Anticipating Treme aka "Tremé" - David Simon and his buddies do post-Katrina N.O.

yeah, def interested in seeing what the actual plot is

such a trip to hear all these brass band musicians namechecked on tv.

on a super-nitpicky-no-one-cares-at-all nerd level: when wendell rolled up in the second line and the rebirth dudes make fun of him for stealing tyrus chapman's licks, the irony is that the trombone player standing next to him (staff0rd agee) actually played all the parts that you hear wendell playing, and they're totally signature stafford licks. so it would have have been funny & correct to have him accuse wendell of jacking his own licks.

Hopefully the Steve Zahn character is being set up for some horrible fate in an early episode.

i v much appreciate your super-nitpicky-nerd perspective, Jordan!

how bad can this irl davis rogan guy be then? i'm struggling to get my head around it.

i also love to hear jordan's take on all this

though that shit with tower records really did happen. those motherfuckers liquidated the entire local consignment section and didn't give the artists a dime.

― adam, Tuesday, April 13, 2010 10:40 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's fucking cold. like, evil even.

how bad can this irl davis rogan guy be then? i'm struggling to get my head around it.

― r|t|c, Tuesday, April 13, 2010 12:49 PM

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/86/206125975_daeeeb58c8.jpg

i wonder if they recorded rebirth outside or in a studio. they did a good job of matching up the footage to the playing, but you can hear kabuki playing trumpet and he wasn't in the scene. hope he shows up later, he's the best brass band trumpet player by far imo.

http://www.whiskyfun.com/Materialforlog14/Derrick-Shezbie.jpg

xpost good luck steve zahn

Coming to BBC2...when??

HBO ordered a second season of Treme

loving the handheld camera work slipping around the musicians in the second line, really marvelous

great news about the second season reup as well

hopefully we'll get some hot second line dancing footage too

the sound isn't good but here's a clip from the real first post-katrina second line, much bigger than in the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owAvYNY6WPc

really liked this first episode, it looked and sounded great. i hope goodman's gonna be a regular?

i wonder if they recorded rebirth outside or in a studio. they did a good job of matching up the footage to the playing, but you can hear kabuki playing trumpet and he wasn't in the scene.

In one of the articles before the premiere (can't remember which, sorry), they talked about how the music supervisor insisted on recording all the music live, which is pretty unconventional. Sounds good, though.

so that was just recorded at a different second line then. yeah, when i was down there a couple months ago we went to a second line that was staged for the show, and there were camera people and mic holders running around everywhere, it was pretty impressive (and non-intrusive).

Really enjoyed this but kinda difficult to imagine where it's going, which is great obviously. Presumably the Bunk Moreland guy and the Lester Freamon guy are going to hook up at some point. Proper lolz in there already as well.

xpost matt dc you are a UK person right..where did you get hold of it?

It's at eztv.it

and all friendly torrent sites

gotcha

omg the woman playing Wendell Pierce's girlfriend was in When the Levees Broke!!!

cuh did these guys really have to stoop so low to have a ridic comedy snooty english reporter for goodman to spazz out over?

yeah otm, this was just terrible writing. and it's not even like i disagree that there might have been snooty english reporters, just that this sir arthur chessington III was such a crap stereotype...surely they could write an english reporter who's a dickhead more accurately, just turn on bbc news channel and watch for a few mins...

other than that thought this was great

Steve Zahn's character's a lot more likable in the 2nd episode.

I'm pretty well hooked on this already. I expect good things. It's unfortunate that another great David Simon show looks to continue the tradition of the occasional cringer of a scene, but whatever. Small complaints.

yeah the english reporter was -_- and john goodmans daughter had a couple eye-rolly lines but pretty excited to see this play out

the english reporter wasn't the problem, it was the way the whole scene was just a setup for a really didactic rant by john goodman, which i suppose was supposed to telegraph the writers' political slant.

if i recall there were some similarly didactic scenes in the first season of the wire. in a way i think those scenes, as cringeworthy as they might seem, were kind of necessary to position the show in a certain way. once that was done, the show didn't have to be so broadly didactic. we'll see what happens.

funny thing -- i made bank off of selling that selfsame dave bartholomew boxed set that steve zahn's character goes apeshit over in episode 1. when that became a major plot motif i was like o_O.

the english reporter wasn't the problem, it was the way the whole scene was just a setup for a really didactic rant by john goodman

totes.

