Doom and Bossa Nova • Audiobook format innovation • Baden Powell • Paul Simon + South African Choral performance on SNL • Happiness is a Warm Puppy

Did you know that the illustrator who made the cover for Luiz Bonfa’s classic solo guitar record Introspection, also did the cover for the videogame Doom? I didn't, until recently. Don Ivan Punchatz is the illustrator's name. He’s from Texas and also designed many book covers. 

I’ve never played Doom, despite being a core target demographic when it was released in the 90s. However, I really enjoyed the book about the game’s creation, Masters of Doom, by David Kushner. Themes of creative competition, business ideologies, technology’s influence on art, and how friendships fray and fall apart.

The founders are maybe like the Lennon-McCartney of the video game world? The book also has good insights about parenting culture in the 90s. Apparently the book is a cult favorite in Silicon Valley, for reasons that become obvious when you read it. 

For Brazilian guitar, I find myself often returning to Baden Powell’s records (more than Bonfa). The album above was designed by Gigi Berendt and recorded for the MPS label, surprisingly headquartered in Shwarzvald (the Black Forest), Germany. They were known for crystal clear studio records for European jazz, Brazilian music, and many other global genres (MPS = Musik Produktion Schwarzwald). 

But this one. This one is the one. 

1962, 32 minutes, this is a perfect record. The haunting, echoey vocals are by Quareteto em Cy. Track #5, Canto de Iemenja remains mysterious and cool — there’s really nothing else like it from the early 60s. The album foreshadows, and ultimately inspires, the tropicalia movement that would soon emerge. 

You can find the album on spotify or youtube.

Here’s a few pictures from Shwarzvald. Magical hiking trails, ancient cities, wild boar sausages, very undervisited by Americans. 

The continuing story of Chicago’s fight against charming lighting. Stephanie Zimmerman at the Sun Times broke (yes, broke) a story about the business inspector delivering citations to cafes and wine bars for displaying string lights. 

String lights. 

Is this the best use of our city resources? Alternatively, what if the inspector came around and helped to install string lights to improve a neighborhood's charm? 

Or, maybe they could just do nothing and use the resources to speed up the permitting process.

Is it any wonder that Monocle’s quality of life survey 2026 neglected all cities from the United States? In Monocle’s ranking of “the 20 most livable cities in the world”, not a single American city was on the list.

Vancouver, coming in at #19 was the only North American city. 

Audiobooks are an underexplored format. Malcolm Gladwell appears to be the only author really pushing the boundaries of this format. (Maybe I'm wrong about this and I confess that I haven't done exhaustive research. If there are audiobooks innovating with the format, please send me references.)

The audiobook format that I’m thinking about is not a traditional audiobook — where a voice actor or the author reads from the pages of the book. I’m thinking of something that acts like a documentary — with great editing, narrative structure, sound design, archival clips, live interviews, and intentionality for the format. 

Jad Abumrad made something like this about Fela Kuti and it’s very good. But it’s designed more like a podcast (streaming with ads) than a book (pay-per-product). 

Imagine an audio book, with the depth of Hardcore History, but with the editing and sound design spirit of Walter Murch? That's a book format I'd like to write.

I was thinking of this while listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s audiobook about Paul Simon, Miracle and Wonder. First off, it’s great and I highly recommend listening. I really didn’t want the book to end. There are a few too many moments of gee whizzery from Mr. Gladwell, but overall, it’s an enlightening homage to one of America’s greatest musicians. I especially liked his focus on Simon as a great appreciator of music.

In 1986, before Graceland was released. Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo played live on Saturday Night Live. The tape transfer is a little rough, but you can get a sense for how special this moment was.

As a kid, I can remember sitting on our living room floor and listening to the Graceland CD. I would listen to the choral introduction of Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes on repeat. The acapella voices, their interplay with Paul Simon’s voice, gave a sense of weightlessness, as though the harmonies could lift you off the ground. 

Here’s a mix that I made during the quarantine with all my favorite Ladysmith songs (they made over 50 records!). 

A few images from Happiness is a Warm Puppy, by Charles Schulz, published in 1962. The book indirectly inspired the John Lennon song, who actually got the title from a gun-themed magazine article (which itself was riffing off Schulz’ book). 

Enjoy the week, friends. If you visit the actual website  – https://www.place-codes.org/ – you may notice some design improvements. I haven't had much time to work on the design and I enjoyed having an opportunity to consider the layouts. More to do, but we'll worry about that later.

—Michael Neault • Chicago • Recovering from the first bug of the year • Weekly post slightly delayed