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with sssoul

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Socrates1
Am I right? Doesn't everybody who watches this show want to know more about [Juno]?

Nah - I'm not impressed with her at all, and I don't think I'm supposed to be -
she comes across as a fantasy babe for the gentlemen viewers to enjoy.
As swiss says she looks/talks/acts like someone who's wandered in from Queens in anachronistic hair, rather than the wild thing from a wealthy family that she's supposed to be. (And for me it didn't help that her mother's Polish pronunciation was so terrible - mercy, they have a city full of Poles to call on to get it right!)

"Anachronistic hair" -- best phrase of the week. Reminds me of the song, "San Francisco BC," by the Silver Jews, which features the lines: "We had sarcastic hair/we used lewd pseudonyms/We got a lot of stares on the street back then." Also loved "someone who's wandered in from Queens" - LOL!

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with sssoul
And thanks, swiss, for more of your insights. I'm glad you're getting so much out of the show. Apparently I just expect a show to do more of the work filling in those fleeting moments and half-baked characters instead of leaving us to guess about quite so much. I don't feel like I need to be hit over the head with things - I think I do fine with nuances and subtlety - but this series is simply leaving too much out.

I know what you mean. The past several years I've felt hemmed in by strict or formulaic narrative structure (across media and genres), and this series feels refreshing and new. I'm not caring that it doesn't hang together and is more an expressionistic collage. I might with another series, I had low expectations, and this feels delightful and alive despite or being such a hot mess. To me it's perfectly evocative of the '70s, if not always "accurate" in a literal sense.

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with sssoul
When I could still get into the "vinyl cuts" site I read an interview with Olivia Wilde explaining what Devon and the Swedish chick are about, what motivates them, how they feel, etc. Great, big help - but why do I have to read this in an interview?? It should be conveyed on the screen.

I haven't checked out "Vinyl Cuts." The interview sounds like something I'd generally enjoy, altho I'm not sure in this case I care as much what the actors are thinking/saying about it. I'd like to read/hear--candidly, but probably never will--the producers' impressions of the series, episode by episode. What they see as the differences and strength/weaknesses of the various episodes' writing teams and directors. What they think worked best. They also may be frustrated by the lack of cohesion, which I'm enjoying, but is frustrating to other people. The sloppiness we're seeing probably isn't mindfully effected, orchestrated, or mapped out, I reckon there truly is a fairly high degree of spontaneity and lack of rules about how the episodes should come together--i.e., a similar messiness that makes me love Stones' outtakes and rehearsals so much.

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with sssoul
I'll watch this episode again (well, I watch them all twice, to make sure I'm getting my money's worth :E )
The basement party scene was nicely done. The bat was hilarious!

Agreed! I wonder who Devon's lover is supposed to be. Any idea? Richie is such an animal - LOL! He's totally focused on finding Devon and whoever, possibly in flagrante delicto , and then as soon as he sees the bat---he is all about the bat, totally focused on shutting that down!

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with sssoul
Swiss in Las Vegas?! I hope you settle in nicely, and that you'll tell us more when you're ready to

Thanks. Just my usual geeky professional work stuff. Not Altamont stuff, which again has been on hold given regular life stuff. If I had piles of funding I would finish the things, but I have to fill up the coffers again in order to self-finance. I live in a leafy suburb in a comfortable house backing up on desert open space. There are coyotes and mountain lions and foxes, jack rabbits and little tiny cottontail bunnies, weird birds, including roadrunners that show up on my back wall, and quail that make noises of hysteria, and a backdrop of powerful mountains ringing the Las Vegas Valley. A far cry from San Francisco--but, oddly enough, miss it far less than expected. As with Vinyl, I guess I'm not looking at what's not here, but what is here---man-made and Nature-made---and so much of it is extremely strange and foreign and, as such, is capturing my imagination and attention rather than wishing for something else or different.

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Socrates1
Jamie Vine steals every scene she’s in, IMO.

I really like her! She's beautiful and fresh. I'm happy she's as prominent and important a character as she is--and she's not silly or dumb. I'm not sure I buy the flimsy background they seem to have imbued her with, but I do enjoy her. Then again, I enjoy most of the characters.

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Socrates1
How did anybody ever wear polyester clothes? Do the characters seem like they’re agitated? Are there too many pained expressions on the their faces? They seem like they’re miserable sometimes. Maybe it’s the polyester, or they just know the writing has kind of sucked. “This was all really funny as it went down.” Yeah, that’s not totally coming across.

