The intro remains the same, because I’m lazy.
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Music does something to me, and I’ve never been able to explain exactly why. It just happens. My molecules are somehow rearranged when I walk into a supermarket and hear a song on the sound system.
I stop dead and forget the shopping list. My wife becomes understandably exasperated. I can’t not listen. In similar fashion, I can’t ignore words wherever I see them, even when they’re on billboards as we’re speeding down the interstate.
It would be a startling change of pace for my existence to experience blank sonic space and be indifferent, except I can’t so much as imagine such an existence.
My earliest childhood memories have melodic accompaniments. When very young, I’d go to sleep to the cracklings of an ancient AM radio, and perhaps that’s why absolutely nothing about being five years old remains intact in my memory except for hearing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “California Dreamin’” when both were smash hits.
The grooves on a LP collection of children’s music subsequently became worn and frayed. I recall two cuts in particular: An American folk song called “One More Day,” and Mozart’s “Turkish Rondo.”
The anecdotes are both endless and tedious, but the point is this: Music plays inside my noggin at all times, and has been doing so for as long as I can remember. At times music invades my dreams, and upon waking most mornings, a randomly selected song begins playing. It is glorious, maddening, and central to my being. And yet, for all the ways that music is the soundtrack of my life, I possess no musical skills.
None. Zilch. Nada.
Instruments are a mystery to me, and my voice, once capable of decently carrying a tune for Floyd Central High School’s legendary choral director Mick Neely, has digressed through decades of misuse and abuse to the point of shower stall braying when alone, safely away from the ears of humans if not our terrified cats. I listen, drum fingers, hum, whistle, and participate as best I can.
It’s enough. My conclusion? If there is a “music gene,” I possess a strange variant of it. Music has spoken to me from the beginning. Had my formative years been spent with musicians as role models as opposed to athletes, perhaps it all would have turned out differently. As it stands, I’ve no complaints.
The innate pleasure to be derived from listening to music is more of an essential heartbeat than an optional amusement, and I can’t imagine life otherwise. If the music in my head ever stops playing, it will be the unmistakable sign of imminent death — and as all atheists like me know, death is a symphony without encores.
As such, my mission each year is to find new musical releases of the sort that Roger likes. It’s as simple as that.
These might be rock, pop, world music, classical or jazz, although I’ll readily concede that rock and pop again constituted the bulk of my “new” findings in 2024. Granted, I streamed quite a few new classical albums, but not as much new world music or jazz.
It varies from year to year, although a steady diet of Billie Holiday, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Bunny Berigan and Duke Ellington always occurs at some point.
Also, as a necessary caveat, you’ll see a notable absence in my customary musical vicinity of hip hop, rap, “today’s excruciatingly auto-tuned pop songs for truncated attention spans,” and country/western music. These genres don’t thrill me very much.
They don’t flip the switch, but be aware that my lack of interest in them is strictly personal. I refrain from making sociological pronouncements about these genres.
All music is good; some of it is better than others, at least for me.
The idea, then, is to constantly program my brain with new music. It takes effort and a modicum of forethought. It’s far too easy to dive into the “classic” back catalogue and relive (but why?) the days of my youth.
When you’re a kid and have only a handful of albums, you listen to them hundreds of times and they’re imprinted forever; at least that’s the way it worked for me. Consequently, these days I ration my oldies, saving them for special occasions only.
Rather, my aim is to stay fresh, renew and think ahead, when this year’s new music will be bringing me nostalgic joy. Some of these rock/pop acts are of recent vintage, and others are veterans of the scene.
No matter; music comes to meet you wherever you are.
It bears noting that an undisputed highlight of 2024 was streaming Coldplay’s set at the Glastonbury festival. Simply stated, it isn’t for nothing that Coldplay has been referred to as Glastonbury’s “house band.”
Coldplay never became a true musical “love” for me, remaining a strong “like” at least through the release of Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends in 2008. After that, the band’s global trajectory left me behind, but as is so often the case in such success stories, the most obvious nods to auto-tuned popular taste, derivative world music beats and pompous pageantry do not entirely obscure the better bits.
Coldplay’s founding strengths still peek out here and there, and the Glastonbury aptly demonstrated an entity that knows how to work a gigantic crowd — something I’ve always admired in any rock/pop context. I’m well aware of the reasons why I’m expected to “hate” Coldplay at this juncture. It’s just that I don’t, especially after this video came out in December, 2024.
The video was released on Dick Van Dyke’s 99th birthday (the actor’s eldest son will be 75 in May). Coldplay’s singer and pianist Chris Martin explained to Jimmy Kimmel that he and Van Dyke are neighbors in Malibu, and became friends. I’m long past the point of caring that my psyche is constructed of many buttons, and items like this video are endowed with as many or more fingers. Folks my age grew up with Dick Van Dyke — and Coldplay is fine by me, even if I barely made it through this year’s album (Moon Music) as a whole.
