Monday, April 6, 2020

Network 77's new Musique program is just what we need right now

Ever wonder what SCTV's Gerry Todd would do with his own 30-minute variety show?  It might look a bit like Rachel Lichtman's retro-fabulous Musique. 
Over the last few months, future media mogul Rachel Lichtman has been working on a music-oriented plank of her brilliant Network 77 platform which she just launched as Musique.

Drawing on the inspiration of both 70s TV variety shows and the commercial advertising spots which accompanied them, Musique presents swank period-perfect video clips for contemporary artists like Ted Leo, Juliana HatfieldJoe Pernice, Eszter Balint and Liam Hayes – with cameos by Aimee Mann and Luther Russell – all gorgeously styled and every bit as sun-bleached and shag-carpeted plush as you would hope. The crazy rare vintage clip of Margo Guryan fits in seamlessly.

Musique seems like a godsend to independent and reissue labels looking for an appropriate outlet to reach culturally-sussed folks of a certain generation and everyone else right now who could use a tuneful, colour-saturated reverie to escape the shut-in doldrums of our shared pandemic predicament.

Now if only some visionary executive at Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO, Apple TV Plus or even say, PBS had the sense to see the enormous potential Musique offers... well, in the meantime, just watch the pilot episode of Musique right here.

Evidently, Rachel has quite a bit of great stuff which didn't make it into the pilot. So if you enjoyed the first episode of Musique and would like to help fund a second – Rachel bankrolled the whole shebang herself – you can make a donation through Network77.com (there’s a donate tab in the navigation). You'd think this would be something that that the shrewd operators behind labels like Light In The Attic, Numero Group, Omnivore, Sundazed, Vampi Soul, Ace Records, BBE, Drag City, Anthology Recordings, Cherry Red, Dust-To-Digital, Tompkins Square, Third Man, etc would be happy to support.



LINKS
WFMU-FM Evan Davies chats with Network 77's Rachel Lichtman about Musique


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