Since I left you, I found the world so new.
Why now matters.
It started with The Avalanches latest album - ‘We Will Always Love You’ - and it crescendoed with the 20 year anniversary of - ‘Since I Left You’ - and the release of a three-part podcast about the album’s creation (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
What struck me in learning more about Since I Left You was how the magical elements of the record came from what seemed like barriers at the time:
In the late 90s, people had all but ditched their vinyl, transitioning to CD collections. Second-hand stores were flooded with classic records selling for dirt cheap. The Avalanches, young, and with no moneyspent their weekends taking trams across Melbourne, hopping from opshop to opshop, loading up on records.
The technology of the late 90s constrained the number of samples The Avalanches could save at any one time. As with Keith Jarrett having to play The Koln Concert on just 1/3 of his piano, that limitation served to make the record better than it otherwise would have been. One reason the The Avalanches follow-up record took so long was the fact that the technology allowed them to use infinite samples. The paradox of choice.
Because they were completely unknown at the time, the Avalanches sampled everything from Madonna to , never imagining the nightmare that would come from clearing those samples, or the copyright implications. Had they known, or cared, about those legal restraints, Since I Left You would never have been as imaginative as it was.
Robbie Chater, one of the band’s central members, experienced his most intense periods of creativity in making the record after coming out of hospital having been treated for alcoholism. The lyrics: “Where's Dexter?, Get a drink, have a good time now, Welcome to paradise, Since I left you, I found the world so new” take on a new meaning in that context. The album finds some of its effervescence in Chater’s post-recovery euphoria, seeing the world so new.
No money, an oversupply of cheap, second-hand vinyl, extreme technological limitations, the total creative freedom that comes with anonymity, and the newfound love for life of a recovering alcoholic.
Imagine that being the recipe for creating a masterpiece.
The Avalanches - Since I Left You
PS. Here’s your next month of music sorted: 24 (and counting) of The Avalanches' mixtapes, live sets, and DJ sets. I recommend Big Tent Set Live @ Splendour (2006) which I got to see live. Changed the way I thought about Bon Jovi forever.
If you were curious as to why Abba’s ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) is getting played at every wedding, and birthday you go to, you have Folamour to thank (skip to 31:00 in his set if you want to hear the build up).
“The CDC had lots of great people, but it was at heart a massive university. “A peacetime institution in a wartime environment,” Carter called it. Its people were good at figuring out precisely what had happened, but by the time they’d done it, the fighting was over.”
Michael Lewis’ ‘The Premonition: A Pandemic Story’ should be required reading for everyone.
“I always felt a bit like a child in all this but having the eyes of a child and a sense of awe and no firmly held perspective to begin with was how I could help in some small way. I never had anything to unlearn.”
I can’t wait to find out who plays Charity Dean, Carter Mecher, and Joe DeRisi in the inevitable movie.
“I have found that there is an order of magnitude difference between bearing the ultimate responsibility for decision-making and being either an advisor or student of the process,” he wrote. “It’s one thing to experience an orgasm or an arrow between your ribs and it’s another thing to read about it.”
Steve Jobs on Consulting
With the news that One Medical acquired Iora Health for $2.1B, I took the chance to revisit this classic New Yorker article from 2010 that profiled Iora Health’s founder:
“Fernandopulle, who was born in Sri Lanka and raised in Baltimore, doesn’t seem like a radical when you meet him. He’s short and round-faced, smiles a lot, and displays two cute rabbit teeth as he tells you how ridiculous the health-care system is and how he plans to change it all.”
Related: Malay Gandhi had a sharp summary of this deal on the Second Opinion substack.
Man bijt hond - Het dorp
If you’re at all interested about what’s happening in the world of finance right now, you’ll love this piece: Ape Armies and Investor Relations
“Traders call themselves the Ape Army. This led to a donation push back in March by the r/WSB folks to adopt a number of gorillas. In six days they raised over $350k for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (Note 1).
On that May earnings call, Aron announced AMC’s Charity Cares and Aron personally would be donating 100k total to that same exact fund. He went full meme. Not only did he acknowledge the new majority ownership of retail investors, he paid full homage to the memes, and he did it in the language of the meme.
He told the Ape Army that he respects them and understands them. It wasn’t done in some cheesy corporate how do you do fellow kids way either. It was the perfect insider-y reference that seems absurd or irrelevant to an outsider. It was perfect memespeak.”
Fitness Frauds Sued For Pranking Morning News
After watching Vice’s story about the fitness frauds being sued for pranking the morning news, I went back and watched the original videos, and… well, Kenny "K-Strass" Strasser made me laugh harder than I have in a while.
"I don't have a girlfriend, don't want one. My parents, they live in Denver, they just got divorced. My dad is now in Oshkosh. . . . I have a brother in Portland who I don't get along with very well because of his wife."
K-Strass the Yo-Yo Guy Super Compilation
Some Longreads:
Kevin Durant and (Possibly) the Greatest Basketball Team of All Time (New York Times)
A Shooter In The Hills (New Yorker)
Building Products At Stripe (Ken Norton)
On Sneakers (Paris Review)
‘I’d Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This’ (Politico)
Michael and Dwight Rock Up to the Party Early - The Office US
One of the people I’ve learned the most from when it comes to mindset is Matt De Boer, current GWS Giant, and founder of Athletic Ventures (who I wrote about in Something immortal has just entered the world).
De Boer went on Dyl & Friends recently and shared his story, and his mental approach, and it captured so much of what I’ve learned from him. His Player A/Player B analogy alone makes the whole thing worthy of a listen.
Dyl & Friends - #96 Matt de Boer - Player A, Player B
Now matters.
I’ve had this simple idea reverberating in my mind for weeks.
My friend Anthony is a fitness coach, and now cancer survivor.
A little over a year ago he was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer. When they found it, the cancer had spread so far that the surgeons refused to operate. With the help and support of family, and in particular his wife Clair, Anthony refused to accept those first opinions, found a surgeon willing to operate, and with a combination of surgical intervention (including having most of his liver removed), and intensive chemotherapy, he managed to survive, to the point of being cancer-free.
It was the most heroic thing I’ve seen.
Anthony shared his story with Lach & Robbie on the Funny Business podcast. Anthony is humble, and incredibly honest about the last few years.
His message that now matters resonates so deeply when he says it.
interesting, thanks. My contention is that all the avalanches albums sound way better on cd or digital. i got my SILY this week on vinyl (the reissue) and was really disappointed with the pressing. thanks for that reddit archive too.
Epic, Nick!