Cultish Creative Weekly (5/24/2024)

Besides being (still) in Albini-intake mode this week….

On Just Press Record - I had my friends Guy Penn and Lindsey Bell on to talk about “The Shifting Landscape of Work.” No matter where you are in your career, if you care about the generations above, below, and with you, Lindsey brings an eye for the statistics/surveys of workplace analysis I so greatly admire, and Guy’s built an entire business on being a better human at this stuff. Pure magic.

Also, on Breaking News, we got deep into updates about Israel, asset managers calling for policy interventions that help them with future returns, mystery traders willing to rug-pull markets to make a buck for no other purpose, policy makers calling for political framings that help them with re-election hopes, and lest we get too dark - a reminder that engaging with other people at a local level is still the best way to be human in what feels like an increasingly dark world. Yes, that means a little more Conan on Hot Ones talk. It’ll be my happy place for a while (for a good reason).

Personal Archive Entries this week included:

Wayne’s World doing “Everybody Hurts” and how I still make this monkey joke way too often in my head.

Steve Albini wanted to be paid like a plumber when he recorded Nirvana. There are a shortage of people with these types of standards. That’s a theme here, fwiw.

Steve Albini had a gardening blog! Which is so fun, and such an appropriate metaphor. Plus, he had an additional blog where he documented what he made for his wife for dinner every night for a period of time and just knowing that might be my favorite detail about him ever.

The problem with music in 1993 as told by Steve Albini in effectively a college zine! This was an education at the time. It’s still an education now. There’s a through line between this and a Fugazi post I’m working on too. Just so’s you know.

And last but not least - I’m extra proud of this one and how it stitches a bunch of bigger ideas together:

Steve Albini, Anthony Bourdain, And Some “Godfather” Quotes.

Enjoy!

-Matt