One record + a bunch of miscellaneous stuff #7

I was a lucky to see Steve Gunn live earlier this week and so I thought I'd highlight my favorite record of his this week. This is one of my most replayed summer/ drinking coffee on a bright morning records. It just has one of those "life's good" moods. It's relaxed and breezy and warm and hit's that sweet spot between folky pop and sonic experimentation that I love a lot.
The live show was a great representation of Gunn as an artist: He opened with 3 gentle and superbly well written folk songs played with an acoustic guitar drenched in reverb and then switched to his electric to play a freakout psych jam of guitar feedback and synth that slowly transitioned into a rendition of the opening track of this album of the same name.
Such a great show and a great musician. I'm a big fan.
Plus any record that has even only occasional flourish of pedal steel guitar already is a winner in my heart. Best sounding instrument ever.
If you're into folky rock with psychedelic tinges and just all around great writing and production, I can't recommend this enough.

Listen here: https://stevegunn.bandcamp.com/album/way-out-weather

Miscellaneous stuff:

I haven't had the time/ inclination to watch movies lately.  Mostly I've been watching the WSOP Main event (the biggest poker tournament in the world). Poker is a bit of a "guilty pleasure" of mine because It's so antithetical to how I feel about money and so on. Most poker players are probably people I'd sorta hate in real life. Money obsessed. Probably all economically hard right.   Most them of course LOVE crypto. But it's a fascinating game to me and a world filled with interesting personalities. I came into poker by watching the WSOP and tv shows with high stakes games with personalities like Tony G, PHil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu and let me tell you: HBO is missing out on doing a tv show around this world.

Also been watching the occasional episode of Samurai Jack since it popped on HBOmax. I had forgotten just how influential this show was to me and Andromeda. The 70's tv show Kung Fu was a big reference to how I wanted to structure Andromeda but since Samurai Jack is obviously inspired by it and I watched it way before I did Kung Fu, SJ is the clear arch inspiration. But beyond the episodic "stranger comes into town", the silent storytelling of many of the greatest episodes of SJ must clearly planted the seeds for my interested in that kind of story. What a cool show. 

It's not news to many of you that I'm a big Cormac McCarthy fan, I suspect.
I found out via his subreddit that the elusive old man had a short stint as a child actor in a instructional film about milk from 1946. Which is a weirdly fascinating factoid to me. I ended up watching the whole thing because I love to see real footage of olden times and this short 20 minutes doc is full of nice shots.
https://vimeo.com/730086823?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=11736238

And lastly, I just finished watching the first episode of Nathan Fielder's new show The Rehearsal. I'm a massive, massive fan of Nathan for You (in my top 5 tv shows of all time probably). I was a bit disappointed when NFY ended and have been wandering for a long time what was next for Fielder. This new show seems to be both a continuation of the previous show and an examination of it. Slightly less preoccupied with being Funny, the cringe seems to be set at 11.  No doubt in my mind this is going to be super HARD to watch and absolutely great and ground breaking. 

Have a great week,
Zé