Happy New Year. I started writing this yesterday, but that’s indicative of how 2025 went, generally. It’s been a year, in other words, one I’d rather forget. Except for the music, that is. Pretty soon I’ll kick off all the various end-of-year lists, but before fully shoving 2025’s ass out the door I wanted to take a few minutes and look back over some of my discoveries, addictions, and other music-related highlights of the year. It’s also been a hot minute since I did one of those “What I got over the holiday/break/vacation” deals, so we’ll start with the incoming holiday music (pictured in the header) and move on to my other predilections and penchants when it came to music in 2025.
Holiday Pickups
I can almost guarantee I came to Eater from Henry Rollins, most likely via one of his Fanatic! books. Most of my UK punk love comes from his books and radio shows, and The Album is – for once – perfectly captured by this quote I found on the album’s Wikipedia entry: “uneven but spirited.” The spirited part really comes through on the plethora of covers including “Sweet Jane” from the Velvet Underground and Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” but I dig the more rocking originals – “Lock It Up” is a great anthem, and “No Brains” leaves enough of the ’50s rock and roll to chime through the distortion.
My wife knows me. She also knows how to game the system, looking through my records for the ones she likes, and then getting me albums she wants and “works” for my collection. Such is the case with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk. Blakey’s band had backed Monk on earlier sessions, and this one-off reversal would get issued in 1958 – a full year after recording to capitalize on Monk’s newfound fame with John Coltrane. Does that mean this wasn’t worth releasing on its own? Absolutely not: working largely off Monk’s own compositions, the band sounds fantastic, especially trumpeter Bill Hardman. And Blakey’s drumming is phenomenal; you can hear him drive the arrangements forward, with Monk happily following suit.
Early 20s, just out of college…Fugees were everywhere. “Ready Or Not” was great, but every radio station were flipping their collective wigs in upstate New York when Lauryn Hill (Ms., I guess) unfurled her smoky voice to the group’s cover of “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” Who knows if that explosion ultimately doomed the band, or if the majority of the sales that caused The Score to go 7x Platinum was because of the single: it doesn’t matter, because the rest of the record is stellar, from the slippery syncopation of the strings and loops on “The Beast” not to mention the hook that grabs you on “Fu-Gee-La.” YMMV on Wyclef’s cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” but I dig it, and this album reminds me of that time living on my own and slowly figuring out the next step.
The other gift from my wife, there’s nothing I can say about Patti Smith and her debut Horses that others haven’t said better. I’ve had it on CD forever, but it really has only been the past couple of years that I’ve dug in past the all-timer “Gloria” and the swinging Caribbean beat of “Redondo Beach” before falling away somewhere in the folds of “Birdland.” Both “Free Money” and “Kimberly” are great concise little rockers, but it’s the near 10-minute “Land” that really solidifies Smith’s punk god status. This is the album we danced to Christmas morning.
I knew “Born Under a Bad Sign” and I knew Albert King was a great blues guitarist…and that was about it. A few months back I heard the incendiary Live Wire/Blues Power album from 1968 and was blown away, buying it for my brother for Christmas. Lo and behold, my mother turned around and picked out Lovejoy, his 1971 studio record for Stax. It’s great, showing the Stones how to do it with his opening version of “Honky Tonk Woman” and lighting up the sky with killer slide on “She Caught the Katy (And Left Me a Mule to Ride).” It might not match the fire of his live release, but man, there is some sweet, lyrical playing on this and it’s kinda perfect for Sunday afternoons.
For the life of me, I can’t remember why I ever put the Henry Cow Box Redux, which collects all the studio and live recordings of the progressive, experimental band Henry Cow together in one place for about $100 on my Amazon list. But for that price you get 17 CDs and a DVD which is everything they put out, apparently, along with three thick booklets of essays, recollections, photos and liner notes. I’ve never heard a single song from these guys, so the origins of why I was ever interested will remain a mystery, but at least when I’m ready to do a deep dive, I’ve got everything I need.