Do little drops approximating tears form each time I watch this video? You bet your ass, and don’t expect me to feel self-conscious about it.
Of course there were departures in 2024, among them both Toby Keith and Kris Kristofferson, who stand to be forever linked by a 2009 story Ethan Hawke told in Rolling Stone magazine about a backstage altercation in 2003.
“You ever worn your country’s uniform?” Kristofferson continued, to which Keith replied, “What?” “Don’t ‘what?’ me, boy!” Kristofferson replied. “You just don’t like the answer. I asked, ‘Have you ever served your country?’ The answer is no, you have not. Have you ever killed another man? Huh? Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not. So, shut the f*** up.”
There is much more, which can be perused at American Songwriter. The late Keith dismissed the account as fictitious. The late Kristofferson was slightly more evasive, but…
In a later conversation with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kristofferson conceded that his wife remembered the event taking place. “That’s something that happened six years ago,” Kristofferson continued. “I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast.”
I’ve no beef with Keith; he did as he did. Kristofferson on the other hand wrote Sunday Morning Coming Down, the rueful drunkard’s national anthem, which became even more impactful when Johnny Cash sang it.
The Top 25 Albums of 2024
Album releases 2024
25 Blossoms … Gary
24 The Mysterines … Afraid of Tomorrows
23 The Feeling … San Vito
22 James … Yummy
21 Travis … L. A. Times
20 The Vaccines … Pickup Full of Pink Carnations
19 Fontaines D.C. … Romance
18 David Gilmour … Luck and Strange
17 Hayley Mary … Roman XS
16 Stone … Fear Life for a Lifetime
15 Middle Kids … Faith Crisis Pt. 1
14 Elbow … Audio Vertigo
13 Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets … Indoor Safari
12 The Cure … Songs of a Lost World
11 The Black Crowes … Happiness Bastards
10 Liam Gallagher & John Squire
09 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds … Wild God
08 Courteeners …Pink Cactus Cafe
07 Libertines … All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade
06 Sleater-Kinney … Little Rope
05 Starsailor … Where the Wild Things Grow
In the old days at the public house we used to talk about craftsmanship and good taste in music. I first heard of Starsailor in 2001, purchased the band’s first album, and promptly forgot about them for almost 25 years. This album displays impeccable taste in weaving too many influences to mention; one reviewer cited a “world-weary” tone. Favorite track: “Better Times”
04 Pearl Jam … Dark Matter
The first Pearl Jam album in forever that bored into my skull and lodged there, following last year’s Hackney Diamonds by the Rolling Stones, with producer Andrew Watt being the common link to both. This suggests that Watt should produce my beloved Cheap Trick before it’s too late. Favorite track: “Wreckage”
03 Crowded House … Gravity Stairs
The inclusion of Neil Finn’s musically gifted sons Liam and Elroy has given new life to a group that originated in the 1980s. Neil’s songs are almost always the sort that reveal nuances with each additional listen, and so this album grew on me as the weeks passed. Favorite track: “The Howl,” with a lead vocal by Liam Finn.
02 Fastball … Sonic Ranch
Any year during which a new collection of music by Fastball appears is a very good year. Given that I tend to gravitate toward guitarist Miles Zuniga’s compositions, like “Daydream,” the album closer “I’ll Be on My Way” — written and sung by bassist Tony Scalzo — has become one of the most memorable songs of the past 12 months for me.
01 Deep Purple … = 1
Between 2003 and 2021, Deep Purple made five albums of original material with a lineup comprised of original drummer Ian Paice; Roger Glover on bass and Ian Gillan on vocals; keyboardist Don Airey replacing the late Jon Lord; and guitarist Steve Morse instead of Ritchie “Smoke on the Water” Blackmore.
The albums were Bananas, Rapture of the Deep, Now What?!, Infinite and Whoosh. The last three in particular, produced by Bob Ezrin, were my favorite albums of their respective years. In 2022 Morse stepped away to care for his terminally ill wife, and the band played on with new guitarist Simon McBride, who performs (and slays) on 2024’s = 1.
It’s hard to find a comparably excellent late period run like Deep Purple’s in the “classic” rock canon. A few years back, Gillan offered this insight.
Twenty or 30 years ago I vowed I would never be screaming my nuts off when I was 75 years old. I used to be able to do the pole vault when I was an athlete, but I can’t do that any more either. I’ve dropped about a tone on my register and that made the screaming impossible, though I still yell a bit. I’m lucky to be in a band, Deep Purple, that is primarily an instrumental band.
McBride is a rosy-cheeked 45. His bandmates are pushing 80. Deep Purple itself will turn 57 in 2025. Obviously it all could end at any time, and bearing this in mind, here’s “Bleeding Obvious,” the final track off = 1, and one hell of a closing statement if it comes to that. I hope it doesn’t.