LOL on the polyester! I think the writing anything but sucks, but as we know, you and I have some different preferences. If I yawned at any point, other than the hardercore gangster scenes, it was in the slapsticky guitar stealing scene.

But to the point of Mick saying it was light-hearted and funny as it was going down, I remember reading that when it came out and thought it sounded a bit revisionist. Or, more specifically, it may genuinely have seemed that way to Mick, but Mick was in an incredibly privileged place at the time with the Stones, where he could've been laughing more than, say, a record mogul who just bludgeoned someone to death, and whose company is going out of business, or just missed out on signing Elvis or lost $90,000--or any of the other central characters, except maybe Hannibal, who's not nearly as big as Mick was, but who's riding high and not too worried about anything.

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Socrates1
All the other bit players are orbiting around a dying sun. Richie is too much the center of the show’s universe.

Well put - "orbiting around a dying sun"! Maybe he's not a dying sun. I guess we'll see.

I do know if I looked at Vinyl in an even slightly different way, I probably wouldn't like it as much as I do. If I viewed it through the lens of being a Scorsese production...his recurring preoccupations/themes of nihilism, of the world being deeply dark and chaotic, of life having at its core a continuous, brutal, amoral grappling match to the death among men of power, of there being very few redemptive qualities of human beings and existence itself probably doesn't feature anything resembling redemption, of love probably not being real or at least not terribly relevant. That's all present in Vinyl, and is tedious to me, but I'm captivated by the show's attention to moments, wherein far more life, grace, humor, truths, complexity, fluidity, and spontaneity lives. Which is what I dig, because moments and the moments between moments is where the juice of life and art live
- swiss



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2016-04-13 13:37 by swiss.

That scene between James, Juno and the guitar player was hot-hot-hot!

Big question - how sexually fluid were James and the other guy?

......................................................................................................................................Kip: "Who the f_uck is Mick Jagger"


......................................................................................................................................Scorsese: "Look, it's Mick Jagger"

Mick: "Maybe I should go talk to Martin Scorsese about my movie idea"

Bianca: "Maybe you should talk to me"

Warhol: "Who the f_uck is Martin Scorsese? What about MY movie idea?"

Richie: "What'd I tell you, Dev ..."

Devon: "When can I get naked?"



Edited 11 time(s). Last edit at 2017-03-22 20:50 by schillid.

I love this series from the outstanding , Scorsese/Jagger production to the lead actor Bobby Cannavale ,Ray Romano (who in the begining i thought i was going to have a major typecast problem from his TV show which went away after the first episode )same with Max Casale from the Sopranos to the absolute surprise of the show for me Juno Temple ,to Olivia Wilde .What a superb cast with a more real and accurate portrayl of this most tumoltuous drug fueled period in the music industry .Does not get any better with the direction of the great Martin Scorsese at the helm .For me this is must see TV or as the ad says it's not TV it's HBO ! BRAVO HBO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Totally agree, GREEK! Ok, so maybe YOU WILL TELL ME which character is supposed to be Gram Parsons! I also can't imagine Richie leaving...being killed off! I love his character! When will the series resume? Is there a start-up date in the fall?

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swiss
I do know if I looked at Vinyl in an even slightly different way, I probably wouldn't like it as much as I do. If I viewed it through the lens of being a Scorsese production...his recurring preoccupations/themes of nihilism, of the world being deeply dark and chaotic, of life having at its core a continuous, brutal, amoral grappling match to the death among men of power, of there being very few redemptive qualities of human beings and existence itself probably doesn't feature anything resembling redemption, of love probably not being real or at least not terribly relevant. That's all present in Vinyl, and is tedious to me, but I'm captivated by the show's attention to moments, wherein far more life, grace, humor, truths, complexity, fluidity, and spontaneity lives. Which is what I dig, because moments and the moments between moments is where the juice of life and art live
- swiss

If everybody had your sunny disposition the world would have no problems. This was a nice passage from you here.

If you have a weak stomach, divert your attention from the screen. Let me apologize to you in advance for grossing you out. Stop reading now if you just ate dinner. I want to see somebody puke in front of the camera out in the street. I could at least wince, blink my eyes quickly and feel disgusted by it. Then the show would have made me feel something. Real puke -- let it just spew out and splatter everywhere. I want the visceral experience of pure rock 'n' roll. Somebody has to puke -- just once.

