Kentuckyseven

We had the good fortune of meeting Joe Pug yesterday in Gothenburg, Sweden. He’s on tour and played a great gig at Bar Kom. The ending, when the band left stage and strolled down onto the floor singing in the small audience was enchanting. Thanks for the magic, Joe!

We asked for some of Pug’s darlings and got this:

• Pod: The Moment with Brian Koppelman:  ”In this program, screenwriter Brian Koppelman interviews artists and business leaders that inspire him.  Specifically, he talks to them about how they handled certain crucial ”inflection points” in their lives.  That is, he wants to know why successful people process the high and low points of their careers differently than the rest of us.  Start with the interview he does of Seth Godin and move on from there.”

• Music: ”Warm Enemy” by Christopher Paul Stelling:  ”I had the pleasure of playing the Paradiso in Amsterdam with this American songwriter.  We swapped records after the show and I found myself returning to this tune.  His guitar playing is a personal, nylon-string take on John Fahey and Joseph Spence that is absolutely gripping.

• Book: The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro:  ”I read this classic of modern fiction on the flight over to Europe this summer.  Told from the first-person perspective of a mid-20th century English butler – stay with me! – it explores the act of relinquishing the notion that your individual life had meaning beyond your own private joys and sorrows.  The narrator, Stevens, spends the book reflecting on a career that he spent in the service of an aristocrat whom he considered a ”great” man.  As the book unwinds though, he begins to question whether or not his employer was indeed great and therefore whether or not he himself spent a life doing meaningful work.  This is a short, wonderful read.”