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

Just like the Sex Pistols you mean.

Having been in and managed bands in my younger years, that side of things (the bickering & bonking) looks pretty accurate to me!

 

If it was a guy he'd be a folk hero

 

I think the excuse that "oh, this is just a fictional story" doesn't hold up, because the moment something doesn't ring true in a period rock & roll story, then you've lost a certain part of the audience. Capturing the flavor, creating a verisimilitude that is completely believable for the viewer -- newcomers or fans -- is a huge challenge.

I can point to similar "fake rock biopics" (like That Thing You Do, Walk Hard, Almost Famous, and Grace of My Heart) where they pretty much got all the major aspects correct. I'm hard-pressed to think of an obvious mistake, except maybe for the color TV cameras in That Thing You Do. And the "real rock biopics" like Ray, What's Love Got to Do with It, Love & Mercy, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Elvis got most of the details correct. Doing period pictures is really hard, and it's worse for filmmakers who weren't actually alive when the story took place. And even more difficult when there's legions of dedicated fans who know every detail about the artist being featured.

 

If she was a guy, she’d be like Van Morrison, Dickey Betts, Chris Robinson, Don Van Vliet, etc. Notoriously difficult and generally unlikable human beings who usually sabotage themselves.

 

Oh for crying out loud.

 

One thing for me is true, the period songs used in the soundtrack like The Sweet (that really caught my ear) are superior to anything this fake 70s group is doing, still haven’t heard a song this band does that screams “hit” to me yet we are to believe they are a sensation and rising up the charts despite all the knock out drag out fighting going on between the 2 leads (who are both insufferable and horrible human beings).

This show does remind me of HBO’s Vinyl that only lasted one season. That show had a $100 million dollar budget.

 

Sure, but it shouldn’t cost anything to get the right dance moves by the fans at the “festival” in Hawaii. I didn’t think that kind of hopping was a thing until the 90s (I’m not referring to the Molly Ringwald-type jumping she did in The Breakfast Club, which was a popular dance style then). It’s a minor quibble, but it’s also something that seemed “off” when watching what’s supposed to be a 70s concert.

caveat: I was too young to go to concerts on the 70s, so I’m basing this on real 70s concert footage I’ve seen. Maybe I’m wrong about this.

 

So I’ve watched all the released episodes so far. It started out somewhat vapid and forced to me. By the 2nd episode I thought I might bail. Daisy’s interview segments at the beginning revealed little about her and the dialogue was trite.

However, it definitely got better as the storyline progressed and the tension heightened between Daisy and Billy. Daisy isn’t a very likeable character, no doubt due to the lack of love and attention from her parents. Meanwhile Billy does a poor job hiding his attraction to her. They are talented individuals in a newly successful band who clash on a regular basis. This is the gist of the show. There are some annoying flaws but I find myself enjoying this.

Even the music, which initially didn’t appeal, has grown on me. I have streamed the soundtrack a few times now - “The River” is probably my favorite and does give off a Fleetwood Mac vibe.

 

Interesting because several mornings now when stepping out of the shower, I've had "Look At Us Now" running through my head... I guess some things grab one person, but not another...

 

Well that's not really true. Hiring a qualified union dance instructor to teach all the extras in that scene the "right dance moves" would certainly take extra time and cost something. It's such a minor detail. I'm sure the producers and director were more concerned with what the actors were doing rather than if the extras in the audience were doing period correct dance moves. I went to many concerts in the 70s and I didn't even notice it.

 

Don’t take this too seriously - I look at this way - Amazon prime’s subscriber base is what’s considered “Bridge Millennials” who are between age 30-40 with a female majority. Who, statistics compiled from streaming services suggest they also buy and listen to a lot less music than they used to, drink merlot or craft beer, eat organic food and recycle.
So if your watching Daisy Jones, drinking craft beer, smoking a little weed, chowing down on organic nachos and reminiscing about REM, your significant has the remote control, text a least twice during an episode and deny this is you - Amazon owns your soul - though it’s likely your an atheist.

