The Saturday List — April 18, 2026

What I'm Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering

Hey there! Hope your weekend is off to a dynamite start. Before we dive in, here’s that button…

Watching: My Interview with Stephen Barrigar on The Vandy Program

Stephen Barrigar has been a friend for several years now — we first worked together for a Canadian marketing and communications agency in 2019; we bonded over music and sports and pop culture, of course — and he, too, has a Substack. (You can check out his Velcro Staircase music site here.)

Our 90-minute chat reminded me of what society seems to be missing: conversations where a couple buddies obviously don’t agree, are willing to debate, and would part as friends. We talked about…

• Canadian politics

• Pope Leo XIV vs President Trump

• Iran, Israel, Lebanon

• ALSO Coachella.

Reading: Fast Food My Way by Jacques Pepin

Yup, we’re cooking at home.

We picked this up ages ago — might have won it in a package at a pre-school raffle or something — and the theme from Jacques Pepin is that you can make food at home rather quickly and it can taste good and you can be proud of your own accomplishments. Fast Food My Way is the companion cookbook to a Public TV show from the mid-2000s.

There’s a recipe for Ham Steaks with Apricot-Mustard Glaze that’s a definite winner; been making it for years now (and the cookbook came out in 2004). And there’s a Chicken Breasts with Garlic and Parsley recipe that introduced me to Wondra Flour.

Wondering what the 90-year-old Pepin is up to these days? Surprise: he’s still in the kitchen. Here’s a Croque Monsieur recipe.

Listening to: A Whole Bunch of Chicago Live Music from Three Decades (?)(!)

Aadam Jacobs appears to have been obsessed with Chicago’s live music scene. So he has curated tapes of shows. Lots of shows. And they’re all on the Internet.

When news of this collection broke, I was skeptical; I’ve watched the first 30 seconds of way too many YouTube videos where the concert footage audio just isn’t quite right and the crowd noise drowns out the lead singer.

But this collection: it’s the real deal.

You can read more about how it came about here, on this unofficial recap of the Aadam Jacobs Collection.

Suffice it to say, for the live-music obsessed, it’s amazing.

The full thing is at this link, and you can search by year, or by venue, or alphabetize the columns and search by band.

I have spent way too much time on this site in the past week; as a result, I have discovered that the most popular shows in both 1994 and 1995 were from this band: Guided by Voices.

Rediscovering: The Work of Robert Plant

A week or so ago, Stephen Colbert decided to have Robert Plant on his show — with accompaniment from a band called Saving Grace — to perform a Led Zeppelin classic called “Ramble On.” It’s a must-watch, so here it is…

BUT we can’t stop our Plant-based Musical Diet there, eh?

In 1988, Plant released a solo album called Now and Zen. It’s outstanding, and, to me, “Heaven Knows” still sounds amazing.

And let’s close things out with “Ship of Fools,” also from Now and Zen and also still sounds like it just dropped yesterday.

May your week be filled with the sights, sounds, and tastes that delight you. Cheers!