Mmhhh, this has some distinct late 90s/early 2000nd flavour to it somehow.
I always wondered how a Syd and Razor Punk band would have sounded at the time the game came out? Pixies? Replacements? Meat Puppets? Violent Femmes? Hard to tell since we only got Razor´s Tape from Zak to go by (which sounds more proto gothic, if the 8bit bleeps and bloops are anything to go by) and the tune they play on the piano sounds more 50s rock´n´roll. Guess Syd´s music would sound more Gary Numan like while Razor more be like Siouxie & The Banshees. 
Read the lyrics… 
The sound of the music reminds me the early Green Day songs.
There is even a video of that song, on youtube:
Yeah that´s what I was thinking of. That or any of those late 90s early 00 skater punks.
I’m a kid of the 80s and I’ve never heard of these bands! 
That’s “alternative”, all the favourite bands of Kurt Cobain! You´d know if you had read Rolling Stone back then. 
Speaking of Nirvana, they completly went past me when they were new. When I think of that time I think of Michael Jackson and Genesis. That was what our radio was playing.
Actually you may have heard at least two of these bands’ songs but maybe you thought they were from the 90s (because that´s what they sound like)
I haven’t read about music back then, I was the radio guy … 
… so this was “my” music. And in the 90s I’ve watched a lot of MTV and VH-1. So I was influenced by that too. It took me over 30 years to discover some not so popular, but really great bands and songwriters.
The first one (Where Is My Mind) sounds familiar. I’m pretty sure that a friend of mine played it - but actually in the 90s.
But I’ve never heard the second one (Blister In The Sun).
Gotta say I’m slightly surprised you hadn’t heard of the Pixies. The others are quite a bit more niche though. 
Like I wrote: They sound very familiar and I’m sure I heard the name. But my (old) brain can’t tell me where and when at the moment. 
Yeah same here. I grew up with 80s music on the radio, but only later learned what it all was really because it was just background stuff for us. There were very few TV shows around then like Formel Eins (nobody I knew watched that) and the european MTV my Dad started watching from 89 and I might have caught a few glimpses of that here and there (like the commemorative Queen Clip Show after Freddie Mercury died, I actually wish I could see those again).
Same here, I watched MTV and VH-! in the 90s all the time. Also Viva but they mostly showed crap. At least during the day. Only later I learned that they actually had some good shows at night at on Viva 2.
And VH-1 introduced me to some classics too finally because they showed a lot of older videos as well, so I could place pictures to songs I had heard on the radio for 10 years in some cases.
It got famous again in the late 90s for having been used in Fight Club. Blister In The Sun actually gets used in a lot of movies and commercials.
Meat Puppets you could only know through the two cover songs that Nirvana played on their unplugged album. That´s how most people know them, really.
Some of my friends watched it, but not regularly. I don’t liked the show very much, can’t say why. There were some video clip shows on 3sat and the SWR(?) in the evening/night that were much better IMHO.
Yeah! Until the end of that channel! 
Maybe I was just too old for them (or the music they played).
But even VH-1 showed a lot of “mainstream” music, so I hadn’t the chance to discover some lesser known musicians.
I will (and really have to) dig into the music of the Pixies and the Meat Puppets later after work. 
There was also MusicBox that later turned into Tele5 but I wasn´t aware of that until a few years ago. I guess had I actively watched music channels then I´d probably have prefered shows like Rock & Pop in Concert or Rockpalast. Which were both WDR and I don´t think we would have gotten these with antenna reception? I guess BR would have shown Live aus dem Alabama, which was good too.
Hehe, if you had just watched Viva in the 90s you´d have thought that DJ Bobo was the biggest music star ever! They were just very big in that eurodance stuff for some reason. No idea what target audience that was.
Also
and
As the guys in the band probably grew up playing Maniac Mansion, that should come as no surprise. They probably picked up a guitar in the 90’s listening to band like Blink182 and Green Day.
Well, they’re a (half) generation older than most of us - so probably they’d sound like older influences too (70s new wave and punk - think Ramones, Pistols, Blondie). The DAT in 1997 is from their later phase when Syd quit the band and Razor was in her bleep-bloop phase.
It also sounded very familiar to me- but from a song about 20 years older
Yeah, Pixies are like mainstream alternative 
That´s a good point, but I think that´s true for the groups I mentioned too. I was just thinking what a band of that time might have sounded like that was just starting out. So I thought of the american college bands of that era.
Ah yes, that famous 90s synth bleep bloop movement.
I think it´s important to remember that Zak probably takes place in an alternate timeline.
Haha, good catch! I bet that´s a 100 percent where they got it from. I mean The Shadows more or less influenced everybody!
If you lived in the south of Germany, then it was very unlikely. You would have needed cable or a satellite dish.
But I’m not sure if Rockpalast was also shown in the ARD… 
“Live aus dem Alabama” was a very good show too!
Viva was a huge advertising channel for the (German) music industry.
Yeah that´s true. If I can say something positive it´s that it introduced Stefan Raab. And they also showed a lot of Helge Schneider music videos you couldn´t see anyhwere else at the time. Considering the later friendship of both makes me wonder if the former had something to do with that.
R.E.M. and the Peppers spring to mind as major influences then for some college kids who ventured of into a creepy mansion.
That’s what they want you to believe. I know I stayed clear of the phone in the 90s until 1997 passed. Then I got a cell phone a few years later and more stupid every year since.
Actually, I asked David and Matthew before about the origins of the bleep-bloop 90s music
and the answer:
For anyone who doesn’t know the waycool noizbop we’re referring to:
This Is The End Of The World As We Know It? Perfect! Especially after causing the nuclear explosion of the mansion. That song came out 1987 as well! Perfect ending credit song in any case.
Oh that´s great! And makes a lot of sense too!
Reminds me that I probably still haven´t asked him why the Sphinx and the Pyramid are in reverse positions as opposed to real life.
Heck, in all these years I have only realized it now!