The Glamour and the Squalor

The Glamour & the Squalor is the story of Marco Collins, one of America's last great rock radio DJs and a musical tastemaker that changed our culture. Before the Internet made sourcing new music and rising bands a simple matter of keystrokes and RSS feeds, there was the radio DJ. Those with an insatiable thirst for the fresh and undiscovered relied on the savvy DJ with the right connections to feed us a steady diet of the up and coming. For the bands, it was said DJ who provided the air-time, created the buzz and could ultimately set the stage for stardom. No one epitomized this role like Marco Collins. He was the on-off switch for an artist's potential career and was the gatekeeper credited for helping break the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Beck, Weezer, Garbage and countless others. The film skillfully splices together archival footage of Marco and the bands he helped break to the masses with animation, recreations and interviews of Marco and the over 20 subjects that help shape his story, along with an original score by Pearl Jam's Mike McCready. Marco turned his passion for music into a significant lifetime of work, battling some seriously determined demons along the way. And he's still standing.