Full Cast And Crew

239. Dead & Company 60th Anniversary Shows, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA

Dead & Company's 60th Anniversary three-show stand is an opportunity to talk about about the living history that the band's music represents, the ongoing and still-vital multi-generational pull of the concerts, which drew about 175,000 people, and the fascinating real-time challenge represented by sitting in with the band.  Using Sturgill Simpson and Trey Anastasio as examples of how players find a space for their instrument to occupy in the band's sonic tapestry, I dive into the sink-or-swim weirdness of entering this telepathic onstage space and speculate on what could be next for the band and the songs. You can watch the first songs of all the nights here on YouTube. Subscribe to my [indistinct chatter] newsletter, where I jot down musings, recommendations, and random thoughts. Check out nugs.net for the streaming 4K videos of the Dead & Co Golden Gate and other shows. Vertex Effects 'The Guitarist Behind' Series is fantastic. This is the Wendy Melvoin one referenced in the episode. Other favorite are the Michael Thompson, Darryl Stuermer, Tim May, Ray Parker, Jr, Dean Parks, and Eddie Martinez.

238. John Grisham's The Rainmaker

In 1996, Francis Ford Coppola needed the money. He was coming off a run of films that included The Godfather Part III, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Jack.  His critical and box office results were at a career nadir. So he agreed to direct an adaptation of the John Grisham bestseller 'The Rainmaker' for Paramount.  He wouldn't direct another film for 10 years.  And he'd make only four more, including the epic disaster 'Megalopolis'. Curious then that 'The Rainmaker' is a superlative example of a courtroom thriller, a  big-business-versus-the-little-guy movie that features fantastic performances from a large cast of total pros; a film that deserves to be considered among Coppola's best, and maybe a film whose constraints brought out the best in a filmmaker not know for personal or professional restraint.

237. '2010 The Year We Make Contact'

Well, it's come to this. Was it curiosity? Was is discovery? A sense of completism?   Oxygen deprivation? Whatever it was, I've now watched '2010: The Year We Make Contact' and I leave it for you to decide whether I'm any better for it.  

236. '2001: A Space Odyssey', Part 4

We've come to the end...or is it the beginning?  This is part 4 of my series of episodes about the emotional and intellectual contact Stanley Kubrick made between movie-goers and his epic science-fiction film of 1968. Here's the amazing mashup between Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' and the final sequence of 2001. Please sign up for my newsletter if you haven't; it's free and filled with random recommendations based on what I'm reading, watching and listening to on a given week. Some of it podcast-adjacent and some totally unrelated.

235. '2001: A Space Odyssey', Part 3

In Part 3, I geek out into how incredible and evocative the HAL sequences are in this film; what an amazing sense of character and personality Kubrick creates through the use of Doug Rain's iconic, best-in-class voiceover and the varying cutaways to HAL's electronic eye in scenes featuring the computer. Be sure to check out my other episodes covering the other sections of 2001. Next up: THE STAR GATE sequence in Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite.