The TV show on FX. I like the subject matter and the characters but…
…the rock and roll name dropping is over the top. They could cut out 80% of it and it would be the best part of the show.
I’ve only seen the first two episodes and don’t get what you mean by name dropping. Sure they mention that Flash is Lady Gaga’s lead guitarist and in the second episode Johnny Rock does a long rave about how crappy a lot of real life songwriters became when they stopped using drugs, but how can he do that without using their names?
“David Bowie has been without drugs since 1973.”
“Without talent too!”
I have no idea what this show is, and the above exchange guarantees that I don’t care to know.
(Besides, surely Bowie was coked to the gills during his Thin White Duke period in the mid '70s.)
He didn’t say '73 he said '78, then he said, “…and what has he done since then?! Let’s Dance?! Let’s Not!!” The show is pure Denis Leary so if you do/don’t like him you’ll have your answer as to whether you like it.
And the show is supposed to be about a real band that was a flash in the pan around 1990, so it pretends to exist in the real world. This also gives Denis Leary the opportunity to trash real ‘celebrities’, and so far he’s been dead on with it!! 
Are they using this tune as their theme song? (Some lyrics NSFW, so don’t crank it up and start rocking out in your cubicle, eh; in case yer wondering, it’s a song called Stop by Psychotica, a mid-90s flash-in-the-pan band that broke up and then reformed some years back.)
A better choice is a song that actually uses the phrase as a title.
Scary Monsters {and Super Creeps} came in out 1980.
Yeah, that’s what the thread title got me thinking of…
Previous thread with a few posts.
A lot of it comes from Leary’s standup comedy routines. It’s not the strongest part of the writing, and I think John Corbett as Flash is one of the best and underutilized talents on the show. They could stand to let more of the humour evolve organically, like it did on Rescue Me. Strong ensemble performance there, and the names dropping was at minimum. The show has many of the right elements but hasn’t quite connected yet the way I hoped it would. Maybe Leary is just more believable as Tommy Gavin or Mike on The Job.