Music Scum

By Luis Fernández García - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.1 es, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=173732

There has been many a movie based on the lives and careers of musicians and bands. More recently, The Runaways (about the band of the same name with Joan Jett and Lita Ford), Notorious (Notorious B.I.G.), What We Do is Secret (Germs). There are also some classics such as La Bamba (Ritchie Valens), Selena (Selena Quintanilla-Perez), Amadeus (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri) just to name a small few to demonstrate the broad range of musicians immortalized on film. On the flip side of this, there quite a bit of stories yet to be told with a well produced/directed/acted film. Because I am bored, I have compiled a small list of artists' stories that I would like to see dramatized.

1. Ian MacKaye and the D.C. Hardcore scene. A movie about this could show the formation of possibly hundreds of bands that were a result of this scene or people involved in it. With Ian MacKay alone, you have Minor Threat, Fugazi, Teen Idles, Pailhead, Embrace and The Evens. Ian MacKaye's Dischord record label put out some of the best music ever. We could see the origins of Henry Rollins's music career, the first Emo band Rites of Spring, and many many other important events and people in music history.

2. Wu-Tang Clan. There is a documentary out there and a dramatic film "in the works," but let's get it done already. The Wu-Tang Clan has been around and revered long enough for a film to have already been made about them. I imagine the casting would be rough, finding 9 actors to play them, as I would only assume that they would have equal screen time. You would also have to cast Cappadonna, who "replaced" the late ODB while he was incarcerated. A lot of the Clan's group albums as well as solo albums are some of the best rap/hip hop albums out there and most of the Clan has have quite successful solo careers.

3. Seattle Grunge Scene. While there is a movie by Gus Van Sant called Last Days, that may or may not be based on Kurt Cobain (look at a poster for it), I would like to see a film based on the band and that whole scene in general. Like the D.C. Hardcore scene, the Seattle scene was filled with musicians that band hopped, filled in for each other and seemed like a huge group of friends all jamming with each other rather than competing bands. We would see bands like Melvins, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam and many other in this film. While I may disagree with the constant dissection and sub-categorization of music, especially spawned from the "Alternative" sub type, the fact remains that Nirvana is credited with causing a movement. I think it would make for an interesting study of how music was for the people involved in it prior to Smells Like Teen Spirit and then after. Some people became famous, while others remained underground.

4. Mötley Crüe. Sure. Go ahead and laugh. But this movie would have it all. Sex, drugs, lead singer killing someone in a car accident. I mean, these fucking guys INJECTED liquor. Read that sentence again. It doesn't say ingested. INJECTED. Into their veins. Nikki Sixx and Ozzy Osbourne had a contest to see who to perform the sickest act! Are you kidding me?! Supposedly, The Dirt, based on the book, will be out in 2011, so hopefully it will satisfy my desire to see famous people destroy themselves.

5. Vanilla Ice. On second thought, no.

As a side note to this article, I was discussing the movie Last Days with Puck and our friend Phil, and his suggestion of a plot line of a film about Kurt Cobain was as follows: "Aaahhh, I'm singing, aaah, my stomach hurts, aaaah my wife's a whore, aaaaah, boom."