Mundane Things
One For The Road is dead, long live One For The Road.
I’ve been doing this thing as an email newsletter (mostly) monthly for a few years now, but this is the first issue that’s started as a post on my blog. That’s because I’ve ditched Substack as my email platform, and won’t be posting One For The Road there anymore.
There are myriad problems with Substack, which I could finally no longer abide: it’s fully pivoted from being a newsletter email service to a walled garden social media platform (and not a great one); it’s done, as the English say, fuckall for the growth of this particular newsletter (98% of you still access this thing via your inbox rather than through the Substack site or app); and then there’s Substack management’s refusal to moderate content, and the whole platforming of nazis thing.
This is not earth shattering news, it’s actually pretty mundane, but about damn time.
The upshot is that, going forward, these newsletters will be published to my site as blog posts, and if I can make it work, repurposed as the monthly email dispatch. Which means (hopefully) no real change for email readers.
Unless I can’t make it work because email platforms are now all “marketing engines for creators” which mean they cost more than I want to spend to send one email a month to handful of subscribers. In which case I guess I’ll stop sending emails altogether. Thanks, enshitification.
I’ll be working to migrate old posts from Substack to my site (unfortunately there’s no easy way to batch this process the way I want it done) before deleting One For The Road entirely from that place. I exported all my subscribers, and have updated the sign up form on the site to collect subscribes here (even if I don’t do anything with the, right away…or at all). Otherwise it’ll be the same old bullshit, but here instead of there.
Anyway… Whether you’re here for the photos, or for the music, maybe to read my batherings, or if I just never showed up in your inbox enough for you to bother unsubscribing…I’m glad you’re here.
PHOTOGRAPHY
I mused about photography projects and themes on the blog, a post that’s accompanied by a loosely themed photo set of black & white film photos I shot in the streets over the last few months with a few different cameras. Click to read the post, or skip the post and just check the pics.
And because this month’s edition O.F.T.R. is about the sad mundanity of housekeeping, the here includes images of mundane things, snapped on film with subcompact 35mm cameras (a Rollie 35S and an Olympus XA) on daily walks I took through my neighborhood in May and June. Enjoy.
MUSIC
Holy shit. This was not on my 2024 bingo card — the first collection of new music in over 25 years from one of the best bands of all time. And judging by the heat emanating from the only available song so far, these guys haven’t lost a bit of their touch for the kind of dissonant, swinging noise rock that defined an era. I’ve already pre-ordered the vinyl LP for its September release, and bought tickets for the SF show in May 2025. To quote my friend Scotty Imp, I feel like fuckin’ teenager again.
Ahmed Malek, Musique Originale De Films
Referred to as the Algerian Ennio Morricone, Ahmed Malik’s music definitely has some of that old Spaghetti Western (Eastern?) vibe but, it goes so far beyond that. There are tunes rich with Afro-Cuban and island flavored rhythms, gritty and darkly funky odes to crime drama soundtracks, and laid back, deep pocketed sojourns clearly rooted in Middle Easter musical soil. I can’t recommend this enough — it’s the second in a series of Ahmed Malek release from the fine folks at Habibi Funk Records, and both volumes are well worth the price of admission.
Brycon, The Shape of Things That Went
The melancholic jazz vibes underpinned by the piano sample that’s front and center in the opening track of The Shape of Things That Went pretty quickly give way to hefty helping of dreamy pop and smooth soul. Altogether, it’s an instrumental soundtrack for any chill occasion, and another Brycon banger.
Mama & His Boys, “Disanthropomorphic” b/w “Drug Macho”
Shameless self-promotion alert: my current band managed to pull together some trashcan demos from our practice space so we can try to land some shows in advance of a proper record making session in the late summer. The music is loud, noisy, down-tuned and some mix of ugly and catchy. If you like what you hear and you wanna hear more (including a cover of Iggy Pop’s “Repo Man” that might be better, and is definitely more punk rock, than the original), hit me up. I’ll send you a link to the rest of the session that’s not on Bandcamp, where we’ve only got two songs for now…
