My Best of 2024 — On Substack

Wednesday is about writing, books, reading, etc. So for the first day of 2025 I thought I’d look back at some 2024 highlights from “Sounds Good!”

Hi, Happy New Year! All the best to you all for 2025. I had a great year across 2024, something I feel a tiny bit guilty about saying, since I recognise it was a tough year out there for many. I felt that too, in many ways. A lot of tongue-biting. A lot of stopping myself from finger wagging. A lot of deep breaths.

As I posted on Facebook earlier today — I seem to have returned somewhat to Facebook (the coldest of social media’s cold showers):

It’s hard out there. You see it on people’s faces more than ever. There’s a stiff wind in the face of many, and I don’t think that’s just because I live in Wellington. But I personally had a great year. Which I find slightly challenging to boast about or reconcile because there was so much that was awful or just unpleasant going on, particularly in the political arena. We are now almost definitely Post-Truth and it’s a fucking lottery, made worse because you can get AI to make you a back-dated ticket.

I spent most of the year off Facebook — and was better for it of course. And have largely been away for the last three years. And I returned because, well, I have a book to plug. I sure plugged that book a bunch here, and why not. And that was one of the successes of 2024 for me — the entire book written, conceived, edited, designed and published inside the calendar year. The Richard Poems is my best work, to date. A small book that came from a large story, a deep labour of love and passion project that I took very seriously. And I’m pleased with the result. Haven’t seen a review, don’t know about sales, don’t (really) care. Of course it would be great if it was a raging success in that regard, but I don’t see it as that sort of book. It’s a small book and those that find it will feel what they feel about it. And I am just thrilled that I did it.

Anyway, I had a good year for many reasons, and there were many highlights, and I thought I’d share some of the Substack highlights, and favourite posts (of mine, and yours — some are things I liked writing, some are things you liked reading, some were both. Alright, here goes:

January

This first thing I wrote last year — on New Year’s Day — was a review of the latest comedy specials by Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle, two punch-down non-classics that allowed angry “anti-woke” ragers to declare their love for comedians bereft of new ideas as a way of baiting “the left”. Shit these comedy specials were terrible. Anyway, this is one of the most read pieces I’ve written for this platform:

I also wrote my first ‘proper’ short story in a while. It was just after Christmas. So that was obviously the inspiration I needed:

I also wrote some “non-fiction short stories” — a format I really like. Basically just taking from my own life and not hiding it at all, not obscuring it into fiction, but owning the very Non Fiction of it all. Here’s an example I liked and it seemed to go well with readers too:

One of the things I got really into do last year, as a way of sourcing content, but also as a way of experimenting, having fun, was taking something I’d written much earlier and changing the format. So a poem would become a story, a review could become a poem, and so on. Here, with this example, I took one of the longer poems from my 2020 book, The Death of Music Journalism, and basically made it a little essay, or the sort of ‘blog post’ I used to write back in the 2010s for Stuff.co.nz. The title remains the same:

I’m not the biggest Foo Fighters fan — at all. But I was excited to take Oscar along to a stadium show, and I was keen to see new drummer Josh Freese do his thing, roughly 25 years after I last saw him play (as part of Nine Inch Nails). I have fun writing gig reviews again — especially when you can stretch out a little:

I celebrated four years sober — and wrote about it. And yes, I’ll probably write something at the five year mark. It’s good to celebrate such things:

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February

One of the big themes and preoccupations for me this year was falling in love with the cassette tape medium. Something I didn’t expect to happen. But hey, the heart wants what it wants. It started — really — with this piece:

Always a treat to see Calexico live — always something new to say when you write about them too, or some new way to try and say it:

I love The Beatles nearly as much as the next Beatles Obsessive, but even I am getting a bit sick of this anniversary worship. So when it was all on about the 60th Anniversary of the Fab Four playing Ed Sullivan, and Beatlemania finally exploding across the US, I thought it would be fun to look at some other incredible (better!) albums by other artists that were released in 1964. I liked this idea, it wasn’t super well read or received but it was one of my favourites to put together:

My first hack at “Political Satire” was fun for me. I love calling Luxon “The Mate of the Nation” after his (alleged) State of the Nation address:

Another poem turned into prose — this was my rewritten, reworked attempt at remembering my time in the hot seat being interviewed by Kim Hill:

I’ve never really ‘got’ the appeal of The National (the band, I mean, the political party too, but I’m talking about the band here). So I went all in, listened right through the catalogue, got as pumped as I could, then went and saw them and it still felt like either they had a flat tire, or I did, or both. Still, trying to keep the gig reviews rolling (speaking of flat tires). And, yeah, it was good to try to encapsulate why I can’t love them on the level of the spiritually devoted:

It wasn’t really on my 2024 Bingo Card to have an old-fashioned phoner interview, let alone for it to be with the drummer from The Animals! A band I truly loved — part of a wave of music that felt world-changing to me, even a couple of decades after it first made its mark. He was, of course, a scholar and a gent too:

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March

I had a lot of nostalgia in me for the music of 30 years ago, 1994 being a big time — my final year of high school, and just a lot of amazing music turning up in my world. This was a fun post to write, it was about the women in music in 1994, specifically PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, and Bjork, and that photo:

Early March started off with four gigs in four days, and I reviewed them all. They were all pretty great, but a couple were absolutely sensational. First up, Mogwai, my god:

The gig reviews always get good views — because no one is out there regularly reviewing gigs anymore. But here’s a funny story. Wrote a review of Graham Nash. Went to Auckland for it, don’t usually ask for free tickets, I buy them now most of the time. But a promoter offered me tickets to Nash and I was keen, since I was going for other gigs. And yeah, good enough show, Nash meandered a tad, but I liked it, and the players were extraordinary. I wrote the review — and then the promoter ‘took back’ the tickets he was going to give me for Tommy Emmanuel, because my review wasn’t positive enough. I just checked, and it’s had more views than just about any other gig review I’ve written, and more views than many of the newsletters I’ve created on Substack. Lol:

I love Dinosaur Jr! And I saw them in late 2023, in America. At the Fillmore. But that wasn’t going to stop me seeing them again, in Auckland. And the sound was patchy, but I’m sure glad I got to see J and crew do what they do yet again:

The final night of the four gig run was Mr Bungle with Melvins opening — a true double bill. It was noisy, messy, and beautiful:

I said I loved 1994 and there were a lot of special albums, and artists associated with it. One of course was NIN and The Downward Spiral, so this was a great pleasure to write:

I certainly didn’t expect the third time I saw Shonen Knife to be the best time:

The Arooj Aftab gig was the only thing I went to at this year’s Arts Festival — and it was amazing:

Another toe in the water of political satire:

It was nice writing about Once Were Warriors in the 30th Anniversary year of the film. The movie is astounding. The book…was at the very least, important:

Following on from interviewing John Steele of The Animals, I saw the group — okay, yeah yeah, he was the only original member, but it was FUN! And good:

Not a Winston Peters fan, but sure appreciate that he’s a Phil Collins fan. This was a fun one to write, and actually one of my favourite pieces of the year:

Writing “non fiction short stories” and the like, allowed me to open up about things from the past. But how to bring that into the present? I found a way by admitting that if I ever had a ‘villain era’ it was certainly over. And it felt good to spell this out — not that I truly think I was trying to be a villain ever, but I did have my era, that’s for sure:

What better way to show you were no longer in your villain era than to write about Creed. People thought I was joking. But can’t a joke be serious too? I genuinely — sincerely — “discovered” the music of Creed in 2024, having spent a quarter century ignoring it. And I liked a lot of it. No lies:

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April

More 1994 nostalgia — it was 30 years since the death of Kurt Cobain. And though I didn’t know really how to feel about that, or if I should feel any particular way about it, I did seem to remember vividly hearing the news that he died, in much the way people older than me remember hearing about Elvis or John Lennon. So I wrote this. And it seemed to resonate with a few:

A lot of good metal gigs in 2024 and The Black Dahlia Murder with Carcass was definitely one of them:

I got a lot of feedback about this one — a true story of why I am not a fan of camping. Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, but also I probably won’t. Anyway, another in the line of “non fiction short stories” I guess:

Went and saw Beth Orton. Amazing band, particularly the drummer — but what was up with Beth’s voice? Ruined! Still, it was a pretty great/interesting show. But it was like there was an elephant in that room no one was calling out. Some do-gooder from The Spinoff told me off for my title. But the whole reason to write somewhere like Substack is so you don’t have a sub-editor telling you what to call your piece:

Chris Isaak on the other hand was not only still in good voice, but his incredible charisma meant that, 29 years after I last saw him, I remained a huge, huge fan. And I got some comments from all around the world on this one, and directly to my inbox:

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May

Devastating story, but it was one of the best books I read all year:

It wasn’t quite as great seeing James Taylor a second time, but also in some ways it was better, more endearing, and he had better jokes, and the setlist was different, so it was absolutely still worthy:

It was nice to champion music most people wouldn’t get to hear or didn’t know about — far better than just joining the crowd to suck up to Beyoncé or Taylor Swift with hot takes. So I wrote about people like Graeme Woller. Who? Well, check it out:

Mucked around with ChatGPT and watched it pick the soul out of some of my writing:

I’m a let Taylor finish, but Paul Kelly had the best Taylor Swift cover of all time, of all time:

I really went all in on Peter Hook coming back to town. Got a sweet seat, and read his books, and hoovered the catalogue/s and, well, really enjoyed the show of course:

Transmission: Beta was the best play of the year, and a most amazing thing to see:

Enjoyed writing about some old albums I’d previously never heard by bands I’d never even heard of:

Once I worked out how to sync my podcast with Substack I shared this year-old recording of a chat with Henry Rollins. It’s a fun listen even if the gig he was promoting is long in the rear view mirror:

I knew Rodger Fox well enough to be very sad about his death, and to want to write the usual eulogy to honour someone like him, but to inject a bit more into it — since he was a friend. I was thrilled to see this shared a lot, commented on, and read widely. R.I.P. Rodger. Legend:

My band, Dirty Spoons, played live at Music Planet in Wellington. And there was a video recording to prove it. We had a great time, and sounded pretty good I reckon. Perfectly captured in that moment by store manager, Pete. A legend:

Um, I spoke to Jon Ronson on video (Skype) and recorded the audio for my podcast. What an experience. He was kind, funny, wise, everything you’d expect — and more:

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June

I enjoyed writing this piece about American History X, a film that I had liked enough back in the day. But when my 12yo started using the term “bite the curb” apparently without context, well, it was time for some home-schooling:

A few years ago I wrote out a story that happened when I was working in a bookstore in Newtown — I made it a poem, and felt it didn’t quite ‘work’. So I rewrote it as a blog post, a piece of journalism, a kind of short story, maybe little bits of each. It felt more successful to me in this new setting:

I had a few goes at making some lazy ambient-styled loop music on GarageBand, I don’t do this much anymore but from time to time I still try. I quite liked this one:

Another poem that works better — I think?! — as prose. This, in another version, was cut in the end from my first book of poems. Cut for space, like an SNL skit. It was too long. But also I think it was longwinded in that format. But a story worth telling, ultimately. So I retold it. Perhaps the biggest, or at least weirdest highlight was someone leaving a comment to say they were unsubscribing as a result of this piece:

I’ll try and get better at this — make more, create a better view/atmosphere, but here’s a first attempt at a video poem:

They say you need to separate Art from Artist sometime, well also we might need to separate Audience from Audience. I did so, and found I quite liked TOOL (again):

Geez, but it was a last minute decision to get a ticket (one of the last available I think) to see Alain Johannes. Sure glad I did:

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July

I felt very sad about the death of Shelley Duvall, and the story of her, across the last 20 years or so. I did my best to write about that in considering her acting highlights from earlier in her career with this eulogy:

Woke up ridiculously early on my birthday, no idea why, coincidence, and wrote a few things down. Including this, which I love. A tribute to my darling wife Katy, and our two typewriters — some sort of metaphor grown wild sits in here:

Oscar and I started a podcast about Stephen King — we are going through his novels in order. We started with Carrie. Here’s the first ep:

Yay. Sade. Love her. Had to say so:

The Monster At The End of The Book is one of my all-time favourite books, and it’s been fun getting to revisit it in a few different contexts — from child, to parent, to hopeless nostalgic, borderline-autistic collector-type:

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August

It was nice to finally get something down about a weird little shared universe I’ve always been fascinated by: Prince and Morrissey share the same favourite Joni Mitchell, The Hissing of Summer Lawns:

Poems are meant to be about more than one thing, in just a few short lines. Well, that’s one read. Poems of course can be whatever they want to be. They don’t need to be about anything. Here is a poem I’m really proud of that I wrote this year. It’s about me seeing Ray Charles when I was 17. It’s about the racism that was rampant in my hometown. And it’s about how attitudes were blasé back then:

Didn’t watch a lot of the Paris Olympics, but was there for the memes — so had fun writing this:

I got strangely obsessed with the final Police album, Synchronicity. Should I say, I’ve always been strangely obsessed with it, but the 40th Anniversary got me back into bumper-review mode:

For National Poetry Day I was both the MC and one of the readers on the bill. So I managed to record my set and shared it. These were all pieces still in development that would later be collected in The Richard Poems:

Have felt very passionate about The Bear. I think it’s a new gold standard for consistent TV writing, and acting. God, I hope it doesn’t jump the shark. Some people were down on the ‘slowness’ of season three, but in some ways I think it was the best season to date:

I weighed in on the news of an Oasis reunion. Nostalgia is my beat after all:

I was asked to contribute to a little series on Slow Boat Records’ website about favourite albums and how you find them. I chose to make it a tribute to the idea of record stores, those magical places that helped you find what you didn’t know you were looking for. For some reason Slow Boat didn’t end up using it, so I shared it out on Substack — and really like this piece and its sentiment (and the album it talks about of course!):

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September

The lid was off, and the bottle was tipped, so that nostalgia-sauce around the role of the CD store continued as I revisited Beyond Skin by Nitin Sawhney. One of the first albums I reviewed as I was trying my best to break into music writing a quarter-century ago:

Loved The Substance. Film of the year. Well, one of:

Wrote an essay about Pip Adam’s work for my Honours English class. It got an ‘A’. So I felt comfortable sharing it in public. Love Pip. Love her work:

Enjoyed revisiting American Psycho — after buying a copy that will stay sealed on my bookshelf:

Got way more into CDs than I ever expected…wonder that that’s about? Clue could be in the title here:

Flew up to Auckland first thing in the morning, still had to work remotely, fly back the next morning early and get straight into the office. Jesus, what was I thinking! Well it was all worth it to finally see Iron Maiden live:

That wee newsletter I wrote in February about the cassette tape turning 40…I mentioned a tapedeck in a second-hand store. Many months later, the owner saw me in public and said he appreciated the ‘review’ of his store, and wanted to gift me the stereo as a thank you — it’s the same model as my first ever stereo. So yeah, cassette culture kicked in big time on the back of this:

I love sharing ‘behind the scenes’ things about how you get into a particular thing, writing, or an obsession, or fixation. Sometimes that story can be ‘quite cringe’. Here is one such example:

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October

R.I.P. Kris Kristofferson. Legend:

Also didn’t expect to get right back into U2 in 2024, but it happened. It started, as it always does, with Unforgettable Fire. Which turned 40:

I think Listening To Bob Dylan at Red Rocks is my other favourite non ‘Richard’ poem that I wrote in 2024, after the Ray Charles one:

I said to a friend straight after seeing Marcus Miller, “it had every right to be that good, but there was no guarantee that it would be”. Holy shit this was a magical show:

I bought a second-hand suitcase, it perfectly fits three rows of CDs. I decided to make a time-capsule type thing; I call it my “Survival Kit”. Nuts, I know. But I really enjoyed building this, and writing this:

Any chance to write about Fleetwood Mac, I’m gonna take it:

As I listened to the songs that helped me to assemble The Richard Poems, those songs started triggering other ideas. The best of them arrived in the form of this poem:

I write about CDs — the medium — and so I found the perfect place to write about my love for the Brian Smith album, Moonlight Sax, well albums actually. A day later, because it’s New Zealand, someone had told me they’d sent the piece to Brian Smith. I love this place:

Esperanza Spalding was also incredible at the 2024 Jazz Festival. Such a treat to finally see a musician of that class and magnitude and talent:

Loved writing about tapes in 2024 — some albums or compilations just felt perfect for that format. Here’s an example, I’ve written a dozen of these and counting, but this was one of my favourites to revisit in this way:

I don’t comment on music “industry” stuff much, so when I do I want it to be something where I kinda know what I’m talking about, or where my opinion can’t be discounted as bonkers. I think I hit in well on this one:

Incredible to see my book cover all around town on posters. Couldn’t believe my luck. Thank you again Phantom Billstickers:

Bloodsport - it means the world to me, that film. I have a painting of it in my lounge. No, really. I own the movie on DVD, the book it was based on, and its soundtrack on vinyl. I wrote about it in my new book, and I wrote about it here:

I wrote quite a few CD reviews of brand new albums, they’re just buried on the site, rather than emailing them all out and sharing them about. One of my favourite new records of the year is the latest by The Necks:

Took Oscar to see Travis Scott for his 13th birthday. It made his night. I was just lucky they were selling coffee:

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November

Outing myself as a massive Mariah Carey fan seemed crucial, or at least cathartic in 2024:

Quincy Jones died. He made it to his 90s. But what a towering legend across decades, eras, generations, and genres:

I enjoyed writing about Langston Hughes, and the intriguing tone of voice in his short stories for a uni essay, it got a decent pass-mark too (A-) so once that was in the clear I shared it here:

With my book finally published in early November I was the guest poet at the Fringe Bar for the monthly readings. It was a great set, a few brand new poems, a couple of old ones, and the focus of course the new book, The Richard Poems. I recorded the reading, and you can hear it here:

Discovering the band The Slingers, from Aussie, got me engaged in a bit of Ye Olde Fashioned Music Journalism:

Spat venom at my least favourite “Xmas” movie, my least favourite “romcom” and just an all around disaster of a movie, which is just Shit, Actually:

Amazing scenes at the hikoi to protest the Treaty bill. And I was there. Got some photos. And wrote a piece that was shared a bunch — one of the photos even got shared via Spanish news media, and those pesky louts, The NZ Herald wanted a piece of it too:

It was so cool to see Bob Mould do his thing, solo, live:

Always love seeing the Circa Christmas Pantomime:

So, I got to see the Jon Ronson gig — and wrote about it. The show was amazing, but more amazing (to me), Jon actually read the review, and shared it on his Substack! Then subscribed to mine:

I started writing about how I have some patterns in my life, some traits and tropes, some things that have stood out on reflection. I’m not diagnosed autistic but a lot of people started asking me about that over the last couple of years. So I started “The Autism Diaries?!” — these have proved really popular and so I’ll share the first one here:

Another short story I was very pleased with — based on something very close to the truth, and containing, of course, plenty of truths within it:

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December

The band Spotlights blew me away. Incredible intensity, great playing, and a just a really nice surprise:

I’ve seen Dean & Britta three times now, each time great. But this was a reminder of Dean Wareham’s unique and great guitar skill:

Getting a new (old) cassette player was one thing. Writing about tapes was another. Making playlists based entirely around songs I used to own on cassette tape was really starting to push it. Then I joined r/cassetteculture on Reddit. So to keep up with all of that I had to go and get a brand new Walkman didn’t I?

The Christopher Luxon interview on Q&A was a How Not To from him and a bit of a How To from host, Jake Tame. So I joined the throng already writing about it, and got some of the most hits I got all year and certainly the most ‘likes’:

One of my favourite CD “revisitations” this year was The Fat of the Land, by The Prodigy:

Spotify Wrapped got everyone in a tiz. Including me, obviously! Lol:

No matter what you read, I am NOT in the new Robbie Williams biopic. I felt I had to front-foot that particular issue:

Doechii had one of the best albums of the year, and started giving amazing performances too. She’s the start of tomorrow today:

Another “A” essay for my Honours — Modernism, English — this one a real passion-project too, I’ve always been fascinated by Hemingway, his life and influence as much as his writing. So I got to explore a bit of that through the lens of modernism:

I listened to a lot of music in 2024 — mostly old. But I did check out some new albums too. So I wrote a bit about the ‘albums of the year’, but with a slight twist:

Fuck I hate musicals. And the more I heard about Wicked, or saw it mentioned the less I wanted to see it. I hope to never see it. But I did enjoy the chance to vent a bit of bah humbug:

Christmas was nice. Low key:

I got another short story out of Christmas — this one came to me on the drive up, sat with me, and gladly I didn’t forget where I wanted to go with it. Though actually it took a lighter twist than the much darker original, which I might also write one day. But yeah, I was pleased with this:

I love writing the series “Shit That’s Good! Crap Albums I Love” — though I have to think pretty hard about them now as I want them to mean something, it’s a curious effort to try to explain how you can still be attracted to a sound or at the least attached to an album when you know objectively that it’s kinda garbage. Got onto a good one here from all my recent Pink Floyd and adjacent listening:

Tough year for film — but I found a few I liked. And some great docos:

And that was the year. That’s a small selection of the newsletters — which is HUGE. I wrote loads and loads in 2024. More than I thought at the time, looking back through. And there’s more here than you’d ever need, and I don’t expect anyone to have even made it this far, so this is a record for me as much as for you. A sampler of the year as I viewed it. Writing was my way of making sense of things. Or trying to.

Burying the lede here, but I reached 1000 subscribers this year. Which felt like a cool milestone. I hope many of you will stay with me through 2025, but I understand if you don’t.

Happy New Year!