 

I want to know what’s going on in your shower with all that grabbing!

 

And you never could stop that drummer when your trying to share some communication

 

thoughts: Billy is way too buff, he should be spindly like most 70's rock stars. Daisy is very watchable. the songs are a very mixed bag, some trying to cater to the country crowd and others rock crowd but it feels muted.

 

I quite enjoy Billy's buff body, thank you very much

 

I wouldn't say you lose a certain part of the audience - I'm surely part of that audience (older, was a kid and teenager throughout that decade, huge fan of 70s rock, my home base in terms of a lifelong and expanding taste in music, reader of dozens of rock bios, autobios and memoirs, avid fan of rock movies from the moments I saw Phantom of the Paradise and Stardust on heavy repeat on HBO in 1975, etc.). That audience recognizes when the challenge of doing this right, recreating a time and place with insight and accuracy, hasn't been met. At that point the movie or series becomes pure entertainment as opposed to a valid representation of that time. They're clearly not going for that (i.e., our) audience! I can still enjoy it on that level while recognizing a missed opportunity. I always a appreciate a director or production team going all-out to achieve authenticity but also recognize that's not a given.

It is much better than the vomitous HBO show series Vinyl that was thankfully cancelled just after the first season ended! I would recommend Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel as a fun rock read.

 

I just watched the episode where they recorded the album, and that one, in particular, made me think her vocals sounded too much like a modern country singer (which I hate). I feel like rock singers didn’t really use that type of phrasing and timbre in the ‘70s. I actually wondered if her vocals were done by a Nashville singer until I googled it. I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if her vocal coach was from Nashville, though!

The songs are WAY too derivative of Fleetwood Mac. That’s the clear reference for the entire show, but I thought they could make the music at least a little less of a blatant rip-off.

But I certainly would not expect songs written for a fictional TV band to be at the same quality level as literally some of the most successful, popular songs in the history of rock music.

I’m not really complaining about the show. It has some flaws, sure, but not enough to ruin the enjoyment of watching it. I had low expectations going in, and have been surprised that I’ve enjoyed it a little bit more than I’d expected. But this isn’t great art here, it’s lightweight mindless entertainment. It’s the TV equivalent of a beach novel. And it works fine as that.

 

I do like Regret Me, it has potential.

 

I'm enjoying the series, but Vidiot is right - that jumped out at me as well as not ringing even slightly likely.

 

I don’t watch that closely, I guess…

 

"egomaniacal, stupidly stubborn, childish, self destructive idiots."

I can think of some rock "stars" for which this is a pretty good description.

 

Wow, with that level of period detail you should produce a series.

 

You know, I wanted to love the Vinyl show, and it was extremely well done. But instead of being a show about the insides of the 1970s record business, and how some artists get successful while others crash and burn, it became a show about how the mob infiltrated the record business, with way too much about the criminal aspect. And yet from an "accuracy" point of view, everything was terrific, as lush and dramatic as you would expect a Martin Scorsese project to be: great locations, great costumes, the hairstyles made sense, the studios were right... I would say even the fake music was pretty good.

 

It's a cliche, but I like that the show flips the gender from the way this usually works (the guy is a mess, the lady is sober and tries to straighten him out). It's different than the usual. Like Mylene, I like Daisy as well, for the same reasons. Her character (and Riley Keough's performance) is the best thing about the show.

 

The thing I really disliked about that show is that it tried to cover every music subculture that existed in New York City circa 1977 - punk, disco, early hip-hop, and I think the Salsoul scene was in there, too. Any one of those scenes would have made a great story on its own - smashing in all of them felt overwhelming. Daisy Jones and the Six does something similar with the disco scene, but on a much more reasonable scale (one episode).

Something that I'm wondering about - when does this show take place? I assumed somewhere around 1975, but the last two episodes cover disco and use The Jam's "In The City" (1977).