Did CBGBs really used to smell of urine wafting out from the bathrooms? I know this is disgusting. I usually don't write gross stuff like this. But everybody looks too cleaned up on this program. Everything is too much in its place. They might want to make the lighting a bit darker. Could we at least see a rat scurry out across the street in the middle of the night?

I mean, I wasn't in NYC in the 1970s. You could tell me about it. But my impression is that everything was grittier than it's being portrayed on Vinyl. I liked Boardwalk Empire because I felt like I was being transported back to the 1920s. Vinyl is almost too Hollywoodized. It's like everybody is dressing up in polyester, but nobody is really breaking a sweat. All this stuff isn't as dirty as I thought it would have been. I've grossed myself out now. I'm sorry for this post, honestly.

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mickschix
Totally agree, GREEK! Ok, so maybe YOU WILL TELL ME which character is supposed to be Gram Parsons! I also can't imagine Richie leaving...being killed off! I love his character! When will the series resume? Is there a start-up date in the fall?

Ray Ramano put Richie on the floor twice -- once at his kid's Bar Mitzvah, and once in the elevator when he bloodied his lip. If he goes down a third time he's not getting back up. I like the guy's acting, a lot actually. He's the whole show, yet it's unfortunate that he is at the same time.

I guess I'll be the only one who isn't surprised when they kill him off or send him to jail. It just seems like Ray Ramano is poised to take over. Although, Ray Ramano did have that awkward moment where he appeared to offend Bowie. Nobody succeeds on this show. All the characters keep failing over and over again. Jamie Vine seems like the only one who really wants to succeed.

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mickschix
which character is supposed to be Gram Parsons!

At the music industry party in LA, in the Vegas episode. The one who tells Richie that he should get out to Joshua Tree, a place of “wild silver and furious gold," where desert is so spare and plain, stripping away all the junk, so that Richie could maybe refind “that thing of beauty that you lost or let go.”


- swiss

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Socrates1

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swiss
I do know if I looked at Vinyl in an even slightly different way, I probably wouldn't like it as much as I do. If I viewed it through the lens of being a Scorsese production...his recurring preoccupations/themes of nihilism, of the world being deeply dark and chaotic, of life having at its core a continuous, brutal, amoral grappling match to the death among men of power, of there being very few redemptive qualities of human beings and existence itself probably doesn't feature anything resembling redemption, of love probably not being real or at least not terribly relevant. That's all present in Vinyl, and is tedious to me, but I'm captivated by the show's attention to moments, wherein far more life, grace, humor, truths, complexity, fluidity, and spontaneity lives. Which is what I dig, because moments and the moments between moments is where the juice of life and art live
- swiss

If everybody had your sunny disposition the world would have no problems. This was a nice passage from you here.

Thank you! Not sure what's sunny about it Just saying that belief systems and ideologies that are reinforced over and over, which proclaim "This is the way things ARE" tend to be reductionist, limiting, constricting, and suffocating---the places where moments/sparks of life reside are not necessarily "sunny" but they are alive--in motion, not nailed down, not planned, not predestined, not predictable.

Now see, I didn't even catch that. They spent what seemed like forty-five minutes at the party, and they devoted only like three minutes to Elvis at the end of the show. Why didn't they hang around with Elvis and make fried peanut-butter and banana sandwiches or something? That's what Vegas-era Elvis used to like.

They devoted a whole episode to Alice Cooper, and went golfing with him, etc., that was cool. But at the industry party in LA, Ray Ramano and Richie stayed for what must have been 45 yawn-inducing minutes, which included a character cameo with Seals & Croft? Is that who they were?

I didn't even catch the Gram Parsons thing. He looks nothing like him, btw. I don't know. Time management, maybe? Try to make the show interesting? At least Richie had the presence of mind to chuck a potted plant as they were leaving the LA party (and he was totally sober). That was a rock 'n' roll moment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-04-14 05:22 by Socrates1.

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swiss
Thank you! Not sure what's sunny about it smiling smiley

You're just very sunny. That's a good quality. Accept it. You're wonderful.

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Socrates1

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swiss
Thank you! Not sure what's sunny about it smiling smiley

You're just very sunny. That's a good quality. Accept it. You're wonderful.

Thanks

You're welcome. You're a great writer. You lift me up. I read your stuff and I feel better.

