My favorite track from a fantastic summer album Mr. Brown recently recommended to me, Rodney Crowell's The Chicago Sessions, produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.
Crowell has been kicking around for decades; his debut record, Ain't Living Long Like This came out in 1978, but I don't remember ever being exposed to his music until Brown sent me a copy of his 2018 Christmas Record Christmas Everywhere last year. Working backward, there's a wealth of fantastic material (especially on that first record and 2001's The Houston Kid). Crowell spent some time in the mid-to-late 70s in Emmylou Harris's backing band, and they did an album together in 2013 that's also on my list to check out.
Watch:
I've never really been a Godzilla fan, but I have to admit, I think I'd probably be a fool not to see Godzilla Minus One when it opens this December:I'm assuming it was lack of exposure to Godzilla flicks as a kid that is the reason they don't really resonate with me. I remember when the trailer for that first Legendary film with Brian Cranston popped up before something in the cinema - that trailer made me think the new approach would be a lot more in the Cloverfield vein, and that sounded really cool at the time. Then several of my friends saw it and reported back that if I was looking for something new, this wasn't it. I let that film come and go, then tried to watch the second one on HOBOMAX a few years ago and actually fell asleep for lack of Godzilla. Will this return to Toho ignite a love for these films? Well, it's not likely to move the needle backward, but you have to admit, this looks pretty badass, so I'll check it out. What I'm really hoping is all my Godzilla-loving friends come away super happy with this one; the buzz of the franchise's return to its original home Toho seems like a good omen for sure.
Read:
I finished Nathan Ballingrud's The Strange, and as I suspected, I'm having a difficult time choosing a book to move to next, simply because The Strange was so damn good. Officially, as of right now, this is the best novel I've read in 2023 (new or old):
Described by the Author in the afterword as "The Martian Chronicles meets True Grit," I think that says it all. This is a coming-of-age story shaped by loss and the quiet, frustrating echoes of it that resound forward through our lives and shape who we become, especially for those loss touches at a young age. Annabelle Crisp is a protagonist for the ages, and I loved the brief 'wraparound' that Ballingrud employs so we could 'hear' a grown Belle relate the events of her 14th year on Mars, 1931.
Playlist:
Mercyful Fate - Don't Break the OathSinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Soul Coughing - El Oso
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab
Lustmord - Berlin
Metallica - The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited
Various - Apple Yacht Rock Essentials
Bria - Cuntry Covers Vol. 2
The Ravenonettes - In and Out of Control
T. Rex - The Slider
Rodney Crowell - The Chicago Sessions
Bluekarma - The Frictin, The Pain
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
Southern Fried True Crime Podcast - Episodes 180, 182 and 190
Oracle:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE. And as of 5:00 PM Central Time today, September 5, 2023, you can head over to Kickstarter and back Grimm's new deck, The Hand of Doom Tarot. Check it out HERE.
• Six of Pentacles
• IV: The Emperor
Right off the bat (and probably because I'm tired and have a lot of work-work in front of me), I'm reading this with a squint, which is to say, I'm not even looking past the fact that there's only one Major here, and it's telling me to sit quietly and hammer out my work before even thinking about the creative and emotional threads that will emerge as the day lengthens.
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