Speaking of music we think is worth your time, this installment features four acts from different corners of the map, each doing something distinctive and, at times, moving. There’s folk-tinged defiance from Portland, a slice-of-life pop gem from the New York area, an emotional tribute that spans continents and generations, and some neo-vintage instrumental cool.

The Builders and the Butchers, “World’s On Fire”

We’re living in a time of great change, and during times like these, artists are often at the forefront, expressing what it feels like to live through it. Case in point: Portland, Oregon-based The Builders and the Butchers. Their latest album, No Tomorrow, is out now. It has an organic feel — banjo-forward, with a Decemberists-and-Mumford-and-Sons vibe — but “World’s On Fire,” despite its rather bleak title, reflects what lyricist and guitarist Ryan Sollee calls an “overarching message…that we can find hope in each other and still lead lives full of joy and creativity even when systems and leaders fail us.” That sentiment is evident in the opening lyrics:

Sitting around here waiting for my Lord
Sitting around here waiting for my Lord
And if he don’t show, I’ll have another cigarette and beer
’Cause only a fool thought that the good Lord would end up here

There’s no shame in loving someone you don’t understand
Only wasted time in keeping heads down in the sand
I shot my bullets at my feet, I cut your name into my hand
There’s no shame in living life in full light while you can

Amen, brother.

Allie Sandt, “Amanda Antiques”

This New York/New Jersey-based singer-songwriter has been featured in Single Play before and on my podcast, Planet LP. She’s currently working on a new album and has completed a studio version of “Amanda Antiques” with some of her former bandmates from Seeing Double. The song opens with busy guitar work before leaping into an almost samba-like feel anchored in a pop-rock structure. Allie noted that the song is about a woman she met in upstate New York who — yes — runs an antique store, and the lyrics clearly reflect that slice of life:

I’m knocking on her place of business
I ring her doorbell to the dogs
They run up biting on my ankles
She jingles over when she walks
In with the old, out with the new
She’s selling your old clothes back to you
Just like her mother and her mother’s mother too

Coco Bans, “Pray (Daughter’s Version)”

Fans of Grey’s Anatomy might remember this song from episode 20 of season 16, “Sing It Again.” Performed by Coco Bans and written by Allyson Ezell, Jo Pereira, Olivia Slania, and Matthew Ker, “Pray” is an emotional rollercoaster that hits all the right notes for the feels. Now, Liv Slania has taken this 2019 song and expanded it into a tribute to her father, Czesław Słania. Liv notes that her dad was “the world’s most esteemed and prolific stamp engraver” and that she began writing the song after his death to find some closure. “When Coco Bans heard me quietly playing it on the piano and humming along,” she continues, “and having recently experienced a loss herself, she was inspired to help bring it to completion.”

Trabants, “Purple Panther”

The name of this band is Trabants — pronounced Truh-bonts. They are a Portland, Oregon-based instrumental project whose latest single, “Purple Panther,” is inspired by composer Henry Mancini. If, on first listen, you think, “Hey, this could be the theme of a TV show from the 1960s,” you wouldn’t be far off — that’s very much the intention: to carry on the crime-thriller and spy-film style that Mancini brought to shows like Mission: Impossible, Get Smart, and Peter Gunn. Saxophonist Ron Dziubla (who has played with Duane Eddy and Los Straitjackets) supplies plenty of soul and character, making this a real neo-nostalgia treat.

Giant, however, slashes. To set the scene for the main event this time I must mention that at the same age I was watching Vincent Price movies I was consuming the books and stories of Roald Dahl, a cornerstone of many a childhood. Mark Rosenblatt’s play, an Olivier winner on the West End last year that’s now at the Music Box, finds the beloved author in his not-quite-finished house struggling with The Witches (1983), sparring with his fiancee Liccy and British publisher Tom Maschler, and generally performing the part of the great man of letters as only a great man of the theater as John Lithgow can. (Like Dahl he’s a BFG, filling the room when he stands.) But there’s a chill in the air, attributable not to the weather (it’s summer) or Dahl’s fussing about but from reports of a prowler. He’s made the news, and not in a good way–a critique he’s written for the Literary Review about a photo book concerning Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, a review steeped in antisemitic vitriol, is causing headaches at home and “across the pond.” Liccy (Rachael Stirling) and Tom (Elliot Levey) are trying to control the damage, but both are in too deep with Dahl to sway him toward reasonableness, much less a public apology. (He and Liccy had a long affair while he was married to the actress Patricia Neal, a fraught union recently ended, and Tom, who came up with the Booker Prize, is constantly calibrating art and commerce with his star client, notwithstanding his own Jewish heritage.)

Into this unsettled situation comes Jessie Stone (Aya Cash, excellent), a young, relatively green sales director of Dahl’s US publisher, which has been fielding complaints. She hasn’t been briefed on how to manage Dahl’s moods and temperament but at first it’s ok; he’s happy to sign an autograph for her son, which brings out his paternal side. He loves children, and prides himself on speaking their language of disgust and revulsion (I reciprocated his indulgence, a wellspring of delight–and controversy over appropriateness–that has carried on into the era of Timothée Chalamet and Netflix adaptations). But he’s horrified by the death of Lebanese children at the hands of the Israelis–isn’t Stone…or is it “Stein”? And so begins a war of words, a war that Stone , fiery in her red skirt, wages with Dahl’s own words, taken verbatim from his review. They’re ugly, and I flinched throughout her painful recitation. What I knew of this episode was about as much as Wiki told me, and that isn’t much. (This is more illuminating.)

Act I concludes on a note of what I call “mic drop theater,” where no one in the audience dares to say a word. The second act contrives to bring Stone (a fictitious character) back to Dahl’s dining room table, which by this point is about as inviting as Titus Andronicus’. We expect some sort of comeuppance, or meeting of the minds, or understanding. (Some, not Rosenblatt, who wrote a portrait of the author, conjecture that the traumatic brain injury he suffered during World War II, which he said released his creativity, also loosed his demons.) There is a bit of relief. But only a bit, as Dahl, for whom antisemitism is a feature and not a bug, wallows in what goes well beyond performative hatred. In truth the play, galvanizing though it is, succumbs to repetition as it builds to a harrowing final scene, a telephone interview with a journalist also repeated verbatim. You’ll hang onto to every horrible word that Lithgow utters–a problem with Nicholas Hytner’s otherwise assured direction, as you’re bound to miss most of the clarifying reaction from Dahl’s maid Hallie (Stella Everett), who is positioned elsewhere in the room.