I'm sorry about that one post. I've never been so disgusting on the internet before. I hate rats.

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mickschix
Totally agree, GREEK! Ok, so maybe YOU WILL TELL ME which character is supposed to be Gram Parsons! I also can't imagine Richie leaving...being killed off! I love his character! When will the series resume? Is there a start-up date in the fall?

Hello, i think Vinyl will be back February, or March 2017.Funny story i was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last Friday night at the Barclay center (Deep Purple, Chicago,Steve Miller NWA,and Cheap Trick (who i really love a lot from the start way back in the seventies) and when the HBO table was pointed out to me with Bobby Cannavale, Max Casale ,Juno Temple and Ray Romano that just made me so happy to see the cast of my new favorite TV show !!! I really love VINYL !!!!!!!

I would like to see Lester Grimes avenge his stolen voice. What if he were to kill some mobsters and get away with it? That would be cool. As it is now, the reality of his character is too unjust. His story has been one of the biggest heartbreaks of the show. Lester is suspended in animation, with a ruined voice, trying to work within the system that took everything from him. It's HBO, so they could make it really brutal, just like they did when the mobsters roughed him up. Have Lester Grimes destroy at least a few mobsters. That would work for me.

Well, I was close about a couple different things. This was my favorite episode. Who was that crooner who sang about: "boulevards of broken cars"? Something like that... For a minute there, I thought the mob was gonna kill Ray Ramano. But I still hate rats! Let's see how season two shakes out. I give this series a good four or five years on HBO. This is good stuff.

okay last night when Kip was lights out and Ritchie comes over just before he is supposed to hit the stage what does Ritchie shoot him up with to wake him up ? speedball ?

Cocaine

I call foul on those underpants

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with sssoul
I call foul on those underpants

yeah!

Season One is over & after watching all the episodes I'm left a little disappointed that the story has not moved much for 10 episodes & 11 hours.

I felt there was big lull around episodes 5, 6 & 7.

'The Nasty Bits' storyline turned out pretty much as I guessed it would have from the beginning.

I'm a little surprised the murder investigation didn't resolve itself in the last episode & leave us w/ a great cliffhanger.

Overall I'd give the show a strong recommendation. Good acting. Amazing Soundtrack! Though I can't see this show having a strong following w/ anyone under 35 or who doesn't know their history.

I read/heard Mick wrote the lyrics to the original music on the show & would like to think that pushed him in a more old school lyricist style & that it shows on the new Stones album.

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

If there's one fault that exists with most high cost US drama serials...it's that they always write with the hope of getting umpteen series out of it .

Therefore...so as not to run out of plot....bugger all ever happens from one year to the next ;^)

They end up being more like soaps than cohesive stories with a beginning, middle and end.

Life, of course, is pretty much the same ;^)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2016-04-19 15:27 by Spud.

Head to #Vinyl Cuts for the last issue of the season >> [www.vinylcuts.nyc]

[twitter.com]

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TheGreek
okay last night when Kip was lights out and Ritchie comes over just before he is supposed to hit the stage what does Ritchie shoot him up with to wake him up ? speedball ?

This scene made me laugh!

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Bliss

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TheGreek
okay last night when Kip was lights out and Ritchie comes over just before he is supposed to hit the stage what does Ritchie shoot him up with to wake him up ? speedball ?

This scene made me laugh!

I did not expect Kip to awaken from his drug slumber to go after his guitar player at once .Dont do drugs kids !

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with sssoul
I call foul on those underpants

I concur.

It's funny that in the show about twenty-something girls (called Girls), there's full nudity on a semi-regular basis at the drop of a hat, but in the show about the mob, murders, rock stars and junkies, they use the tightest whitest underwear in a scene where they're completely wrong. So bad.

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Marhsall


Overall I'd give the show a strong recommendation. Good acting. Amazing Soundtrack! Though I can't see this show having a strong following w/ anyone under 35 or who doesn't know their history.

I'm not sure that knowing history is the issue. The logic doesn't apply to folks watching Mad Men or Downton Abbey. I think they need to focus on compelling characters and less on the cheap tricks of star cameos, drug use and meaningless sex.

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with sssoul
I call foul on those underpants

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CloudCat
yeah!

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camper88

I concur ... they use the tightest whitest underwear in a scene where they're completely wrong.

Explain ? Do overdosing junkies sh1t their pants?
I am happy to admit that I don't know...