Come On Over And Get Down

The Rocks “I Won’t Need You When You’re Dead” – Video treatment: We’re at the Grunge Prom. The room is populated by assorted teens in extremely obvious early 90s grunge/indie/alt-rock/goth attire and teenage lookalikes of various early 90s rock icons. Our Kurt and Courtney are the king and queen of the prom, and we also see young Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Henry Rollins, Michael Stipe, Liz Phair, Trent Reznor, Beck, Billy Corgan, Scott Weilland, Layne Staley, Thom Yorke, Anthony Keidis, PJ Harvey, etc. An extremely miserable-looking (even in comparison to the rest of the room!) young man is walking around the prom. He’s obviously lonely and alienated, and is pining for some beautiful grunge girl who is dancing with our Eddie Vedder kid. Occasionally, he lip-synchs and makes histrionic faces to the camera. At some point, he steps outside and we see a group of Cool Kids. In that crowd would be our young versions of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Stephen Malkmus, Kim Deal, Laetitia Sadier, and J Mascis. It should be pretty clear that he doesn’t fit in with them either. At the end of the video, our bitter, sad protagonist is still alone. He watches as the beautiful grunge girl leaves with the apathetic-looking Vedder kid, and then walks off by himself, as the rain soaks his flannel.

(The Rocks are a band from London, and this song is the b-side to their debut single from last year, “Everybody In The Place.”)

Konk “Konk Party” – Konk were a Latin funk band from NYC in the early 80s, and this is taken from the 1982 album Yo!. It just sounds like a party, really. To my knowledge, this hasn’t ever been released on cd. I might be wrong, though. (Apparently, a Konk compilation is forthcoming on the Soul Jazz label. Thanks to Peter for the tip.)