Decades after his death Dahl’s family apologized for these actions, which by then were obscured by the passage of time. Giant brings them front and center on Bob Crowley’s haunted set as arguments over artists and their art, never easy to resolve, are further amplified in the clanging corridors of social media. (The 80-year-old Lithgow, who loves his monsters, is working on a Harry Potter show, angering fans who admire his gentler Oscar-nominated performance in The World According to Garp and detest author J.K. Rowling’s statements on transgenderism.) It’s a difficult play to absorb, and to ponder, in the wake of October 7 and the Mideast conflagration. I’m glad Dahl’s books remain and that he’s gone; I shudder to think of him Zooming with the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, trading barbs and conspiracy theories about the Jews.

It’s just the exact kind of movie that people say they want – no superheroes, about real people, and made for adults.   

Here’s the thing: there were 5 other people with me in that theater, even on a limited release.

Were we there because we have more integrity than other mainstream movie fans? Nope. A ton of other things can get in the way of “walking the walk” artistically in life.

Hypocrisy No Longer Hypocritical

It would be easy to say that this demonstrates that people say they want sophisticated movies, but they don’t put their money where their mouth is. Not only would it be easy to say that, but it would also be lazy to say that. It’s a cliche.

Again, I liked the movie – but it’s also a taste making movie to say you like. The norm seems to be that if somebody sees a foreign language film in a theater, or even anything at the “art house” theater in town, it takes that person about 10 minutes after it’s finished to post on Instagram how much they loved it.

That’s not hypocritical; that’s just the way it is. People have online personae, and they have their real lives. Those two things are less and less related. Or at least mutually predictive.

It might seem odd to think of us all having double lives, but it’s structurally normal now. And it’s probably been the case even since social media began.

Every tweet, post, or reel is like a press release submitted to an algorithm. They’re curated to be of interest, not necessarily representative of our lives.

I’ve probably posted 100 vacation photos on some social media platform over the years. I have never once tweeted about washing the dishes, and I’ve washed the dishes probably 200 times per vacation over the course of my life.

But we all expect that. When we watch TikTok or Facebook videos, we know we’re watching a sizzle real, not normal moments.

Film False Fronts

I started this about Fantasy Life, but the dichotomy between what we say we watch and what we watch is there in all of the arts. Shared playlists are just as curated and self-conscious as any mixtape somebody made for a girlfriend back in the day.

It’s not surprising to see somebody post that they just binged DTF St. Louis but I would definitely do a double-take if I read one of my friends bragging that they just watched reruns of 2 Broke Girls for three hours on a Saturday night.

Lifestyle Signaling

The whole situation seems like a nightmare for a marketing expert to gauge or predict sales based on “buzz.” Hard enough in entertainment, but probably even more difficult in commerce.

Everybody loves to “support local,” it costs absolutely nothing to say. And people use Starbucks as a stand-in for bourgeois consumerism. Yet, guess what the most popular coffee restaurant is in just about every neighborhood. That’s not an “aha moment”, it’s just the way buzz vs. behavior goes.

Some communities or organizers have tried their hands at legislation to ban The Gap from their shopping district. As if that’s our better nature but we just can’t help ourselves from going there.

Or my favorite example of public vs. real behavior: Symphony closings. If a mid-sized or even large city has a symphony or opera company that is close to filing for bankruptcy, the social media posts come out lamenting the state of the arts and that a burgeoning opera scene is the hallmark of a first-class city.

Eventually, a rich local benefactor swoops in to save the day so we can all go back to normal. Which is nobody going to the opera or the symphony.

I-Dentity

We’ve called social media behavior “virtue signaling” and while that’s true, I’m not trying to be critical or blow the lid off of inconsistent behavior. It’s just a fact. And everybody does it in their own way; not having a calculated persona IS a calcuated persona. There’s no escape.

But what I think all of our posts and press conferences for nobody are just that: for nobody. I would submit that these posts do way more for people to clarify their own choices and opinions for themselves than they do for informing others about you.

The things we say publicly are self-definition. And even if we behave differently, that doesn’t mean we don’t believe the contradictory things we said.

Behavior Interrupted

Let’s go back to the movie choice. I saw Fantasy Life the other day because I had the afternoon free, a cool art house cinema a couple miles away, and the showtime worked out great with my plans.

The stars aligned for me to see it. There are plenty of factors that had they gone the other direction, would have kept me from seeing it. If the movie was at 3:00 instead of 2:00, I would have skipped it – and Fantasy Life is not a multiple screen movie. True indies like this are lucky to get one screen in a city to themselves for 1-2 weeks.

If I felt like just seeing a movie regardless of what it was, it would be unlikely to show up at a multiplex and run into Fantasy Life. Furthermore, I only even found out about the movie from some minor Instagram post on it that happened to show up in my algorithm. I very easily could have never known the movie existed until well past its short theatrical run.

What I’m getting at is, sure, people act based on what they value. But the other equally important factors are availability and convenience.

Conclusion

I think most of us would rather have a pasta and vinegrette salad for dinner than a Big Mac. How often we do that depends largely on our values but also how tired we are, what kind of day we had, how annoying traffic might have been on the way home, and impulse. That doesn’t make us phonies.

Meanwhile, we still might take a shot at McDonalds in a social media post. Jim Gaffigan did ten great minutes on the hypocrisy of rolling ones eyes at McDonalds. I hope you’ve seen it:

We can still have our profiles, our harmless virtue-signaling, and online fantasy life. Thankfully, everybody is media sophisticated enough now not to point fingers at each other for being online hypocrites. And that’s great.

That said, please don’t make me go to a Marvel movie. That’s my online position and also my real-life policy.

However, this article is clearly about the evolution of “Meta TV,” and in this piece, we need to define “meta.”

So, we’ve started an article with a cliché of a start, acknowledging how clichéd a start like this is.  It don’t get more “meta” than that.

