The past few weeks have given us some insights into the music industry.
Firstly there was a biopic mini-series
on Australia's rock music guru - Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, and now we have 'Vinyl'.
Martin Scorsese has never pulled any
punches with his movies: always hard-hitting and well-executed, and having Mick
Jagger along side,,,well it's hard to mess it up!
Both shows are worth a look, and having
Mick Jagger compile the 'Vinyl' soundtrack makes it even more interesting.
I think it is fair to say that Mick, or
should I say Sir Mick, is part of the most successful rock band ever inasmuch
as the Rolling Stones are still performing , currently in South America, and
are largely intact with the obvious exceptions of Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor who joins them from time to time.
Whilst 'Molly' is definitely a bio-pic it
is hard to say whether 'Vinyl' really is but it appears to be.
Not being 'in the know' who is Richie
Finestra supposed to be in real life?
And yet we see actual people portraying
Robert Plant, Bo Diddley, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Gram Parsons,Jerry
Lee Lewis, Andy Warhol and many others.
Here is a review by Michael Idato from the SMH:
If you look back in time, through the
crystal ball of nostalgia, the 1970s were a decade of flare-wearing
misadventure, where your hem stretched from your heels to your hair, drugs were
served in large tin buckets, technology consisted mostly of Bakelite phones and
transistor radios and we were all bopping at Studio 54.
In truth, they weren't nearly so
glamorous, and most of us weren't bopping for the whole 10 years, though Vinyl
(Mondays, Showcase, 3.30pm and 7.30pm) seems determined to make you think they
(and we) were. This is the music industry, writ large, with Martin Scorsese at
the helm and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger on the sideline.
That's a formidable imprimatur to hang
on any show, let alone a show set in a decade two of the key creatives lived
through as adults. The third, showrunner Terry Winter, was mercifully just a
teenager, though he had older siblings who exposed him to a wide palette of
music. Brace yourself: it's gonna be a noisy series.
Vinyl stars Bobby Cannavale as Richie
Finestra, a record company executive battling to save his label, American
Century, as external forces swirl, foreshadowing its ruin. Olivia Wilde plays
Devon Finestra, his wife. Ray Romano is Zak Yankovich, the label's head of
promotions and the man who Finestra leans on and confides in. Also Juno Temple from Maleficent as Jamie Vine.
Cannavale is a Scorsese/Winter
favourite, having cut through their earlier collaboration, Boardwalk Empire,
like a tornado. Cannavale played psychopathic mobster Gyp Rosetti with the kind
of mad brilliance that makes you immediately want to cast him in your next
project, which plainly they did.
He is brilliant here, if trapped a
little by a slightly superficial characterisation that, in the first few hours
at least, feels impenetrable. It takes time for the sharp corners to smooth but
it's worth the investment. Cannavale in full flight is a sight to behold.
The biggest challenge with the first
hours is that they're simply slow. Which is odd, because there is a lot of
colour and movement, but behind that the narrative is glacial. That's a tough
thing to hit tucking in to the first hour of a new drama, particularly one that
demands, by virtue of its pedigree, your undivided attention.
Those first few hours are properly
Scorsese's too – he directed – and they feel weighty, full of pauses, like a
nuanced feature film. Television's nature is to be lighter, leaner, faster, so
it jags, though there will be many who disagree. And if it's down to a TV
critic's opinion or Martin Scorsese's, I offer unconditional surrender.
What doesn't help is the tendency to
mistake dick-swinging dialogue and wild gesticulation for action, when
audiences now are far more attuned to the smaller moments and more subtle
gestures. There's a lot of over-talking and over-walking in Vinyl. It's
distracting and sometimes frustrating.
Romano is the great revelation here: a
sitcom actor best known for playing a goofy TV husband and father who brings an
unexpectedly complex dimension to Zak Yankovich.
It's a bit like finding the dad from The
Brady Bunch, Robert Reed, playing the lead in House of Cards. It jars for a
second, but then it's kind of awesome.
Musically the show is perfect,
stylistically it's brilliant, though perhaps because if its pedigree it has
been indulged a little.
Those wrinkles are forgivable. It's also
wholly subjective, but that's forgivable, too, so it's not the story of the
1970s but how Richie Finestra saw them. "Clouded," he notes, "by
lost brain cells, self-aggrandisement and, maybe, a little bit of bullshit".
No Series 2!!
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A History Of Mick Jagger On Film
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The Rolling Stones Guide To Business Success And Survival
More on the Rolling Stones at that link.
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