It's Been a Year
It certainly has. My 2024 in review.
Friday morning, at about 6am while having coffee, switched on pre-dawn as seems to be my way these days, a far cry from the night owl younger me, I typed the following in my Notes app:
“I don’t think I’ve ever lived a year where I worked harder, learned more, taxed myself further and earned less.”
These are not necessarily contradictions, assuming that the four statements can be proven true in the first place. If I took six weeks out in the spring, can I possibly claim to have worked harder than ever before? Allowing that Europeans have six weeks holiday by default, then maybe so. It’s only those (us?) Americans whose work ethic allows them (us?) to become slaves to the punch clock, which increasingly these days is our endlessly pinging phone and computer, constantly calling us back to the grindstone. Personally, I believe life is to be loved not merely lived, enjoyed rather than endured, and should certainly not be spent assiduously proving to The Man (Mark? Musk? Jeff? Ek?) that I can enrich Him further by giving away my creative thoughts for free. But, here I go anyway: I can’t help but type-write.
This is your longer, weekend read on Wordsmith. You may prefer to enjoy it in a browser at leisure, rather than on email in a rush. Either way, enjoy.
It was a year in which I released more of my own music than ever before. Only five songs, not exactly double album status, but all of them to be proud of. Our Hudson Palace cover of “I’m A Boy,” recorded in its entirety in my Kingston apartment, elicited an e-mail of approval from the song’s composer, and made number 1 on at least one DJ’s chart. The three recordings by The Dear Boys all elicited their own airplay across multiple indie stations, made it onto a couple of Year-end playlists, and got us featured in music magazines as if we were a proper indie band. At times, it even feels like we are. We even made a couple of cool videos to go with two of the songs. This music-making lark is way more fun when you’re no longer trying to be a pop star.
It was a year in which I took the spring semester out from my college courses at SUNY Empire to focus on my Prior Learning Assessments. The way it works is this, and it’s one of the reasons I chose my particular branch of the State University of New York: if you can prove that you have gained from your life experiences the equivalent learning of a course – not necessarily one in the catalogue but one of your own design - you can apply for the relevant credits. The application process is thorough, each title requiring an accompanying essay and back-up evidence, a consultation with and approval from one’s mentor in advance and an interview with an assessor for verification. I applied for the equivalent of at least a dozen courses, ranging from Biographical Nonfiction Books to Musical Performance, from Western Popular Music History to Digital Media, from Public Speaking to Music Theory. I got more than I bargained for, literally, with a couple of assessors affording me additional credits. In the end, taking this one semester out to go through the process turned out to be equal to four semesters – two years! – of actual courses, effectively halving the time it would normally take to get a Bachelor of Arts. For those who were kind enough to suggest I deserved an honorary degree, well, thank you, this is as close as it is likely to get, but besides, and we’ll return to this point, I am in it as much for the learning as the piece of paper.
It was a year in which I decided to take a season out from directing at Rock Academy at the same time, after fourteen uninterrupted seasons of three seasons a year (and a year of apprenticeship before that), so as to spend six weeks back in the UK, my longest stint there since 1996. I would arrive shortly before my mother’s 90th birthday at the end of March, and return directly after my own 60th birthday at the end of April. My partner, Paula, would come over during her Spring Break from teaching – which fortuitously coincided with my mother’s 90th – and join me for a week, taking in London, the south coast and my birth town of Beverley all in the space of nine nights, her first time in the UK. I would rehearse and record with The Dear Boys, I would take on one new athletic endeavor, I would attend some football matches, and I would find a way to celebrate my 60th birthday in a way that felt right. I would not earn any money during this period, other than that from my Substack work, and given the amount of time I was already putting into my college degree, the trip might have been seen as foolhardy. I saw it instead as one of the reasons we have life savings, and that sense was vindicated by all the wonderful times I experienced, especially my side-trips to take up long-standing invitations to stay with friends in north Wales and northern Scotland. Vindication came in a less desired manner by the fact that two of the close friends who hosted me on this trip spent the end of 2024 dealing with life-threatening illnesses. I trust in them both to keep living productively and positively, but their sudden exposure to the random sharpshooters of “sniper’s alley” confirmed once more that life is all too short. Trips are to be taken when they feel right. Friendships are to be treasured, rapturously.
It was a year in which I did not visit a new country.
It was a year in which, emotionally, I said a kind of goodbye to my mother. Her 90th birthday was as lovely as we could have asked for under the circumstances, but there is now so little left of her. There is almost nothing of that once sharp mind that was the life and soul of every party, nothing of the worldly traveler who in the second half of her life visited Syria, Iran, China, Jordan, Egypt, Brazil, Uzbekistan, Japan, Peru and more. I have just about said goodbye to the house she purchased in Beverley when she moved back up from London around twenty years ago; my brother and I are putting it on the market to pay for her care home, her own life savings now emptied out by the cost of that care. I will be back in Beverley early in 2025, but this time to help clear the place out. And beyond that? Maybe with this trip this past spring, I said goodbye to my birth-town as well, at least as a place where I always had somewhere this last two decades to hang my hat. I love what is left of my mother as much as any son should but like any normal son, I wish to hold on to the good memories. These current experiences are so hard to endure.
