book.record.beer

After a brief absence from good ol' Nick M, the boys are back Thin Lizzy style with their good friend Franco for our traditional holiday cast. Season six will be an interesting one pivoting to short story collections instead of novels. (diversify baby!!) We get into UK author Angela Carter's holiday trip between myth and Puritanical rejection of joy with her story "The Ghost Ships: A Christmas Story" from her collection

"American Ghosts and Old World Wonders." Nostalgia reigns as we dig into Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" soundtrack to the special of the same name and finally imbibe the brews we've come to love over the holidays as well as some new concoctions we've found this year. We thank you all for listening and hope this offering brings some joy in these fading hours of 2021. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

One of our favorites to date, the Nick's and Daniel dive into Roberto Bolano's seminal work, "The Savage Detectives" in the hopes of making sense of the enigmatic form and poetic prose. What it means to engage with art and ultimately become an artist is explored as well as the importance of paying homage to the artists that have come before and the necessity in blowing them and their work to bits. The fellas jump from the Mexico city of the detectives over to Tokyo, Japan to engage with post rock beauties TOE and their 2012 offering, "The Book About My Idle Plot on a Vague Anxiety" the bands second full-length album. A gorgeous instrumental work packed with tasteful movements in a number of genres and ultimately the assertion that the drums fucking wail. Nick M. ends the show by pounding a 24 oz Modelo Chelada of mango and chile for no good reason beyond he is alive, as are we all, so enjoy good art and beer. Cheers!

Native American myth starts this Gregorio cast with Stephan Graham Jones' acclaimed "The Only Good Indians" and moves the dudes to consider genre, sports writing, and who our Elk Head Woman might be. Pelican's "Nighttime Stories" is universally agreed to be the best soundtrack for the book, especially the horrific sweat lodge massacre scene, and sour liquid of the variety of goses and blackberry mojitos imbibed make for a delicious end to a blast of a cast. NOTE: there are a few moments of "in and out" with Gregorio's mic. Such is life. SMOOCHES

A very special Nick Mehalick cast, this one was done with pride. The prophet James Baldwin's brilliant "Giovanni's Room" frames the cast as the guys discuss masculinity, sexuality, the human condition, and what it means to be othered. Themes of invisible social contracts and just how dramatic we Italian's can be are explored. The soundtrack for the text, M83's "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" follows the book ala Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, a strange trip for sure but one that is equally fitting and equally French. Lastly, the classic French beer by Kronenbourg brewery, the 1664 is downed and followed by the French Canadian Unibroue brewery's Ephemere.

This time it's a little ol' Nhick and Dan joined by guest mw brooke (who we call Michelle, spoiling her disguise). We talk James Salter's 1979 novel, Solo Faces, and the individual's pursuit to the self and the eternal...yeah, it was that kind of cast. We seque right into Sparklehorse's 2001 album, It's a Wonderful Life. The whole album is briiliant and we discuss colloboration and if an artist really only has 1 great or defining work in them. We wash it all done with different sours: Nhick and Dan on the Rodenbach Grand Cru, mw on Ecliptic Peach Sour (some fancy shit micro from Portland). We hope you dig this one as much as we did talking about art and booze.

A Gregorio cast!! A debut novel from K. Chess following a pair of displaced refugees from an alternate timeline on earth has the dudes contemplating the difficulty of sci-fi and how a spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. Minnesota rapper/drummer P.O.S. kills on his 2012 album "We Don't Even Live Here" and has the gents contemplating cancel culture and what makes a dance song a dance song. Lastly, everyone gets wrecked on some Belgium Triples. The end! ENJOY!

A vaxxed and hammered Daniel brings you this very special St. Patty's episode amplifying Black artists. Nuff said.

A depression cast, a perspective cast, whatever you make of it this was a fun one for us. This cast was chosen by Nick Gregorio and explores an ode to Jack Kirby with Mister Miracle by Tom King, Philadelphia natives Nothing and their recent aptly titled release The Great Dismal, and finally Treehouse Brewing's "Haze". we talk the value and role of the artist in our current culture, what it means to write an ode and make it your own, and contemplate nearly a year apart. Cheers and be well.

Dear listener, find a comfortable seat or treadmill or walking path and prepare to get frustrated and enlightened with us as we unpack postmodernist Italo Calvino's seminal work, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. It's a book about reading, being a reader, writing and being a writer...but is it? We take a trip to Argentina and hang out with the wholly unique and experimental artist Juana Molina before kicking back after a 15 hour day with Southern Tier's Lakeshore Fog. Dig.

THEE Book.Record.Beer Holiday coast host Franco Fiorini joins the gents for this one as they dig into Gogol, your favorite authors favorite author, offering of a Ukrainian folk tale drenched in his own wit and told through the critical lens only Gogol could possess. They weep for the soul of a nation exposed through Pheobe Bridger's EP of Christmas cover songs and make it all better with the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, the beer this time being Corsendonk's perfect creation, their Christmas Ale. The gents try and decide what make a Christmas thing and Christmas thing and if art really can save the soul of a people. The last cast of 2020 sees a group of men deciding to take some time to spend with one another as a way to combat this awful year and the numerous ways 2020 has tried to extinguish the human spirit. Yet it prevails. Cheers and love to everyone as we try to do and be better.