"Daisy Jones & the Six" upcoming Prime Series about a fictional Fleetwood Mac-like band (03/03/2023)

Leads are ok but Billy but I don’t they have enough charisma for the parts. The casting and character development of the other band members is poor. They are almost like cartoon characters- especially the drummer, giving a lack of credibility and being way off a top shelf series. That said I dig rock and the era so I am enjoying it.

 

Loved the third episode! Looking forward to the next one(s)!

 

The buildup to Daisy and Billy working together was worth the wait! And I thought the song was great!

I included it in post #4, but I’m copying it here again!

I wish there was a video for the song, but maybe Atlantic will release it later.


Prime Video's Faux-Biopic Daisy Jones & The Six Hits (Almost) All the Right Notes

 

'Daisy Jones & the Six' review: Riley Keough leads featherweight flop

 

"Try as it might, "Daisy" can't create an evocative story out of nostalgia, electric guitars and pretty people. "

lol. Some things are so obvious.

 

Just started watching this, and wow, that garage band scene brought back a flood of memories. What they didn't get right is the garage would've been full of mismatched amps and home-made speaker cabinets and there would be cables snaking every which way across the floor.

 

hahaha And lots of cheap Peavy. The best thing about our garage band rehearsals was everyone was responsible for bringing their own case of beer. Yes, “case.”

 

Amazon slapped up the second set of three episodes this morning. Ep. 4 feels like a breakout episode. Artists might not like each other, but even Their egos can’t deny chemistry when it’s in the air.

Magnificent usage of a piano-driven cover of Faces “Ooh La La” in a key scene—which You’ll know when You see.

- siyt

 

Daisy Jones & The Six Sneak Peek! Daisy Breaks Through with Billy and Encourages Simone to Follow Her Heart

 

Riley Keough Wears a Replica of Grandfather Elvis' Iconic 1968 Guitar Strap in 'Daisy Jones & the Six'

 

I’m enjoying this light hearted romp down nostalgia avenue for what it is

 

Same. I thought the first 3 episodes were pretty good. Looking forward to watching 3 more tonight. It's nice to have a music-related show to watch.

 

I don't see Stevie Nicks at all. I see Florence Welch.

I'm about four episodes in and its entertaining enough. I'm enjoying Riley's acting. The guy playing Billy is not interesting to watch or appealing at all. I read the book and it was fine, had movie/series written all over it (that's the best way for fiction writers to make money these days).

 

Don't forget the eggshell-carton "soundproofing" on the walls. And cheap Shure microphones. And Koss headphones.

 

I like watching shows like this just to spot the anachronisms. "Hey! That tape deck is WRONG!" or "that car didn't come out for another 4 years!" or "nobody used that phrase back in 1976!"

 

Jenny Lewis came to my mind.

 

They're rampant! But overall, it's an enjoyable watch. The appeal of the novel is that it reads like those extended Rolling Stone articles where the reporter would hang out with the band for weeks or months, on the road and in the studio, and give readers that "personal" look into the lives and mechanics of the band. The series feels a bit more like a soap opera, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It helps that Riley Keough is so easy on the eyes!

I only have two big issues with it. Obviously, the music: a band that sounds like it would have given Firefall a run for its money. That's not the generational-defining influence and talent you got with mid-70s Fleetwood Mac. The music is paint-by-numbers "this is what we think 70s music sounded like" pastiches created by no-doubt talented current musicians. (Jackson Browne is in on this? I'm not sure what songs are his?) It becomes obvious when real songs from that time period are used to enhance various scenes, the notable distance between classics of the time and talented mimicry. I need to suspend disbelief when the band cuts a "hot track," or one of the singers offers up a plaintive solo ballad on acoustic guitar, and the fawning response is, "This is incredible" or "you're a genius." The book framed the band's work as being on the real-life level of albums like Rumours or Born to Run. I think what we get feels more so like a reasonably good Seals & Crofts album.

The little aside about two of the band members (one a female keyboard player) deriding one of their beautiful girlfriends because she likes Barry Manilow rings false. Teenage males at the time were encouraged to dump on Manilow in this fashion, with a healthy dose of homophobia (which turned out to be accurate as Manilow really was gay!). But I recall being perplexed by numerous articles at the time when my rock-star heroes (like Ian Hunter) would compliment Manilow on the modulation in his songs, his arrangement and production chops, etc. Musician shop-talk of the time no doubt recognized Manilow as a talented guy who carved a niche for himself - not this dickish interlude I don't recall from the book! There was also a singalong scene to "Ooh La La" by The Faces. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that album and song were not hits in America and not the kind of "fabric of our lives" song in the mid-70s that would have had a whole room of people knowing every word and singing along. This seems like a take-off of the "Tiny Dancer" scene from Almost Famous, which was also dubious and corny but at least had everyone singing along to the radio.