It was a year in which I had my first travel article published.
It was a year in which I directed three different Rock Academy shows. The Prog Rock show, ironically so given my distaste for the genre ever since punk came along and knocked me off my pre-teen pretentions, was probably my best ever show. The Who show, ironically given that it was my dream assignment, was probably my hardest. (Though the performance of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at Best of Season, below, was everything I could have asked for). My current, 70s Sirens show, is one of my loveliest, with a whole bunch of kids I’ve known for years and watched growing up, and some vibrant, brand new eight-year-old students who don’t know me well enough to be bothered that it’s my last season. Yes, I am bowing out after this season. I am leaving a winning team with what will hopefully be a winning show. It is all good. It has been incredible. I know how much I will miss it because I missed it in the spring. But new horizons beckon and all good things must come to an end.
It was a year in which I said goodbye to the apartment in Kingston that had served as my home – and served its purpose - for five interim years after my marriage ended and I moved off the mountaintop house in the Catskills. It was a year in which I made the giant step of living with a partner (Paula) for only the second time in my life, having dated for four years already and feeling that to not take the further step once my younger son was a year into college would be to waste an opportunity. We found our dream (rental) home at the very first time of making a serious appointment, and it was therefore a year in which I found myself, despite myself and all my promises to opposite effect, living in a suburban environment, a compromise I justify by the fact that it’s my dream home (I may have mentioned that?), the neighbors are cool, the houses are quaint, the rail trail is right down the road, and Kingston is just five minutes further up it. It’s all a process for sure, this cohabiting lark all over again, but one of the many observations I made of my mother in later years was that for all that life-and-soul-of-the-party business, she needed someone to keep her in check. I need someone to keep me in check. I need someone who’s got my back (her words). I need someone to hold, someone to sing with, someone to talk with and walk with. She needs me for similar reasons. I never wanted to grow old alone, even if I do treasure my alone time.
It was a year in which, despite all the above, I ended up in hospital for the fourth time in five years, this time dragging my partner with me less than two months after starting a new life together. Somehow, on a drive I have taken dozens of times before, to Burlington, VT where my older son lives and where we were set to spend just a few short days at the end of a summer otherwise completely taken up by the incredibly hard work of the move, I managed to come off the road in the middle of the day and total my Prius. It could have been so much worse, but still we both sustained fractures, hers worse than mine. Way to start a new life together, Tony.
It was a year in which my older son moved in with someone for the first time in his own life, just a week before Christmas. I met his partner Tegan for the first time myself when they drove down from Burlington to visit Paula and I in hospital, bringing us fresh underwear in the process. Anyone who can rise to that challenge with such grace and good humor is more than alright in my own book! I am so happy to see my son move on to the next stage of his own life and can’t wait to see their new digs in early January. (I will drive more carefully than ever.)
It was a year in which my older son and I had but the one day of skiing together. When he was a kid and we lived in the heart of the ski mountains, it would be a whole season. Life moves on, and skiing feels like part of the past. But on beautiful bluebird snowy mornings as we had this Christmas week, I really do miss it.
It was a year in which my younger son proved his musical mixing skills with his work for Hudson Palace and The Dear Boys which, as noted, were treated by radio stations as perfectly professional, on par with their equals. But it was also a year in which he struggled with his college environment and the social world that comes with it. For all that we had it so much harder growing up in London in the 70s and early 80’s, I also think we had it easier in other ways.
It was a year in which I failed at my only athletic goal of 2024: requalifying for the Boston Marathon. The marathon I ran in Burlington at the end of May I viewed as a training run, given that my UK trip had taken me off my actual training. The race at which I intended to requalify was set to take place the weekend after the car crash. There is always 2025
It was a year in which I only ran the one “ultra” – the annual Escarpment Race in the Catskills, for something like the 17th time (see above). As with the road marathon a couple of months earlier, it felt surprisingly doable. I’ve learned that one runs slower as one grows older, but one can also run smarter, with greater stamina. It feels like a reasonable tradeoff.
It was a year in which, confirming the above, I ran the hills of Denbighshire in North Wales and the hills of Aberdeenshire in northern Scotland, and walked the marathon distance Three Peaks Challenge of western Yorkshire in northern England, and loved every minute of all of it.
It was a year in which I published over 100 posts on Substack, my first full year on the platform, keeping to my twice-a-week minimum commitment. I would like to believe some of the posts were worth the price of admission, which is free for the vast majority of them.
It was a year in which my subscriber base increased three-fold, though as with many writers on this ever-more-popular and therefore ever-more-crowded platform, my paid subscriber base increased by nothing like the same ratio.
It was a year in which Dan Epstein and myself published eleven episodes of our Crossed Channels podcast, a show that I love hosting with him, all the more so now that we have “The Orange” – my home studio in Hurley – to record at. I love having new good friends like Dan and I love the rapport we have, the Yank and the Brit, and the fact that we can usually sound like we know what we’re talking about as we discuss acts/albums from alternating sides of the Pond. I don’t even mind that Dan doesn’t like James. Actually, I take that back: he hates James. This picture is for him.
