Filter Machine Glitch

Introducing a new recurring feature: 'Tracks on Teevee'

Welcome to the first installment off TRACKS ON TEEVEE, a new Tracks on Tracks series where we’ll be looking closely at special moments of song in movies, on TV shows, and across the vast video expanses of the World Wide Web. TRACKS ON TEEVEE is here to share these moments and ask what makes them tick.

These essays will generally be available in full only to paid subscribers, as a token of my appreciation. Of course, I’m hoping that this incentive lures a few more of you to open your wallets. Paid subscriptions are what buys me time to work on the site. In addition to bonus articles like this one, paid subscribers get access to TRACKS ON TAP, a playlist (available for Apple Music and Spotify) that features almost every song ever mentioned in a Tracks essay. They also get the knowledge that they’re directly supporting the existence of writing they enjoy.

And now, without further ado …

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Filter Machine Glitch

Sometimes art is the axe slicing the plastic smile off a TV host’s face.

“Meet a book-loving, kind, angry, acoustic guitarist,” says the voice-over. “Real talented but not yet a household name.”

He looks uncomfortable, the way he so often did in public. He’s sitting in an apartment that’s been turned into a TV set, or a TV set that’s been made to look like an apartment, and everyone there — everyone but him — is inhabiting the role of TV person. Professionally cheery, unflappably light. Everything a joke. That’s the job, on TV: to appear on the screen, making yourself into a filter between the viewer and the world, transforming whatever passes through into easy lightness, which makes it easier to watch over breakfast, which makes it easier to sell ads.

The joke here seems to be that the musician is… angry. That he has purple hair, maybe looks like someone’s idea of a punk rocker. Some relevant person has heard his music before – someone in the booking department, at least – but I’m guessing that no one in front of the camera has. And so: jokes. “Feeling a little hostile, are we?” one of them asks the musician. “I’m wondering if there’s potential that any of us might come to physical harm.”

He’s angry, get it? Unlike you and me, viewer. Unlike us. Ha, ha.

And then he starts playing.