My other problem is the cinematography - see my earlier reference to yellow and brown filters used on the cameras to represent "the past" and particularly the 70s. My memories of the 70s aren't shaded in a muted, yellowish tint that I've only recognized in real life in the moments before a severe electrical storm. They're in full color, the same color I see as I sit watching my hands type this now on my laptop. This is why Dazed and Confused and Almost Famous worked so well (among many other excellent creative decisions) - they looked real. I recently noticed the same crappy visual effects used on the George Clooney-directed The Tender Bar which recalled the 70s and 80s in a really odd tint that I don't recall from this time period. Or planet. The worst case of this I've ever seen was that horrible CBGB's movie starring Alan Richtman. It looked like they were filming on Mars. So does this, a lot, especially the legendary concert in Oahu ... which sort of looks like the same Mojave Desert scrubland used later in the album-cover photo session? I don't understand how this visual choice became an industry standard in terms of representing the recent past on film.

Those issues aside, I do enjoy the series and will keep on watching! The story itself is great fun for rock fans and for the most part captures the gist of the book.

 

Shure microphones would've been an upgrade for us...we used Radio Shack mics and even some of the cheesy kind that came with our little 3" reel to reel tape recorders. We did have a couple pair of Koss 4a headphones though...back then, those were the ones to have.

 

Oh, yeah, the Koss Pro-4AA's: the "head clamps," as we used to call them. I swear, they weighed like 8 pounds... massive.

 

That "Let Me Down Easy" song really goes for the Fleetwood Mac sound.

 

I don't know why the F "creative" producers and directors approach period pieces with the insistence that they use an extreme look to show that that time was much different than the way things are now. I think the film that popularized that idea was Steven Soderbergh's 2000 crime film Traffic, where they leaned hard on the "if it's yellow, it must be Mexico" trope, plus it went blue in Washington, then the scenes were desaturated for NYC, and then very colorful for Los Angeles. The idea is, the moment you see those colors, you automatically know where you are in the story.

But to me, if I remember the '70s as I saw it, it's got a bit of a glow and maybe slightly desaturated, but not much. Too often, filmmakers lean on stylish looks because their production is creatively bankrupt, and they're struggling to give it that special "something" that gives it more impact.

BTW, I just saw some kind of a '70s show the other day (can't remember which one), and the authentic '70s car creaked and had clunky noises whenever the car door was opened and closed. Uh-uh -- car doors were smooth and well-greased back then. A 1976 car in 1976 sounded fine... but a 1976 car in a production shot in 2023 is now 47 years old and is creaky and clunky, no matter how well it's maintained on the outside. There's a lot of little stylistic mistakes in these movies that bug me: the sound of telephones ringing is another one, or the way phone booths worked, or graphics on billboards and on store windows. I think the problem is, almost everybody working on the show is maybe 40-45 at the most, and they weren't alive when this stuff was around... so they don't know what they don't know.

It's a pleasure to see a movie like Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where they got all of the look of 1969 absolutely perfect. And DP Bob Richardson didn't slather on some fancy yellow or blue or desaturated look -- I think they just shot it on film with a little diffusion and lit it well, so it basically looked like a well-shot movie from that era. Nothing heavy-handed, all very real and natural.

 

I could have watched several more episodes! Really enjoyed the latest three -- and I think the lead actors have great chemistry as actors and as a "band"!

Just loved this performance:

 

I don't know how they did the car scenes in that movie, which is to say incidental scenes of a car driving down the freeway or through a neighborhood: the scenery outside the car window as the car passes. Did they somehow use actual footage from that time period and touch it up digitally? Because it looked like they were driving around rural/suburban California in 1969! I know the Los Angeles area in general back then was more rural. I always love watching the 1978 version of Heaven Can Wait for the canyon scenes near the beginning (where Warren Beatty's character has a small house) for this reason. (I also enjoy watching Shampoo from 1975 for the same reason - just that look and feel of Los Angeles in the 70s.)

I also understand that with an Amazon production, the budget is probably tighter than on a major motion picture, and the amount of work required to create period authenticity might not be possible. But it would seem replicating the look and feel of a 70s movie featuring the Los Angeles area should be doable, given there are hundreds of easily watchable samples from that time period one can see now?

 

Let Me Down Easy is the show's homage to Go Your Own Way just as Look At Us Now (Honeycomb) is an homage to The Chain.

 

I was in Oahu last year and that concert in ep 4 was not in Hawaii.

And man it was torturous to see Billy and Daisy to write even 1 song together, they are like anti-musicians.