It was a year in which I published ten episodes of The Fanzine Podcast, widening the remit to include football fanzines, litzines, and perzines. Next year I hope to publish at least ten more.
It was a year in which I learned to live with Tinnitus. Not pleasantly, not melodically, and certainly not harmoniously. The best way I can describe it is that we developed a sort of détente.
It was a year in which I started to read more books than I finished. A year in which people sent me more books than I can read. A year in which I set my bookshelves up in my new home and wondered if there would ever be a time I would get to read them all. I know the answer to that and it’s okay. They’re all appreciated all the same and will hopefully never be banned nor burned.
It was a year in which I did not write nor publish a book, not even a foreign language edition of a past tome. I trust that my author days are not behind me, and that new horizons, subjects and scope looms large.
It was a year in which I got to vote – legally - in two national elections. My party “won” in one country. It “lost” in the other. I am living in the losing country. I fear for this losing country, for the fatalist sense of acceptance in which we appear to be greeting this foreboding new dawn. I don’t have the answers. I don’t think anyone does. I just have the fear.
It was a year in which I saw gigs big and small, from the back room of Tubby’s to the posh seats of Madison Square Garden, with a truly fun stop-off at Forest Hills Stadium to see IDLES along the way. It was a year in which, oddly, I did not see a gig in all six weeks I was in England – apart from the one on the night of my 60th birthday, featuring a friend of 40+ years standing.
It was a year in which I spent my 60th birthday doing what I would pretty much do any Saturday I was in England and had the option. Park Run for breakfast, a Palace game in the afternoon, and a gig in South London for the evening, in the company of friends I’ve known since I was a teenager (or earlier). Sometimes, doing normality is best.
It was a year in which there was, truly, so much great music that it was impossible to keep up. But that's for my final post of 2024.
It was a year in which I went to four football grounds in England – and none of them were Selhurst Park. (Though I did pay tribute to the Wilf Zaha mural.)
As much as anything, it was a year in which I learned. For my fall semester, I took on four courses, a full workload, including an Advanced Sociology Course on “Great Conversations in Social Thought” and an advanced Arts course on “Performance: The Twentieth Century.” As with my “Introduction to World Literature” course, these made me commit to learning and studying areas of our culture I had always wanted to know more about. I finally read the works of Marx and Benjamin, Comte and Durkheim, Baudrillard and Foucault, Du Bois and West, hooks and Crenshaw, Césaire and Wallerstein. I finally learned properly about Dada, Futurism, Bauhaus, Constructivism and more in depth. I finally had reason to read short stories from Africa and Latin America, and fantastic novels from Japan and South Korea. In the way I so love life’s serendipities, the subjects collided at the end of the semester; reading essays about the translation of Han Kang’s brilliant historic novel Human Acts into English, I found the same sociologists (Fanon, Bhabha) from my Sociology course being quoted as were also being cited in my Arts course’s textbook chapter about Postmodernism, all while I was quoting various among them myself in an essay subject of my own choosing to wrap up the Sociology course. I felt like my brain was being taxed to the limit in these final weeks, to an extent I haven’t felt since writing All Hopped Up and Ready to Go, and some of it was absolute overload, but I also felt that brain improve and (mentally, at least, ha!) expand in a way I genuinely don’t think I’ve felt before. And I felt that improvement in my writing – especially my college essays, which other than the article on Futurist Luigi Russolo and the Art of Noise, you aren’t all privy to – and in my general demeanor, my understanding of the world in which we live and which I still seek to explore, learn more about and find a way to write about so much further in depth.
As such, it was a year in which I started to feel like an elder, in the best of all possible ways I could use that word. At the age of sixty, I finally sense that I have accrued knowledge, and that just possibly, I can share it. Leading a “Masterclass” on the Art of Surprise in pop Music for the UK’s The Songwriting Academy, just last Sunday, I actually felt like I knew what I was talking about. Working with the kids at the Rock Academy, it’s the same thing (and I will miss it). Writing about running earlier this year several times over for my Substack, I did not feel I was faking it. There is something to be says for continuing to study, to learn; to work, to write; to read, to listen… all of it attentively, all of it actively. There is, perhaps, something to this life to pass along to the next generation.
Here then, is to 2025. If all goes well, in the spring I will have my B.A. in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Studies, with a Concentration in Writing about Global Culture and Music. Beyond that, my world is an open horizon. Cheers. And, seriously, given what we do not have to look forward to: peace.
Here’s to squeezing all manner of joy out of 2025, my friend. Looking very much forward to another year of Crossed Channels with you; and thank you for the photographic reminder that, whatever the coming year may bring, at least I won’t have to listen to James again! 😆
I too am fascinated by becoming an elder. A small positive that offsets the negatives of an ageing bod. There’s a great little podcast in Sydney called Suddenly Senior, by two radio DJs who were popular and cool 2-3 decades ago and are now like, whoah, what just happened? We are senior! They interview others from the era to reflect on ageing and outlook.
The other change I notice is living a less selfish, less hedonistic life, as responsibilities to our own elders increase. All the best you and of course Ruth. Slàinte!