don charles

Nadia Murad, King Gizzard, Mark Normand - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 12:40 PM

Welcome back everybody to the Wednesday newsletter nobody reads! Week 9, here we are! It's more or less just fun for me guys - I hope you like what I find as well. Backstory: this started because I hung out with Maiyah (who's now in Global Marketing) downstairs at reception in the last 15min of lunch everyday when I was coming back from Subway. We would talk about cool things we learned and I would send her a lengthy email of extra stuff I learned afterwards. This daily email evolved into a weekly email where I then added other people I know (or is it "knew"? "Know"? "I then added other people I knew"? Because I knew them back then, but I still know them now. Kneow?)

It's 3 bullet points of things I learned this past week and, at the bottom, what's been up with me (and contact info):

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Murad - I got teary-eyed Tuesday morning from a 60 Minutes podcast segment. It's about Nadia Murad and her journey from her small Yazidi village in Iraq being tortured by *S*S... to 5 years later, winning the Nobel Peace Prize for her "efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict". 60 Minutes actually interviewed her on the spot when she was just a villager in the Yazidi village - at the time, 9 of her family members were killed. After she fled to Germany as a refugee, she remained there and got involved with a human rights group. She plans on bringing ISIS on war crimes, so she teamed up with Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer who represents Julian Assange, Mohamed Fahmy, Yulia Tymoshenko, and others. Full report: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nobel-peace-prize-recipient-nadia-murad-and-amal-clooney-vow-to-take-isis-to-court-60-minutes-2019-10-13/

  2. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Gizzard_%26_the_Lizard_Wizard) is my favorite rock band (they're Australian!). They are the only band at the moment that, I believe, is on the forefront of rock music; they're bringing fresh air to long untapped genres and talk about subjects that are "avant garde". Below is their album lineup:

  3. 12 Bar Bruise (2012) - Garage rock, garage punk, acid rock

  4. Eyes Like the Sky (2013) - "cult western audio book", Garage rock, spaghetti western

  5. _Float Along – Fill Your Lungs_ (2013) - Psychedelic rock, subjects of long funky nights out

  6. Oddments (2014) - psychedelic pop, scraps of song not included on their previous albums

  7. I'm in Your Mind Fuzz (2014) - progressive rock, talks about mind control

  8. Quarters! (2015) - album is split into 4ths, 40:40 - the four songs: Psychedelic pop, psychedelic rock, jazz-rock, progressive rock

  9. Paper Mâché Dream Balloon (2015) - acoustic folk, all recorded on a farm :)

  10. Nonagon Infinity (2016) - psychedelic metal, 9 songs that all morph into each other and the album loops back up to the beginning naturally; Writing for AllMusic, Tim Sendra claimed that the band's inventive sound made Nonagon Infinity "not only their best album yet, but maybe the best psych-metal-jazz-prog album ever"

2017 >> They challenged themselves to release 5 albums in 1 year.

  1. Flying Microtonal Banana (2017) - eastern experimental rock, The name "Flying Microtonal Banana" comes from Stu Mackenzie's custom-built yellow guitar, fitted with additional microtonal frets.

  2. Murder of the Universe (2017) - spoken word prog metal, a narrative driven album with 3 interlated stories about human-beast hybrids

  3. Sketches of Brunswick East (2017; with Mild High Club) - jazz fusion rock, talks about the urban serenity of Brunswick East (think the nice parts of the Valley)

  4. Polygondwanaland (2017) - prog rock, band released it with an open source license so anybody can use it for anything

  5. Gumboot Soup (2017) - psychedelic rock, cool songs to play on a country porch

  6. Fishing for Fishies (2019) - blues/boogie rock, talks about robots gaining feelings, what it means to be ugly, and veganism

  7. Infest the Rats' Nest (2019) - thrash metal, talks about the end of humanity through global warming, overpopulation, and super diseases

  8. Mark Normand is a funny comic I recently came to enjoy. His delivery feels like an old school comic, but his material is fresh. Why this guy doesn't have a Netflix special I will never know. Him on Conan earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIuOhoPB6U8