Meta TV can mean different things to different people.  For me, it starts with self-awareness.  Winking at the camera is a simple and sometimes reliable joke, but a show isn’t really meta until it demonstrates that we all are aware of the realities of shows, and we’re about to play around with something we all understand.

There are additional rules about TV itself being toyed with.  The show isn’t a story about something in life anymore.  It’s a story about stories or a show about shows.

This shared inside joke between creators and audience is a relationship.  That’s what “Meta TV” is.  It only works when viewers understand the tropes and the “rules” of TV storytelling.

Because audiences get savvier over time, Meta TV naturally becomes more meta as decades pass and viewers have watched more TV.

Category 1: TV Discovers It’s A TV Show (Proto-Meta)

Of course, early TV looks pretty primitive looking back on it now – low energy puppets like Kookla, Fran & Ollie and the hilarity of Uncle Milty putting on a dress passed for entertainment.

It took the smarter creators and producers about 15 minutes to get bored with the standard version of the form.  The black and white era had real innovators like Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs doing shows within a show and both literally and figuratively turning TV upside down.

This stuff holds up better than any Your Show of Shows or I Love Lucy clip.  Just watch a Burns And Allen Show and you’ll see self-referential jokes, weird narration, fourth-wall stuff, and all sorts of things satirizing the form that wasn’t even 10 years old.

If you really want to get into something that seems corny at first but turns out to be so revolutionary that you’ll wish you were high for it, try Green Acres on for size.

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, on several occasions has cited Green Acres‘ wonderful weirdness and he credits it being a big part of his upbringing and a partial inspiration for The Simpsons.  You can see some of the playfulness in this clip.

But, the episode where the Green Acres residents of Hooterville put on a theatrical performance of The Beverly Hillbillies (which shared production teams and the same timeslot hour on CBS) is a tour-de-force of early meta, way before anybody coined the term.

Category 2: TV Makes Fun of the Business of TV (Industry Meta)

This group isn’t just about any show about show business.  The Dick Van Dyke Show, as brilliant as it was, never traded in meta-craft.  Ricky Ricardo was a bandleader with a Manhattan apartment and club on I Love Lucy; the premise didn’t generate meta moments.

But several great shows used show business to get very meta.  The Larry Sanders Show was immediately the king of this in the 1990s.  Anything real in Hollywood or star/creator Garry Shandling’s life got sucked into the show.  He hated Dana Carvey’s SNL impression of him so had Dana Carvey do it to Larry on the show.  Sean Penn on the fictional Larry Sanders Show told a story about the nightmare of acting with Garry Shandling.  Fictionalized versions of guest stars were incredible; I will never be able to get David Duchovny’s “Basic Instinct moment” coming on to Larry out of my mind.

There are so many “Meta Hall Of Fame moments” to highlight here.

Arrested Development had a ton, but the “Save Our Bluths” episode not only had the representative clip below but a great self-aware gag about having to blur out one of Andy Richter’s quintuplet brother, who didn’t sign a release

There are plenty of hall-of-fame meta scenes on 30 Rock.  The live episodes’ self-referential stuff alone puts them on Meta Mount Rushmore.  But I’m partial to this clip of Tracy Morgan preventing himself from being used in a film by singing his thoughts to Billy Joel songs that can’t be cleared for air:

The Simpsons threw everything at the wall over the years.  You gotta love the “Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show” episode.  And special format episodes like seeing characters’ off-screen lives in “22 Short Films About Springfield” and the Behind The Music parody are about as meta the Simpsons ever gets.  Yet, none of the shows did it quite as well as “The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase.”

Of course, Jerry Seinfeld making a “Jerry” sitcom as a season-long plot device on the Seinfeld sitcom is approaching the meta TV singularity.  Yet for my money, I just can’t get enough of Kramer finding the old Merv Griffin Show set in a dumpster and turning his apartment and whole life into a talk show:

Then, later on Curb Your Enthusiasm, there was a Michael Richards moment in their Seinfeld reunion arc that not only turned a real-life incident in on itself but perhaps allowed Michael Richards to be funny again.

And when I think of self-referential sitcom moments, I have to shout out the awards show episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia:

Category 3: TV Blurs Performance and the Very Nature of Existence (Reality Meta)

Meta TV just isn’t breaking the fourth-wall or making in-jokes about show business.

Some shows took all of this to the next level and got into so many Inception-like deep layers, it was simply amazing to watch.

If any Mr. Show fans are with me here, you’ll certainly remember “Car Wash Change Thief Action Squad,” where a different change theft happens in the reenactment of a change theft.  But if you really want a Mobius strip of a comedy sketch, go with the insane logic of the “Pre-Taped Call-In Show” here:

Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC political fund existed in real life because fictional Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report created a Super PAC that spilled over from the TV into real life.  The Colbert Report was a consistent meta-TV great with Stephen Colbert as the Stephen Colbert character eating his own tail.

But Nathan Fielder is truly the GOAT when it comes to meta moments every bit as insane and deep as the ones in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdote, New York.

On Nathan For You, the “Finding Frances” and “Dumb Starbucks” episodes have so many levels of real-life stunts; the insertion of the original real humans inside fake re-creations creates so much layered insanity.

Fielder leaned into it on HBO’s The Rehearsal.  Season 1 had the insane trivia night recreations and then the awkwardly real fake family arc.  Season 2 got even stranger and further up its own ass with the co-pilot trust issue and crazy deep airline stuff.  Chef’s kiss.

And how about Perd Hapley from Parks And Recreation?  His self-proving introductions and preambles make a meta meal out of speech itself.  He is tautology incarnated.

Tautologisms are language that explains itself by restating itself to near meaninglessness.  Think of the Abraham Lincoln quote, “For people who enjoy this sort of thing, this is just the sort of thing that they would enjoy.”

Perd Hapley is next level.  “Let’s begin the show by starting it,” “The statement this reporter has is a question,” and “Also joining us is another person.”  Enjoy the Perd Hapley experience in this highlight reel:

This list wouldn’t be complete without the theme song for It’s Garry Shandling’s Show – “This is the theme to Garry’s show.”  Listen to it, please.  It’s meta perfection.

All of these shows in some way are attempting to destabilize what’s real.