The Christian tourists were so dorky but I'm glad they ended up having fun.

really loving the feel of this. just like to roll with it.

also genuinely laughing at the steady stream of 'no shame. there's pride on bourbon street'

oh, and Slim Charles

I loved the Wire, and I love the music in this, but I am still waiting for some kind of conflict to hook me.

iirc, The Wire didn't fully hook me until episode 3 and I was addicted from then on. I'm not at all concerned about Treme doing the same, I mean, hell, the music sequences are already enough to keep me coming back. Plus it is surprisingly funny at times.

Funny thing about the English reporter was that the actor was obviously Irish, you could hear his accent slipping occasionally. John Goodman's ranting (and dress sense) also reminded me a little too much of Walter Sobchak. Other than that, first two episodes have been pretty pleasing.

was there a second line in ep 2?

This feels a lot more dispersed than The Wire initially did - the characters were pretty much grouped into police and Barksdale dudes and we knew immediately where that season was going, the story arc was pretty obvious.

There don't seem to be that many links between the Treme characters as yet, it's like a very spread out soap opera and, with the exception of the woman looking for her brother, I still can't tell what sort of arc is going to play out. Enjoying it immensely though.

Did the Lester Freamon guy kill that dude or just beat him really badly?

Did the Lester Freamon guy kill that dude or just beat him really badly?

Was kind of wondering that myself. Didn't see it coming and trying to figure where the writers would go with that development if it was murder.

Funny thing about the English reporter was that the actor was obviously Irish, you could hear his accent slipping occasionally. John Goodman's ranting (and dress sense) also reminded me a little too much of Walter Sobchak. Other than that, first two episodes have been pretty pleasing.

― Number None, Tuesday, April 20, 2010 8:05 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol came here to say how Walter-esque his character is.

but yeah this is definitely enjoyable without being super compelling so far. i mean obviously setting the whole story well after the big catastrophic event and the nastiest immediate aftermath is kind of deliberate, but i don't really know where they go from here, or if they'll be able to pull off the kind of slowly mounting tension and dread over the course of the season that made The Wire so watchable.

i don't think they're going to try for that

Has anyone British ever had the misfortune to see Spectator editor Fraser Nelson interviewed? He is exactly like that smarmy British guy.

Actually "why should the American taxpayer pay to clear up your city that was destroyed through no fault of your own?" is exactly the sort of question that any number of public school right-wing British broadsheet journalists would ask.

Yeah, watching any high-profile English journo would confirm that. That said, the whole scene is really stagey and there to establish the locals' sense of outrage. It's a fun scene but it doesn't feel natural at all, even if Goodman and the journo are speaking entirely in character. But The Wire also suffered from 'here is our editorial position' monologues on occasion.

It's amazing how quickly I've forgotten that Clark Peters and Wendell Pierce played Wire characters. In a lot of ways the characters they're portraying now are more interesting (maybe it's because we've seen just about every cop imaginable on TV?) so I don't think 'Lester' for even a second when Peters is on screen.

yeah those guys are both fucking beasts and it's exciting to see them both get lots of screentime here to create whole new characters that are hopefully even half as classic as their Wire characters

i have trouble with clark peters with no mustache, his upper lip looks so empty

Now that it was already spoiled above, that scene with him beating down the kid who stole his tools completely broke me of thinking of him as "Lester Freamon" any longer.

wonder if a British reporter will ask Simon if we're supposed to be glad to watch a show about a bunch of music-loving jerks just because its set in New Orleans (only have seen the pilot, and i'm hoping for the best - just sayin').

pretty sure i'd be glad to watch a show about kim dickens, john goodman, clark peters, wendell pierce and melissa leo playing gin rummy in Pierre, South Dakota, so yeah.

basically