MUSIC DIGRESSION/THE WRESTLER

A MUSICAL DIGRESSION BASED ON A MINUTE OF DIALOG FROM THE WRESTLER(2008)

The wrestler was a great movie because Mickey Rourke was so much in character that you forget that he was acting. He seems tired and washed up just like you would imagine Rourke to be in real life. The best moments of the film are the moments that do not seem scripted. he seems to be improvising and ad libbing as the wrestler. my favorite scene is when he is at the bar with Marisa Tomei and the '80s hair metal band RATT comes on the jukebox and he gets over excited and does a little dance. "those where the days...... fuckin' GUNS AND ROSES.... then that pussy Cobain had to ruin everything! the nineties sucked!"  i loved that line. i was glad that NIRVANA came along and made all the crappy bands that he liked seem pointless and silly. to me it smelled like victory. you see kids, back in the '80s there was this thing called "alternative" music. Go ahead smartass, " alternative to what?" you ask. Back then MTV actually played music videos instead of reality shows, they usually showed videos from lame hair bands like POISON and tuneless wonders like Bryan Adams. Most commercial radio was just as bad. There was some great bands around but you had to read the right magazines or listen to college radio to actually know them.I was a college radio guy. it was the only thing i actually enjoyed about my collegiate experience. sure maybe only three or four people listened to me but i  kidded myself that i was making a difference. fighting the man by playing obscure bands on indie labels. It was 1988 when the first single from a band from washington state called NIRVANA got mailed to the station. I had never heard of them but they were on SUB POP so that meant that they were cool and worth some airplay.  i remember the band photo on the single, Kurt and the other two looked awesome. They wore leather and looked like bikers ready for a bar brawl. They looked like they couldn't give a shit if you liked them or not. i played that 45 a lot. The next year they released BLEACH and more people started to play them and to write about them.  i saw them in concert and they were a beautiful mess, they broke strings and fell down and still they could care less what you thought.  i was the first person at the Boston college station to play the new single from their second album. it was called ' smells like teen spirit"  and my first thought was " hey, they copied the guitar riff from one of my favorite KILLING JOKE songs ,nice"  it had a much better production than BLEACH but still had their trademark soft/loud/soft/loud style . Sometimes you could not tell what Cobain was singing but still you got the message, it was an extended middle finger to anything safe and mainstream. NIRVANA was here to make music dangerous again and to champion other "alternative" bands. Kurt appeared on the cover of SPIN wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed"corporate magazines(i.e SPIN!)suck!"  he became a spokesman and idol for a new jaded and apathetic generation that was tired of being told what to buy and to how to live.  I was working at tower records when "NEVERMIND" started to sell like crazy. It felt great! it was like we won!  one of "our" bands was on top. i felt a sense of pride whenever i saw someone buying a cd by the VASELINES or the PIXIES. One of the best nights of my life was being at a club and hearing the opening riff to 'smells like teen spirit" my friends and i slam danced and raised our drinks. It was a victory dance. Of course it was too good to last. Cobain was a heroin addict and shot himself after only two more albums. they held a candlelight vigil outside tower records. Nevermind,indeed.