Category 4: Not Just For Comedy (Meta Drama)

It seems like meta scenarios and statements are easier in comedy than drama.  Once you establish a crazy self-referential scenario, that’s enough to generate comedy.  In a dramatic situation, it’s harder to pull off and find meaning that’s more than a joke.

Author and schizophrenic Philip K. Dick wrote the brilliant, trippy The Man In The High Castle, which became a good early Amazon Prime TV show.  The premise supposes that the Germans and Axis powers won World War II and ruled over an occupied United States.  In the book/show though, there was an author of a book called The Man In The High Castle, which supposed an alternate reality where the U.S. and Allied forces won World War II.  Wow.  Seriously, mind-blowing stuff.

David Lynch and Twin Peaks: The Return were often inscrutable and consistently brilliant.  Yes, tracking the deep levels of the Agent Cooper dopplegangers and tulpas can be hard work.  But so much of that last series was about time and the impossibility of storytelling.
The series concludes with Cooper trying to fix the past, and he looks like he’s going to do it by bringing the Laura Palmer lookalike back to Laura’s house.  Nope.  Instead, we just get “What year is this?”

The most legendary meta drama moment and perhaps best series ending for decades was the conclusion of St. Elsewhere where it turns out the whole series was just in the mind of Dr. Westphal’s autistic son Tommy:

The last scene of The Sopranos makes a case that narrative endings are impossible since they don’t exist in life, or the cut to black is how sudden death feels.

Sure, at the time viewers thought their cable went out.  But it’s caused fantastic arguments ever since.  It’s not “meta” within the show, but it’s meta about how viewers watch television.

Conclusion

Where is this all heading?  More and more, audiences see and hear things about people who make TV.  As their knowledge of the industry keeps expanding, that opens the door to shows about shows and trust that the public understands it.

Yeah, things are not inherently good by being meta.  There’s a lot of lazy “post-ironic” irony from the moustache-humor crowd; it insists it’s a joke by being cheeky or calling attention to itself.  We’ll have to deal with that.

But on the bright side, there’s going to be plenty more of the good stuff coming.  And I can’t wait.

Their usual complaint is that they feel pigeonholed by their biggest hits like “Creep” or “Shiny Happy People.”  As a songwriter with exactly zero hits to my name, my advice for those guys would be to have the dignity to shut their very expensive mouths.  

This article is not about that kind of whiny “artistes”.  That kind of malcontentism bores me, and it would bore you too.  

That said, there are plenty of artists in all kinds of media who have legitimate beefs or at least interesting relationships with their audiences.  

No ‘Correct’ Interpretations  

Most of the art world feels that interpretation is up to the viewer instead of the artist.  There’s an official consensus that there isn’t any one correct take on a song, novel, or film.  In some ponderous cases, like the end of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, there might not be ANY correct takes.  

Even so, some audience reactions have to be infuriating for creators.  I’ll quote the smarter and less violent of the Men In Black, “A person is smart. People are dumb.”

The First Rule of Fight Club: Don’t Interpret Fight Club  

Movie audiences can be scary.  Not scary in terms of copycat violence projection like A Clockwork Orange or The Joker.  The issue that filmmakers have experienced is when they portray a character who is fundamentally reprehensible or irredeemable, and the audience loves that character and almost wants to be that character.  

It’s got to be disheartening and makes film people lose faith in humanity.  

Take the movie Wall Street, for example.  Oliver Stone made what I think is a great movie about greed and the inherent corruption and unfairness in financial and political institutions.  Well, apparently, they screwed up by showing Gordon Gekko’s lifestyle on screen, and aspirational douchebag viewers found a new hero.    

Stone said that the “greed is good” speech was supposed to be a moral warning.  Moviegoers remember that speech and not that Gekko ends up in jail.  Michael Douglas has famously said that stockbroker fans have repeatedly come up to him and thanked him for their careers.  

Equally vexing are the murderous gangsters in mafia movies, particularly The Godfather.  Theatergoers identified with Michael Corleone and Don Corleone as being the relatively ethical capos in the films, even though their real power came from violence and murder.  

Francis Ford Coppola tried to push the audience away from Michael in Part II, showing how far he fell morally – but fans wanted to be Michael anyway.  

What’s worse than having fans ignore your financial grift and violence moral rot messages?  Having them ignore both.  That’s what’s happened to Martin Scorsese with Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf Of Wall Street.  

Sure, only nuts like John Hinckley identified with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.  But fans couldn’t get enough of the lifestyles of Henry Hill in Goodfellas and Ace Rothstein in Casino. Scorsese has discussed that audiences stick with the riding-high parts of those movies and ignore the moral comeuppance.    

He was determined to push people further to make the lessons clear with over-the-top gross and morally repugnant behavior from the leads in The Wolf of Wall Street.  

Yet audiences apparently can’t see a mansion, a yacht, and Margot Robbie and not want to be a part of it, no matter how.  Finance bros have literally been using clips from the movie to fire themselves up on the job.  

Director David Fincher had a bad case of the same phenomenon with Fight Club.  The hyper-masculinity and simple-minded anti-establishment thinking were all somewhat satirical.  Fincher wanted these dudes looking for simple answers to be appealing for purposes of getting into the film, but again, audiences seem to check out morally two-thirds of the way into the film.   

The alleged lone wolf anti-authoritarians turn out to be authoritarian themselves in the end – but nobody got that far.    

Tyler Durden is supposed to be the villain of the movie in the end, not the hero.  A critique of out-of-control masculinity ended up on dorm-room walls for young bros all over the country.  

Film is perhaps the most powerful of the arts.  It envelopes audiences, especially in the movie theater, where viewers are totally immersed.  And the four directors I mentioned here are among the very best in the history of Hollywood, so in some of these cases they were just guilty of setting up the first 60% of their movies too well.  

But audiences missing the point is not limited to movies.

The Catcher In The Why  

Literature has plenty of doozies of audience wish fulfillment that spooked the author.    

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is pretty plainly an examination of the American Dream.  Gatsby is a hollow social climber obsessed with things that aren’t real.  But what’s the legacy of that novel?  Gatsby parties are going over-the-top with flapper outfits even to this day, 100 years later.

Even worse was J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye about cynical and rebellious Holden Caulfield.  The character is complex, and Salinger has said that he was focusing on the fragility of innocence.    

