Foo Fighters: Back and Forth

I like music. I like documentaries. I like music documentaries.

Foo Fighters' "Back and Forth" doc just popped up in my Netflix feed so I watched it last night. Marie joined in and commented that it was a well done movie. I concur. Dave Grohl's been doing this stuff so long now that he knows what to put out and what not to. He knows how to cultivate his brand. The dude has a very high bar.

This movie tracks the inception of Foo Fighters up until the Wasting Light album. There are interviews with all the band members and tons of archival footage. When you're Dave Grohl there's no shortage of cameramen hanging around.

It's a slick movie and something that any Foo Fighters fan would love.

Dig it.

For the Sake of Heaviness: The History of Metal Blade Records

Brent told me about this book. It had totally slipped my radar. Anyhow, I was on Amazon Prime in second and one-click-ordered that shit.

I had an unusual run of free time for a few consecutive nights in a row and was able to fly through it very quickly. I found it really engrossing as a metal nerdario. Metalheads are part historians / part archaeologists. That's just in our blood. So reading books like this is fundamental to feed that quest for knowledge.

You learn a lot about Metal Blade, Brian Slagel, and a host of historical metal tidbits. The Metallica stuff is especially illuminating. But what's coolest of all is really the nostalgia of the 80's and 90's and thinking back to the pre-internet days of discovering new bands etc. It was like a big ass low-fi global scavenger hunt. I'm not gonna wax on about how it was so much better, cuz I like going to youtube and bandcamp just as much as the next guy. But there's a certain magic that just isn't there anymore. Not talking about the music. Cuz the music is still amazing. But in the quest. In the discovery. The chase is just so much easier these days. And like Lemmy said, the chase is better than the catch...

The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

I believe it was my boy, Clint Ford, who recommended I read this. It's a gnarly story about Polish POW's who escape a hard labor camp in Siberia during WWII. They walk to the camp and they walk away from the camp. They walk thousands of god damn miles in this book. It puts LOTR to shame.

Anyhow, walking aside, this is a great book about the will to live and the will to conquer. It's about love, sacrifice, selflessness, friendship, and being a complete bad ass. Oh, and death. Lots of that going on.

Evidently the book was made into a movie which I've since added to my Netflix queue. I'll peep that at some point.

I've read some stories and watched some documentaries about bad ass people doing bad ass things. Solo treks across Antarctica. Plenty of mountaineering adventures gone horribly awry. People do some really brave and mind-blowing things in the face of certain death. But the people who escaped the prison camp in this book take the cake. They're next level.

Highly humbling and inspirational.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

Who doesn't want to watch 3.5 hours of George Harrison? C'mon now.

Scorsese released this bio in 2011. Mercifully he chopped it into two parts. The first half focuses mostly on George in context of the Beatles. And the second half obviously charts George and his quest for spirituality post-Beatlemania.

There's no narrator to hold your hand through the doc. It's just edited together via archival footage and interviews shot for the movie. There are reoccurring personalities throughout the film like Eric Clapton and the two remaining Beatles. But a good deal of it is George himself. Being a Beatle there was never a shortage of cameras around. I believe it took Scorsese's team five years to comb through all the footage they amassed to cull what they needed to tell the story.

I've been watching it on and off for the last few days. It doesn't demand a continuous viewing or even two viewings. I found it quite easy to pick up as if you were reading a book with a couple days in between sessions.

It's not super compelling, but it is good. I'm sure a hardcore Beatles fan would enjoy the hell out of it. I've just never been a huge fan of their work overall. And I found their solo efforts pretty dodgy to be honest. But I digress...this documentary is interesting and it's well done. Scorsese doesn't fuck about.

The Walking Dead: 28 A Certain Doom

Another installment of the Walking Dead. This one was action packed from opening to closing. Lots of twists, turns, and edge-of-your-seat moments. The psychological twists and dangers are far more dangerous than the Walkers.

A main character snuffs it in this one. It's a really enjoyable read. Not because a main character kicks the bucket, but just because there's a lot of action crammed into the story. You'll fly through it. Kind of left you with a bit of a clean slate, to be honest. Not sure what's in store next...

Generation Iron 2

I really quite liked the first Generation Iron. Four years later and here's the second installment. Where as the first one focused on professional bodybuilders competing for Mr. O, this one is more about the non-professional space. Calum Von Moger and Rich Piana (RIP) are spotlighted, for instance.

Vlad goes over to the Middle East to see what's going in Kuwait. And even pops over to India with Kai Greene. It's a typically international overview and the production quality is top notch. There's some good representation from female bodybuilders and overall Vlad does a good job of exploring bodybuilding outside of the narrow focus that the first movie had. He definitely broadens his horizons and knows how to play up the differences between the characters he profiles. The movie flows very well.

If you care about bodybuilding then you'll dig this.