Produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger. About the music industry in the early 70’s.
The scenes with the radio station owner and Richie Finestra… some of the best acting I’ve seen recently. Bobby Cannavale is talented, but who knew Andrew Dice Clay can act?
Anybody watching this show?
Oh. Nevermind.
I only said your name once, not thrice. Not even your full name.
What’s the matter?.. Slow day in your circle of hell? 
Have it on DVR. Need to find time. Hearing so-so things, with Canavale as the high spot.
It’s great, but I’m possibly biased as I’ll watch anything with Juno Temple.
As good as it is, I’m already getting tired of the self-indulgent musical numbers. We get it, showrunners, you like this kind of music. But Jesus Christ, I don’t need four-minute musical intermissions in the middle of a show, much less eight of them. (Exaggeration, but that’s what it started to feel like.)
Andrew Dice MotherFucking Clay was amazing. I’m truly gob-stopped. I’ve never been that much of a fan of his, even though I knew he was a decent entertainer, with good timing and all that, but holy shit he is really good in this. Like Emmy worthy. In fact, if he doesn’t snag one, I’ll scream “rip-off” to no one, because I don’t really pay attention to the Emmy’s.
I’ve gotten 90 minutes in - my son was watching it with me and asked me to stop because it was too much of a bummer. I will pick it back up.
It seems like an attempt to be Mad Men set in the 70’s Music scene vs. 60’s Ad scene - an anthropological study on the desperation of the era, set against a backdrop of the massive substance abuse and now-off social mores of the day.
The music choices are interesting - the New York Dolls singing Personality Crisis was great. Their Robert Plant didn’t work for me, so I was taken out for a bit - I am not looking forward to that happening, but it is good they are incorporating the acts of the day.
It was funny that they slammed Slade when Mama We’re all Crazee Now (or however it is purposely misspelled) was playing - but they kept it playing for a decent clip. And Foghat seems to be the secret handshake of B-Grade 70’s boogie rock. If you include Slow Ride, their cover of I Just Wanna Make Love to You, etc. - it is a stamp of authenticity. Like when Dazed and Confused included them along with Free Ride, Frankenstein and a few other greats.
Just finished watching episode 2. I want to like this show. I do like Bobby Cannavale and Olivia Wilde, I like their characters and their acting is great. Bobby really brings the crazy. I want to see more of the Lester Grimes character, with lots of flashbacks. I like most of the music, and the way they have actors playing famous musicians. I didn’t like the way they portrayed Robert Plant, I always got the impression that he’s likeable and easy going and wouldn’t be complaining and nasty, he’d let Peter Grant handle that crap. Lou Reed was good. Mick Jagger’s son James looks and sounds like a younger version of him. I like seeing the old clothing fashions and cars and decor, it’s bringing back memories.
…and that was the second time in my life I saw someone smash a vinyl copy of Tull’s A Passion Play because they thought it sucked.
Right? During their performance for the record exec dude, close-ups on him looked like the spitting image of his dad.
More praise for actors I never thought I’d praise.
Not that I had a bad opinion of Ray Romano, but compared to his turn on Everybody Loves Raymond, he’s pulling off friggin’ Lawrence Olivier level acting. The contemplating suicide scene in car in the garage was particularly riveting.
I’ve always liked him. Check out The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine if you haven’t already.
At the end of the first episode when the band literally brings the house down, has anything even close to that happened? I know that stages have collapsed but the whole building?
More or less. The real Mercer Arts Center did collapse in August 1973, but it wasn’t during a Dolls show. Actually, it wasn’t during a show at all.
Here’s a decent link discussing it with Vinyl as reference point.
I saw the first one. I thought it was pretty good at depicting the madness and mayhem of the business at that point in time - both in the personalities and lack of rules.
Business-wise, half the time you were dealing with the new rock superstars on almost music hall terms. Lifestyle - made it up as you went along.
Covered a lot of ground in that first epi, I should check it again.
Actually - that bugged me. I kept waiting for the editing to pull back and show he was inside his head, letting the coke play out a disaster mentally as the music took over. When they kept with it, and then he got up from a building collapse and walked to the next situation, it took me out of the show to go 
and step outside of the show (per upthread, when “Robert Plant” didn’t work for me and took me out of the show, too).
My son kept asking if that ever happened. No, not that I can recall. Bugged me that they target verisimiltude and then insert a building cave-in to the timeline…
I thought that whole end passage was intended to show rock and roll itself as the drug.
The events didn’t matter it was how the music, the experience of being at a great gig, left you feeling.
Yeah, I admit, I thought that whole sequence was a metaphor or an allegory or some artistic imaging, or whatever. I kept waiting for the screen to blur and swipe to him passed out in an alley next to his car with coke all over his face.
I was a little bummed out when it played out like it did. I agree with WordMan; it was Scorcese-esque verisimilitude (he’s a producer, no?), right up until that scene.
He directed the pilot.
No shit? I didn’t realize. Well, I think he disappointed at the end.
Yeah the building collapse took me out of the story as well. Knowing that it was something that actually *did *happen is a cool fact, but not with Finestra being *inside *the building and falling several stories (he walked up stairs when he got there) and walking away with just a tiny cut. I also expected him to wake up in a drugged daze.
It was just this weird magical realism scene that was completely out of sync with how the rest of the episode was portrayed.