Instead, he became an icon of teen rebellion and became a role model to some impressionable and misguided readers.  I myself remember being somewhat affected by the book at age 21, but tried it on at 40 and had to put it down.  I literally put it away and said out loud, “I hate this fucking guy.”  

It famously freaked Salinger out.  He retreated from public life and stopped writing, all because his personal work got taken over by Caulfield wannabees who didn’t quite get it.  Salinger’s retreat is the most famous instance of an artist getting freaked out by his fans.  

Total Whack Job  

David Chase, in creating and writing The Sopranos, had a controversy with fan reactions.  Actually, he had two reaction controversies to deal with, but I’m not really talking about the last scene going to black reaction, where fans thought their cable went out instead of it being an artistic choice.  

What really perplexed Chase was that fans of the show just loved Tony.  No.  Matter.  What.  Heinous.  Act.  He.  Committed.  

My aunt, who appeared to be a fairly demure woman, was always hoping that Tony would “whack” somebody in the next episode when we discussed the show.  She wasn’t alone.  Sopranos fans were ride or die for Tony.   

It was amazing to see how people would get amnesia about the fact that these were reprehensible murderers who fans were rooting for just because they said something funny at Satriali’s.  

Mobsters in movies and TV think the rest of us are suckers – fictional Tony Soprano and Henry Hill have spelled it out exactly.  Here’s Tony’s treatise on his fellow man:  

“The people who follow all the rules, play it safe, they’re the suckers. They get what they’re owed and no more. You gotta take what you want.”  

And Henry Hill in Goodfellas …

The audience of “suckers” idolizing these mobsters vexed Chase, and you could almost tell in the writing when fans were getting too cozy; Tony, like clockwork, would do something awful on screen – the bustout of the sporting goods store ruining his friend’s life.  Or murdering Ralph.  Or murdering Adriana.  Or murdering Christopher.  Oops, sorry for the lack of a spoiler alert.  

Sometimes A Banana Is Just A Banana, But Sometimes A Flower Is Something Else  

When it comes to fans spooking a visual artist, I think of Georgia O’Keeffe.  She didn’t like being a public figure in the first place.  And when her paintings became popular late in her life, she shied away from the attention.  

What are her paintings infamous for?  Her flowers look like vaginas.  

She was annoyed by people’s insistence on layering sexuality over her paintings.  “When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they’re really talking about their own affairs.”  

O’Keeffe also felt fan attention to be overwhelming and misplaced – she insisted that art speak for itself.  

Show Business Kids Making Movies Of Themselves You Know They Don’t Give A Fuck About Anybody Else  

Despite Georgia O’Keeffe’s approach to the subject, some artists have had to step in and correct the record when fans get it wrong.  

Bruce Springsteen had a problem almost immediately with the release of “Born In The USA,” which landed squarely in Reagan-era America as a mindless, jingoistic, feel-good sing-along.   

Springsteen has been frustrated at many generations of politicians and zealots who “totally missed the point,” which was ironic about the cold welcome to Vietnam War veterans.  

So, Bruce was irritated with fans for misreading his position.  Donald Fagen of Steely Dan was just plain irritated with their fans.  Just irritated.  Period.  

Every music artist with hits gets tired of fans insisting on hits, and Fagen was no different in being put off by live-show fans heading to the bathroom during album tracks.  But he also hated live show and particularly music festival energy, where fans used his concert as more of an excuse to party than to get into the music.  

Steely Dan songs are famously misanthropic, so this is totally on brand.  I’m personally a huge fan and have seen them live a couple of times and found myself picking up his condescension and thinking, “He’s right, we DO suck!”  

Similarly, Lauryn Hill disliked fan attention being reserved only for hits and songs being misunderstood.  She might be an extreme or special case because she also sometimes would no-show or walk out mid-show.   

It seems like she had serious problems with fan and media attention, which affected her mental health.  This would prompt her to sometimes cancel a show at the last minute, which came across to fans as being arrogant and money-hungry, when in reality she was more likely just overwhelmed.  

But in the best of situations, Hill didn’t enjoy her audience as much as Fagen didn’t.     

Conclusion  

For any artists or wannabe rockstars, having fans misinterpret their work might seem like a great problem to have.  And maybe it is.  

But artists can only make art and send it into the world.  Whether it becomes popular or not, or the intended message is heard, that’s not up to them.  

Anybody who’s ever taken the stage multiple times has had to deal with the peccadillos and just plain weirdness of some fans.  As prickly comedian Gallagher once said, “Show business is basically just babysitting drunks.”  

That said, it’s part of the job.  The more we reflect on the fate of these successful artists, it really does seem to be true that audiences having a mind of their own is still just a great problem to have. 

Every Brilliant Thing is easier to experience than explain. Festooned overhead in the lobby are notecards with words and phrases on them, like “hammocks” or “wearing a cape.” The interior has been rearranged into a sort of amphitheater, the easier to gather the “supporting cast,” as it were. Radcliffe’s character is a nameless Brit, enacting material drawn from the memories of writer and co-director Duncan Macmillan (with Jeremy Herrin) and creative consultant Jonny Donahoe, the comedian who co-created and originally performed the piece (and recorded it for HBO). Radcliffe brings just the right amount of star wattage to its Broadway debut, joyful but earnest, as the fun and games regarding the notecards are in service of a serious cause.

After a scene-setting introduction Radcliffe begins at age 7, bringing his dying dog to the vet to be euthanized. A grim beginning–but the dog is a raincoat, and the vet an audience member, administering the fatal dose (in the wrong place, as the actor points out, to audience laughter). Life gets tougher, as his mother has attempted suicide, and her lifelong depression is the backbeat of his life as his quiet father, ill at ease with her illness, retreats into the comfort zone of his record collection. (He’s not a bad guy, and the guy who played him did a good job dispensing clueless paternal advice.) To rally spirits our protagonist begins a list of joyful things, and at his prompt audience members call them out, one by one to a climactic one million (with, phew, many skips). The list starts simply, with childish delights like “ice cream,” then moves past material things as he ages, into university and first love and the challenges of adulthood. The thoughts on the cards get crazily dense at times (one participant had a devil of a time getting through some tongue-twisting existentialism) then slow, as his mother’s condition ripples through the years and interfere with his relationship. A new dog, “a black one, named Metaphor,” is introduced as it were, as the list and the cards are abandoned in a heap.

