs reportedly cost more than the entire production budget for Clerks. Clerks gave itself over to the 90s grunge scene which is one of the reasons the movie defines the 90s. All the alternative songs in the film are used to help sell Dante and Randal's feelings of self-worth, self-pity and purposelessness. The young men and women of the 90s were using the same music for the same thing.
