Thomas Harrison is determined to start his own alternative band, an obsession that blinds him to what’s either the mental collapse, or the eruption of musical genius, of his little sister, Bridget. Bridget boldly rejects her brother’s music, and the music of an entire generation of slackers, by taking on the persona of an X-rated gangsta’ rapper named “Bri Da B.”
NO ALTERNATIVE probes the lives of rebellious kids who transition into adulthood via the distortion pedals of their lives in an era when the “Sex, Drugs & Rock’n'Roll” ethos was amended to include “Suicide” in its phrase. William Dickerson sets into motion a series of relationships against the backdrop of the suicide of Kurt Cobain, recreational drugs, keg parties in fields, Jesuit high schools, the Baby Boomers who gave birth to the children drinking from kegs in fields, killing commies with laser beams, depression, and the rise of anti-depressants to combat the depression, the New York State Judicial System, Melanin Theory, corporate behemoths from Seattle, the next Nirvana, the emergence of Biggie Smalls in White America, headshrinkers, smoking cigarettes, Converse sneakers (the Jack Purcell’s, not the All-Stars), sibling rivalry, parental expectations, Catholicism, and the felony theft of something that was to never be.
And let’s not forget:
Garage Bands; the real thing, not the software,
Gangsta’ Rap,
Grunge, and
Generation X.