Well, OK, I admit, like everyone in the audience I did read one of the cards aloud, as it was slipped into the Playbill, and I got up and “danced” when a disco ball was introduced (the one spectacle element of Vicki Mortimer’s simple set, artfully illuminated by LD Jack Knowles, with supportive microphone work by sound designer Tom Gibbons). Part of the job. But Every Brilliant Thing isn’t about me, or, really, Radcliffe; it’s about the topics of suicide and depression, and their effect on community, like the makeshift one at the Hudson. (The show is partnered with Project Healthy Minds, identified as “a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to mental health support and helping people find care that feels right for them.”) A worthy cause to be sure but the invaluable messaging blunts the dramaturgy; our nameless lead relays a vague story, shorn of details, that’s held together by the gimmicky numerology. I assume it’s this way to accommodate wherever the performer and improvisation takes it but even at a brisk 75 minutes or so it feels sketchy.

Hard as it is to believe the star is 36, and in full command of Every Brilliant Thing, summoning the show with, umm, a wizard’s touch. With unflagging energy he sings snatches of Ray Charles and Daniel Johnston and keeps in motion, part-talk show host, part-therapist, and part-cheerleader. The show means to put some good in the world, and I’ll add “Daniel Radcliffe” to the list of things that keep me going to the theater.

When Rush hired Dave Bottrill in 2013 to remix Vapor Trails, they did so because the original release was, let’s face it, a hot mess when mastered. To briefly rehash just how disappointed fans were: Rush, a group known for its meticulous dedication to the recording process, had released a record that — as I put it in a Popdose Roundtable with Dw Dunphy, Chris Holmes, and David Medsker — “sounded crappy.”

Bottrill’s remix revealed much of what had been buried in the mastering. And since I enjoy quoting myself, here’s what I noted in that same discussion:

The remix has done more than lower the volume. David Bottrill has moved some elements around, brought the vocals to the front of the mix with better EQ, and even switched up vocal takes to add more dimension to the songs. He’s also brought a crispness to the drums that was missing and layered Alex’s guitar parts in a more even-handed way. There’s a lot on this remix that was simply absent from the original recording — it made me realize how many layers of music and vocals were buried under a really bad mastering job.

With Rush’s tenth studio album, Grace Under Pressure, the problem wasn’t bad mastering so much as bad luck. Wanting their sound to evolve, Rush parted ways with long-time producer Terry Brown — sometimes called the fourth member of the band — and set their sights on riding the New Wave. That ride was to be piloted by Steve Lillywhite, who said yes to producing the record, then said no when Simple Minds came calling for Sparkle in the Rain. The band then pitched Trevor Horn and Chris Squire of Yes, but ultimately landed with Peter Henderson — no slouch, but hardly a New Wave figure. Henderson was more recording engineer than a producer, offering little in the way of creative feedback or direction. The result was an album that sounded thin, with lyrics that probably should have been reconsidered (I see red / And it hurts my head / I guess it must be something that I read). What the actual fuck? Whatever internal quality control existed at the time waved “Red Lenses” through.

Flash-forward 42 years, and Grace Under Pressure gets the remix treatment from none other than Terry Brown — the very producer who was let go before the album got underway. That irony alone makes this a fascinating artifact, and to me, it represents the road not taken in its most literal form.

A bit of context is useful here: by this stage of their career, Rush had entered what fans often call the “synth years,” a period in which Geddy Lee’s enthusiasm for keyboards gradually pushed guitarist Alex Lifeson into the margins. There are moments on the original recordings where one might wonder whether Alex was even in the room. Brown’s remix makes it abundantly clear that Lifeson was not only present but contributed a wealth of muscular, textured sounds that had simply been pushed down to let Lee’s synth experiments dominate. Fans can now A/B these songs on streaming and hear the difference for themselves.

Overall, I really like what Terry Brown has done here. Not everything lands perfectly, but much of it reflects the same magic he worked during the band’s classic era: separating the instruments so each one breathes, applying a more dynamic EQ to the drums so they stop sounding so thin, bringing up the bass and guitar, and pushing the synths back to a supporting role rather than a starring one. He also lets “The Enemy Within” end cold rather than fading out, which is a welcome choice. Certain vocal phrases and ad-libs pop with a clarity they never had before. Will most casual listeners notice the difference? Probably not. Will Rush fans? Absolutely — and they’re the intended audience.

Grace Under Pressure was likely the most difficult record Rush had made up to that point (later, Vapor Trails would claim that distinction), and the strain shows in its sequencing. The album came out in the LP era, when frontloading the stronger material on Side 1 was standard practice, and Rush followed the playbook. “Distant Early Warning,” “Afterimage,” “Red Sector A,” and “The Enemy Within” arrive in succession and make a compelling case for the album’s strengths. Side 2 is where things get dicey. “The Body Electric” has its moments, but it’s a song about a robot — and one has to wonder whether Rush had learned nothing from Styx’s Kilroy Was Here and rock audiences. “Kid Gloves” fares slightly better. “Red Lenses” is unintentionally comic, and the underappreciated “Between the Wheels” are examples of the lack of Grade AA Rush cuts. Indeed, the songs on Side 2 are more reflective of how difficult this record was to make for the band.

Had the band not let Terry Brown go in ’83, I think Grace Under Pressure had the potential to be a genuinely solid Rush album. There’s no way to know whether Brown would have pushed them to retool Side 2 into something stronger — but listening to his remix suggests he would have steered the band toward a middle ground: somewhere between the de rigueur production sheen of Trevor Horn and Brown’s own aesthetic of clarity, separation, and heaviness.

Which makes an album like the band’s sophomore effort Irreversible such a wonderful anomaly, a gift from another, better timeline. Brigitte Calls Me Baby plays a kind of indie rock that has largely been an abandoned amusement park since the early 2010s, but their influences predate those noughties bands by 20 to 25 years. It’s a combination so perfect that it borders on cynical, but there is nothing cynical about this band or this album.

