you are at least a decade out Motas

“I respect and admire Scorsese, but I get tired of his relentless framing of life as nothing but competition among men for power — represented by money, willingness to betray and kill, cocaine, and pussy. Something like that. Granted, it’s a valid perspective, and a good pretext for entertainment, and God knows the music industry is a perfect illustration, but Vinyl is sleepwalking.”

It’s funny that everyone rolls their eyes at Wes Anderson (for example) as a guy who just does the same thing over and over, when Scorcese has been repeating himself (thematically and aesthetically) since before Wes Anderson had pubes.

I don’t personally have any problem with an artist repeating himself. One good idea is more than most people ever have, and if your calling is to explore that one idea until you die, I say go for it. But the nature of Scorcese’s style is that it’s already longwinded, cacophonic, and exhausting… so as you begin to approach the fifth(!) decade of his filmography, you could be forgiven for putting your hands up and crying uncle.

Was it really? Oops, my bad. Still didn’t like the show.

Thanks for letting me know.

The song was originally recorded by Slade in 1973.

I wasn’t there in the 70s, but I was in the 90s. The business side of the music even then was heavily populated by gangsters, crooks, thieves and scum of all sorts.

FYI – Ahmet Ertegun himself ripped off a shit ton of black musicians himself on the way to making himself a fortune:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/dec/16/guardianobituaries.obituaries1

blochead is right: most of the artists thought they were there to make music. The businessmen knew that they were only there to make them rich..

Don’t want to burst your bubble -but this famous Hunter S Thompson misquote about the music industry is totally accurate:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

Except the pilot is supposed to GRAB your audience, not bore them to death.
Or send them to the nearest NA meeting.

Wow.I spy somebody that has no idea how early the punk scene really started in America before the Ramones went to England and basically begat the Sex Pistols. The band Television and new York Dolls go back to early 70’s. Furthermore Hell is right.The show is crap. All I see here are die hard rock fans yearning for the heydays and licking up any residual crap they can find.

All good points Christopher.

I’m a little surprised to see people complain that it didn’t focus on the music, when all the lead up trailers and press seemed to show it was about the music business, with a label head as its protagonist. I personally find this more interesting than another biopic about musicians. But it is indeed great to have Hell’s insight.

It’ll never happen, but I would love to see a Perry Farrell/Jane’s biopic. His songs about growing up in that LA scene are evocative enough to be fleshed out just on those lyrics alone!

Yeah. Everyone I know who has seen it loved that first episode. These are people with little knowledge of that period of the NYC music scene, but I don’t doubt this will draw out their interest in this period to check the music out for themselves, as you say.

Yep. He was absolutely incredible. Scariest “villain” I’ve seen since Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Punch Drunk Love!

It is a bit harsh to fault Vinyl for not capturing the late 70’s music scene when it is set in 1973.

Are you trying to do the contrarian thing where you act like you didn’t like Goodfellas

blochead, re the first paragraph above, I have to ask what your basis is for saying this. Were you there ? Or is this a narrative you picked up from somewhere and consider to be true ?

It seems like a rather bold statement to say that the artists themselves who did interact with these people and depend on them for their income were somehow unaware of what you say was the nature of the business side, but you were able to figure it out.

There were definitely crooks in the music business, Roulette Records being the best known example, and it is certainly true that recoupable expenses messed with some musicians. That does not make these things ubiquitous features of the business or the time. There were all kinds of record labels and a lot of money did flow to musicians. For every Saul Zaentz there was an Ahmet Ertegun.

Christopher, You’re so right about the Empire reference. I cldnt even sit through more than 5 mins of the Empire pilot. Thats not how I remember the black music scene!

So I guess what I’m sayin is if some people enjoy this enough to really get into it and check out the scene in greater detail then I think it could be called mission accomplished. I know that argument is a tired and old cliche’ but it really does hold water here.

Also, it was the pilot. Can we take a breath before we write off an entire project? I kinda balk at the irony that a scene that was based so much on coming to grips with a very new and very radical idea of music and how patient a music fan needed to be to understand what these artists were trying to do would be so quick to dismiss another project after exactly one episode.

I’ll concede that point, but to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, “The heart wants what it wants…”

Natalie Dormer tho.

Yeah, after his work on the Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, I’ll follow Terence Winter to Hell and back. Also, I’m in agreement on Juno Temple–she might be my biggest British crush. I would feel weird if we weren’t the same age (Killer Joe doesn’t help) because she kind of looks too young but at the same time like she’s totally going to blossom out of it into perfection.

As for the show, I liked it. I do wish the pilot focused on the music, man, but it had to introduce a lot of characters, and clearly the show is more interested in the business side of music rather than the artistic side, which is fine and I’m sure will be very interesting. Also, Bobby Canivale is always awesome.

so good

oh, i’m going down with the ship on this one…just hope the ride gets a little more interesting.

Dice was a fucking revelation in this. His performance had be glued to my set. And I’m with you guys about the “fuck, a murder plot!?!?!” thing. But let’s take a deep breath and wait for the next few episodes. I think the murder thing is much more about watching the lead sink to his darkest depths than it is the defining plot element. The 2 hour pilot was a lot to ask of viewers. My gut tells me the heavyweights involved in this thing wouldn’t put us through two hours of that unless they know they have the goods.

totally agree. was expecting an entirely different show, and i’m kind of bummed it’s just another series set up by a murder in ep 1. dice was great too! foolish to kill him off. hopefully the pilot was an outlier and the rest of the series tackles more interesting subject matter. it has potential, but still…

and i can watch juno temple all day long – love her.

Is it like walking into the 1973 music scene? Of course it isn’t. It’s an HBO production and it has to appeal to a large group of people so the grit of the scene has to be cleaned up a bit. America just isn’t gonna tune into a show that shows the reality of that scene. Scorcese et al are doing their best to present the scene as best they can considering the limitations of being a big budget HBO drama.

Hell is right in that this episode focused very little on the music. It definitely felt like a lot of set-up, but I think after 2 hours they got all that out of the way. I PRAY they got it out of the way.

The story of the Nasty Bits is definitely the side story I’m most interested in and it didn’t get a whole lot of air time in the pilot. I’m hoping that as the show progresses it becomes the focal point.

Here’s to hoping Hell gets to review every episode, as this is a unique perspective for the Gum!