Vinyl

Last night the happy few were served the first 120 minutes of HBO's new love baby Vinyl in addition to a shitload of somewhat dubious bitterballen and great tasting mini burgers in a packed Marktkantine in Amsterdam. I had to do some degrading actions on unnamed individuals, but I was there. And fortunately. It seems that from Monday, January 15, Vinyl sets the bar where all other new series in 2016 can bite. Believe me, they are going to have a tough job. It's New York in the early 1970s. It is New York where it is easier to score a gram of coke than a carton of fresh milk. Dilapidated New York that is swept clean two decades later by Mayor Giuliani and his zero tolerance policy, because getting off at the wrong subway station often means that someone will press a barker to your sleep not much later. Actually a kind of Schilderswijk, but then forty years ago. While the mostly dark youth in The Bronx play on their parents' rickety record players mixing funky beats, paving the way for Rapper's Delight, in musty basements punk rockers scream the lime off the walls and in Lower Manhattan on impossible platform shoes the first. Steps into the Disco, Richie Finestra tries as best as possible to keep his record label American Century Records going. Convenience and apparent disinterest among his A&R executives, fueled by mountains of coke so high you'd think you might have ended up in a French ski area, have left just a little too many Nickelbacks and Goo Goo Dolls drawn and a good deal a little too few Sex Pistols and Velvet Undergrounds. Richie is going crazy. Good artists in your stable are posters above the adolescent cot and posters above the adolescent cot are prestige and money in the drawer. Should he continue to do everything in his power to save his company from destruction or is it time to just wake up at home next to his wife instead of sniffing through an overpriced hotel room? Is music at all still what he wants to put all his heart and soul into? I have no idea. Episode one of Vinyl leaves you on the couch with so many question marks that it is a complete mystery what they will serve you in the remaining nine episodes. Nice though. Vinyl is not actually a series, but just an insane long film. If Vinyl is a series, so are the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and Star Wars. If Vinyl is a series, then its definition takes on a new meaning and we really have to come up with something different for bouquet series such as Scandal and Grey's Anatomy. The camera work, the dialogues, the acting, at times you almost get the feeling that you are watching a grim rock & roll version of The Wolf of Wall Street. Not surprising in itself, of course, when you consider that both originated from the genius brain of the same spiritual father, Martin Scorsese. The dialogues are smart, fast and often surprisingly funny. My fingers are itching to type out some chuckle, but then it will probably be such a “you-should-have-been-there” thing, so see for yourself and judge. With a deluge of sideburns, which sometimes seem to extend far beyond the pubic area; car telephones with receiver and wire and turntable and packages where you sometimes see those dusty sixty-year-old bookkeepers walking around, Vinyl throws you back in time with childlike ease. With Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire), Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (Borgen) and Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) you may get some familiar faces, but Scorsese likes fresh so in Vinyl you will mainly see (reasonably) unknown names. Veteran or rookie, everyone is good. Yes, also Ray Romano. Maybe after episode ten we can finally say with dry eyes that everybody loves Raymond. That alone is more than worthy of Vinyl's raison d'être. Or not ?! After Treme, HBO barks another series full of music. Not such a silly DWDD minute of music, but nice long strokes. With nods to Led Zeppelin, Abba, Donny Osmond and The Stones, fact and fiction dance around each other in Vinyl fiercely flirtatious. With some regularity you hear Les Pauls howl louder than Jan Smit's mother after Yolanthe ran off with the towels, but it is certainly not all screeching rock that hits the clock. Music in the broadest sense seems to play the leading role in Vinyl and that makes me happy. It may be clear that Vinyl is one with potential, but more than once we have seen that a promising start quickly turned into rippling sluggishness. Even the Boardwalk Empire that Scorsese previously made for HBO sank in the middle of season one due to chronic uninterest (then give me Peaky Blinders). So one swallow doesn't make a summer yet, but something tells me that Vinyl is fine. Of course this was only the first episode of ten, but Smells Like Teen Spirit was the first number of twelve and Nevermind didn't get any worse after that hard opener. So let's hope that the first episode of Vinyl is the Once of Pearl Jam's Ten, then there is still a lot to enjoy in the coming months. www.gumstarr.com

A series in which a lot of music can be put in ... Is TV still based on good storylines with the right ambiance / atmosphere or a mix of clips with unsolicited popu-crap songs. With a series about a record label you would be excused were it not for the fact that the music choices are really just useless. If you bring in a pilot long Led Zeppelin too before and after for contract problems, you will be musically treated to a fake Led Zep piece of concert ?! Going over the top with sex / drugs and sprinkling big R&R names doesn't make it any more interesting. If you are sniffing yourself around one moment you are functioning fine again 5 minutes later ... yes yes only in Hollywood. Which eventually brings a completely boring and empty story after the pilot and 2nd episode so that the 8 others disappear in the trash.