The production, by Rothman brothers Lawrence and Yves, positively glistens. Sticking with the Smiths as a comparison, this album is the band’s equivalent of switching from John Peel to John Porter, and every album they make going forward should sound this clean. Bassist Devin Wessels features much more prominently this time around, which makes sense considering they were listening to a lot of New Order before they entered the studio.

Interestingly, the band took this nod of inspiration and did two wildly different things with it. New Order has been called the ultimate example of man vs. machine, and lead single “Slumber Party” exemplifies the ‘Man’ part, an up-tempo rocker that recalls not just New Order (the bass line) but also Bloc Party (the drums), while “These Acts of Which We’re Designed” showcases the ‘Machine’ element, with bassist Wessels and drummer Jeremy Benshish opting for a synth bass line and drum machine to deliver one of the album’s most interesting tracks.

This is not to say that the Smiths no longer serve as a muse to the band. Opening track “There Always” has a none-more-Smiths chorus both vocally and lyrically, as singer Wes Leavins uses his lower range to croon, “But the one you really love / Won’t always be the one that loves you / And the one that truly loves you / Won’t always be the one that you love.” And then, for funsies, he repeats ‘You love’ a few times, just like Morrissey would have. For those jonesing for a Johnny Marr fix, “The Early Days of Love” shares DNA with “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” with the minor keys and jangly guitars by the truckload.

And then there’s “I Danced with Another Love in My Dream,” where Wessels delivers a bass line that would make the late, great Andy Rourke beam with pride.

The album’s highlight, though, is arguably “I Can Take the Sun Out of the Sky,” a “Pumped Up Kicks”-riffing skyscraper of a song where Wessels once again is front and center.

If there’s a misstep on the album, it’s “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction,” where Leavins’ high note in the chorus feels like he’s making fun of himself. He’s not, obviously, but it’s a tad overblown. Credit, though, for following up the title in the chorus with “And I said I don’t have five years left / That’s my prediction.” How bleak, especially in a song so bouncy.

Irreversible is the kind of period melding that would have been disastrous in the wrong hands, but Brigitte Calls Me Baby are not wrong-handed people. Their influences aren’t suits that they wear to see how they look in them; they get this at the cellular level. Thank heaven for that.

With that in mind, I want to present to you 25 fake bands that I would really love to see perform live.  When it’s done right, the music is first class and the songs themselves are catchy AF. 

Just a couple of parameters before we get on with it.  These bands need to be acts that commanded a real stage, not garage bands. So sorry, Jesse & The Rippers and Hep Alien, you’re not making it. And as much as we love Citizen Dick in Singles, we really don’t see them perform.

Then as far as fictitious creations go, some great ones spilled over into reality too much with actual real-world tours and fans.  Blues Brothers, The Partridge Family and The Monkees (and maybe even Lenny and the Squigtones) crossover success is disqualifying.   

But hey, enough of my yakking.  Whaddya say, let’s boogie! 

1. The Kid – Purple Rain

Not Prince, just an incredible simulation. In the real world these songs made up the best album of 1984, maybe the best of the 1980s and maybe the best record ever. How much would you kill to see The Kid at First Ave?

2. Tony Ferrino – Tony Ferrino Phenomenon

From an incredible Steve Coogan BBC special if you can find it.  Steve Coogan is synonymous with his Alan Partridge character, but I feel either Saxondale or Tony Ferrino is his greatest creation. The Tony Ferrino album is incredible start to finish; “Silence Of The Lambs” is my ringtone for my sister.
  

3. Spinal Tap – This Is Spinal Tap

There are so many successful eras for these legends, not including their freeform-jazz-odyssey without Nigel. Yes, they’re metal legends but ’60s era “Gimme Some Money” is just fantastic.
 

4. Style Boys – Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Sure, their early stuff with “Donkey Roll” was what made this band, but you can tell with “Incredible Thoughts” that the whole band was evolving.

5. Dewey Cox – Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

You get so many genres in a Dewey Cox show: country, rock and roll, lush Brian Wilson arrangements, verbose Dylan stuff. But damn if I don’t love variety show era Dewey the best. Shoutout to my guy Michael Andrews for composing all of the songs in Walk Hard.

6. The Clash at Demonhead – Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I like them so much better than Scott Pilgrim’s band Sex Bob-Omb, it’s not even funny, and I resent him for breaking up The Clash at Demonhead. In reality, their music was written by real-life band Metric, so this band almost does exist.

7. Test Pattern – Documentary Now!

The real world has Talking Heads and the fictional world gets Test Pattern. I agree with Marky in the band: “I don’t love the Balinese stuff.” The rest is art-rock gold. I still regret kinda knowing about but not attending to be an extra in the theater when they filmed this episode.
  

8. The Wonders – That Thing You Do!

We all know The One-Ders for their hit “That Thing You Do,” but I’m posting the clip of Lenny singing lead on “Dance With Me Tonight.” Outside of this movie, several of these songs really could stand alone nicely.
   

9. The New Main Street Singers – A Mighty Wind

Yeah, The Folksmen have the integrity, but this is the band I would rather see.  I wanted to get cute and link “The Good Book Song,” which is really worth your time, but how could I leave out the bonkers Terry Bohner harmonies from this neuftet? They’ve got more hits than you think, including “Potatoes In The Paddy Wagon.”

10. Dr. Teeth & The Electric Mayhem – The Muppet Show

Have you seen a better horn section from either a fictional or real band? Just like a Dead show could be disappointing if Jerry was on the junk, the same goes for Janice in DT&TEM. It’s an all-star band, and Animal is the felt Keith Moon.

11. Guy & Girl – Once

They broke up, as a band and a couple, before they really had a chance to play live together. But damn that record they made was so good even the jaded rental studio engineer had to appreciate it. There are multiple legit emotional haymakers here.

12. The Schmenges – SCTV

This really is the Last Waltz of polka. Yosh and Stan toss so many little playful things in their arrangements, the knowledgeable music lover is the ideal audience. And when you throw in special guest Linsk Minyuk as a bonus, that’s why this makes the cut.
 

13. Randy Watson & Sexual Chocolate – Coming to America

Yes, there’s not a lot of originals in his catalogue. We all know his killer interpretation of “The Greatest Love Of All,” but everybody’s on their feet for “We Are Family.”

