Song of the Day: Four Star Mary, "Pain (Slayer Mix)"

On this day in 1997, the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB. The pitch for this show was impossible: Based on the original script for a mostly forgotten movie from 1992 starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland (!) and Luke Perry, it showed up on a barely-there network (the WB has only just launched two years prior, and its only moderate hit at the time of Buffy's premiere was 7th Heaven) and didn't do a blow away ratings number. But it did draw in a healthy teen audience and quickly became a topic of conversation about young TV watchers on the still-nascent but growing Internet (I remember seeing Buffy-related chat rooms pop up on AOL in the late '90s). 

I came to Buffy way too late. I think the only episode I saw when the show was actually airing was the musical episode in season six, but I ended up watching the entire series on DVD shortly after it wrapped up (I'm pretty sure that was the first show I properly binged). I can't figure out why I wasn't a regular Buffy watcher during its peak, as I watched a ton of other WB programming (particularly Dawson's Creek) and would have been itching for a proper genre show at the time. Plus, Buffy had awesome music, full of the edgier versions of the sorta-alt tunes being ground out on Dawson's. Both of the official soundtracks from the show are great, but the first one is all killer no filler. Four Star Mary were known better as Dingoes Ate My Baby, the band that Oz played guitar in during the high school seasons. They're not the strongest combo in the universe, but "Pain" is a pretty great version of a terrible post-grunge song you write when you're in high school.