Music and TV Merge
Stones = Sopranos, Zeppelin = The Wire, Rush = Breaking Bad: Our favorite bandsas TV shows
In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, while writing about Breaking Bad, the magazine’s TV critic Rob Sheffield said this: "If The Sopranos was the Stones and The Wire was Zeppelin, Breaking Bad is Rush."
As far as analogies go, it’s not half bad. It paints its picture well and is accessible to anybody who is aware of either the super-famous bands he mentions or the super-famous TV shows he’s writing about. If you’re a fan of all of it – which most Rolling Stone readers probably are – then yahtzee.
And while it’s interesting, it also feels off. Sheffield was wise to omit The Beatles – that’s a lot of pressure for a serialized hour-long TV drama – but he left a lot of important shows off of the 70’s rock map entirely. If The Sopranos was the Stones, The Wire was Led Zeppelin, Breaking Bad was Rush, then what does that make Friday Night Lights? Or Lost?
We’re in an era of hour-long serialized television that is almost universally recognized as a golden age even while we are still in it. That’s rare – maybe the last time in pop culture that happened actually was the era of 70’s rock and roll. In which case, Sheffield’s analogy was both more insightful than he likely even realized and woefully incomplete. We wanted to fill it out with some of the other shows – good, important, beloved, or all three – that deserve to be honored in this way.
“… and Friday Night Lights was the Eagles.”
The Sopranos didn’t invent the hour-long serialized television drama, but it damn sure opened the door for others, just like the Rolling Stones didn’t start the British Invasion, but they stood tall and did what they did without changing their sound much or falling apart the way that other bands did. If that’s the case, then Friday Night Lights is probably the Eagles. It’s populist in a way that a show like The Wire or Breaking Bad isn’t – those shows are for the critics, and people who share their tastes. Friday Night Lights was critically adored, but also the favorite show of my mom, who can’t stand that HBO/AMC stuff. Creatively, Friday Night Lights and the Eagles both excelled at being easy to love without pandering.
“… and Deadwood was the Stooges.”
The Wire redefined what serialized TV could be in ways that are still unmatched – much like Led Zeppelin made a single-handed argument for post-Beatles rock music as art in a fashion that would become increasingly hard to disagree with. Deadwood, HBO’s much-missed progressive Western, didn’t do that. Instead, like Iggy Pop or the Stooges, it just destroyed everything in its path, gave a giant middle finger to everybody who watched in the wrong frame of mind, and just dared audiences to be offended. Which isn’t to say that it was stupid – the Stooges weren’t either. Deadwood was willfully defiant of audience expectations. It didn’t care that contemporary audiences don’t like westerns, that it would feel weirdly anachronistic to hear that much swearing in a period piece, and that people tend to like having protagonists to root for who are at least nominally decent human beings, not the outright villains of the piece. The television equivalent of Iggy Pop rolling around in broken glass.
“… and Lost was Van Halen.”
Amid all of the TV-as-high-art talk that’s come as a result of acknowledging the greatness of our current era, one thing threatens to get lost: We also saw an ambitious, niche-focused show that competed on the same playing field as your Sopranos and Wires and Breaking Bads, but that did it with an audience that absolutely dwarfed all of those programs. At its best, The Sopranos averaged about 11 million viewers per episode. Lost, meanwhile, more than doubled that during its high points. Like Van Halen, Lost wasn’t perfect – though even the controversial final two seasons are a damn sight better than recruiting Sammy Hagar – but it had more integrity and vision behind it than anything on the same commercial wavelength. In short, it took the highly-serialized form out of the arenas and into the stadiums.
“… and Mad Men is Pink Floyd.”
The aesthetic greatness of Mad Men can’t be contested. Like the height of the Waters/Gilmour era of Pink Floyd, every aspect seems extensively curated. The vision behind it is precise. While a case can be made that these aesthetics sometimes take a priority over being as engaging as peers like Sons Of Anarchy or Black Sabbath, the fact is that Mad Men – like Floyd before it – is successful because of this devotion to setting a mood and capturing an atmosphere, instead of relying on mass appeal.
“…And True Blood is Molly Hatchet.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with mass appeal. Boiling most of the art out of an artform to focus on the things that people just plain like – trashy guitar riffs and/or trashy vampire sex – is a path to commercial success, and has its creative potential, too. Not everything has to be high art. There’s a reason Molly Hatchet is still playing county fairs, and why True Blood is HBO’s biggest hit. Sorry, Treme! Instead of a ratings bonanza, you get to be Gang Of Four.
We want to hear your Band = TV show picks, let us know what you think.