14. Eddie & The Cruisers – Eddie & The Cruisers

The Springsteen vibes are undeniable. And Eddie was really showing some great artistic development on that last second album, if only the band wasn’t fighting him. That said, the Rimbaud poetry references were a bit pretentious.
 

15. Infant Sorrow / Aldous Snow – Get Him to the Greek

Aldous Snow is a legitimate rock star. You wouldn’t like to see a live show of “The Clap,” “Going Up,” and “Inside You”? Sure, when they launch into “African Child” it’s time to duck out to the restroom, but the rest of the evening is gold.
 

16. Bob Roberts – Bob Roberts

A pure guilty pleasure, I wouldn’t be able to admit that I paid money to see a fascist reactionary folk singer. But damn, the songs are catchy. In reality, Tim Robbins didn’t release an album because he thought people would sing along with the uber right-wing sentiment. He was probably right.
  

17. The Rutles – All You Need Is Cash

Eric Idle and Neil Innis absolutely crushed it walking a thin line between close parodies of The Beatles but with enough originality for these songs to succeed on their own. The Beatles never toured after 1965, so you could argue that the best Beatles live show ever was done by The Rutles.
  

18. Stillwater – Almost Famous

Outside the Top 10 just because they seem stuck in ’70s rock. Lots of people make the mistake of thinking this is all about guitarist golden god Russell Hammond, but don’t sleep on lead singer Jeff Bebe: “I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off.”

19. Buckaroo Banzai & The Hong Kong Cavaliers – The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

That neurosurgeon test pilot is a hell of a frontman. The band is rock solid as well: Perfect Tommy, New Jersey, Reno, Rawhide, et al. An indescribable ’80s movie relic, and peak John Lithgow. Remember, wherever you go: there you are.

20. Jess Robin – The Jazz Singer

The performance at the end is as good as any Neil Diamond show, not just “America,” but “Summer Love” is sneaky great. Although we really have to deduct some points for Jess breaking out the blackface to sub it for his friend’s group. I wish I were kidding.
 

21. Jim & Al Cody – Inside Llewyn Davis

Lists like this are supposed to name-check the Soggy Bottom Boys from O Brother Where Art Thou?,  but when it comes to Coen brothers musical groups (yes, Autobahn is incredible too) for folk, this novelty hit is a ton more fun and less like homework – would love to see this on a stage.

22. The Sorels – Streets of Fire

Yes, it’s Ellen Aim and the Attackers that’s the main band in the film, but I’d rather buy a ticket for The Sorels, who seem like The Temptations with a bit more rock and roll in there.

23. The Blue Jean Committee – Documentary Now!

It’s a rock tragedy that they broke up so soon. Seeing them live and catching Clark’s famous falsetto would be mind-blowing. Plus, there would certainly be plenty of Catalina Coolers at the concession stand.

24. The Commitments – The Commitments

I fell in love with Ireland in this movie years before I fell in love with Ireland for real. These guys never landed the big stage – but their version of “Try A Little Tenderness” is every bit as good as Paul Giamatti’s version in Duets is bad.
  

25. Mouse Rat – Parks & Recreation

They started as a Dave Matthews cover band, but really evolved. “5000 Candles In The Wind” is an anthem for horsey heaven. And you might just get a walk on guest from Duke Silver or Johnny Karate.   

This outstanding two-hander, a co-production with Two River Theater in Red Bank, N.J., is brought to life by a pair of stunning performers. Or, more to the point, The Monsters is a four-fister. It begins with City Center’s intimate Stage II illuminated by a glint of light that shines off a championship boxing belt. In this corner: Big (Okieriete Onaodowan, a veteran of Hamilton), a formidable mixed martial arts fighter, a king of the ring, a guy known as “The Monster”…but, nearing 40, he’s conscious of losing a step, and the loneliness of gym life is quietly weighing on him. And, in this corner, Lil (Aigner Mizzelle), his half-sister, a would-be “monster” who, nearing 30, is running out of time to make it as a competitor. But she wants her shot, and she wants Big to train her–no matter that they haven’t seen or spoken to another in 16 years.

Of course this chasm of communication does matter. But The Monsters bobs and weaves around it, as Lil makes small talk, jokes around, and tries to engage her half-brother. This is no easy task, as Big is in perpetual shut-down mode. Eventually he agrees to take her on, which means Lil needs to break some bad habits. One of these, alcoholism, is one they have in common, and one that Big has learned to curb. Lil, worryingly, shows the signs of addiction. Flashbacks to their tumultuous childhood show the scars of it. And here we see the beauty of the two actors. Mizzelle, an actor new to me, fully embraces being a little kid, indulgent in the cocoon that the protective Big has built to shield her from the wrath of their drunken father. Onaodowan’s body language relaxes into adolescence in these scenes but his voice remains that of a weary adult, always steeled against trouble, letting little in. They make Anyanwu’s affectingly written scenes all the more truthful and poignant.

Speaking of truthful, the boxing scenes. There’s real alchemy at work on Andrew Boyce’s small, spare gym set, which you can all but smell. With fight director Gerry Rodriguez and MMA consultant Sijara Eubanks the actors have created stage magic well beyond expensive special effects. These sequences are clearly rehearsed but they can’t look rehearsed; they have to be real, and convincing they are. (There’s also some choreography, too, by Rickey Tripp.) Toward the end, as both characters make progress on their goals (and backslide, too; the action consumes several years), Rocky is kiddingly evoked. But, no kidding; all of this comes together modestly, and spectacularly.

The material is close to Anyanwu’s heart, and I’m intrigued to learn that she’ll play Lil in the show’s West Coast debut. Every element is seamlessly integrated, including Mika Eubanks’ costumes (pink for Lil as she goes pro), Cha See’s lighting design (that suggestive little glimmer is the perfect way to start the show), and Mikaal Sulaiman’s original music and sound design, conjuring unseen monsters of its own in the flashbacks. What I appreciated about The Monsters beyond the excellence of the production is that its larger themes and metaphors, regarding Blackness and the weight of the past, are submerged. Avoiding the trap that so many other plays fall into it doesn’t attempt to spell everything out, nor does it wander into other concerns besides Big and Lil trying to harmonize after so much distance. It does just enough to pack a punch.