Sonic Addictions
I was always aware of The Grateful Dead – you can’t be my age and not have heard “Truckin'” or “Bertha” or, once it broke big, “Touch of Grey”. In college I chanced upon Dick’s Picks Vol. 14 at a local Best Buy and picked it up. I’m sure that’s not the first or the 1,001st time that story’s been told: college kid discovers live Dead, smokes weed, eventually gets a job, etc. I would still spin Live/Dead every once in a while. But then my friend and co-worker Ross died in June. He was a massive Dead Head, and by September after a chance discussion with some friends I went in hard. Within a month I had the 50th Anniversary deluxe editions of the first eight studio albums, Europe ’72, Skull & Roses, the ’77 Cornell show, the Sunshine Daydream show and film…I went through the first two seasons of the Grateful Deadcast, became an early subscriber to the 2026 Dave’s Picks, devoured the Amazon documentary…oh, and maybe read a book or two.
My point is I not only discovered a new favorite band, I discovered a whole culture I only saw from an outsider’s perspective. Still an outsider to be sure, but one who can say I have first-hand experience of the healing power of the Dead. I wish like hell Ross were here to laugh in my face about my conversion, but I admit it hurts a lot less than it did.
A peek behind the curtain: I typically get about 10-20 views per review here. Which is fine, because this is more therapy than actual trying to be a writer with a subscriber count (that being said, huge thanks to each and every one of you who subscribe to this thing and deal with all the typos and muddled thoughts as I work through my myriad of issues). But my first Deep Purple review, which was for their possibly final album =1? 465 views. Machine Head did even bigger numbers – over two thousand hits. What’s the infatuation with Deep Purple, especially considering my hard take on Blackmore not being the most essential thing alive for the band? I dug in deep, and I think it was the superlative Steven Wilson remix on the Made In Japan Super Deluxe Edition that put me over the edge. I must have listened to that over a dozen times, and that soon translated to more live albums (the ’75 Graz show with the Mach III lineup is killer) and more of both the Blackmore era albums as well as the Morse line up. I plan to get more reviews for the band in this year, probably as I pour through this massive tome from Martin Popoff.
There was nothing new per se that put me on the Uriah Heep track, I had already been there for a few years, having never really listened to the band at all until watching a ranking the albums show on YouTube. I slowly started collecting the classic albums on vinyl, and though I no longer drink alcohol, I still have fond memories of staying up late at night with a glass of scotch and blasting Demons & Wizards, Look At Yourself, and The Magician’s Birthday on vinyl while writing about them here, here and here. While I hunted down and eventually found and wrote about the debut and stellar follow-up Salisbury, I found a similarity with my love for Deep Purple – a massive appreciation for the early, “classic” years, but also a deep love for the modern incarnation.
So yeah, we’ll definitely be covering the latest box set The Shadow and the Wind: 1973-1974, which collects the seminal Uriah Heep Live album as well as Sweet Freedom and Wonderworld…but we’ll also be covering a huge swatch of the latest incarnation of the band, including 1995’s Sea of Light and their incredible 21st century run with Wake The Sleeper, Into The Wild, and Outsider. Mick Box may be the only original member left, but he still can play like a demon, and Bernie Shaw just might be the best lead singer they’ve ever had.
I know a lot of folks pick up a Dolby Atmos system for the movies, for that immersive vertical experience that is simultaneously both more subtle and more expressive than standard 5.1. Not me – I got it so I could finally hear all these Atmos mixes from the bevy of Frank Zappa box sets I’ve been steadily buying for years. Shocker/not a shock: they sound great, and while they’ll never replace the stereo version I grew up with and loving (I still plan to do The Zappa Files at some point, and I’ve been steadily collecting the original vinyl in anticipation of it), they’re a fun alternative and a new way to hear albums I love. On the best Atmos mixes I pick up all sorts of interesting nuances and instrumentation that shine a light on the compositions.
One thing I didn’t anticipate was that – while Zappa was my gateway and impetus (okay, the movies were, too) for caving and setting it up – it turns out that there are a LOT of folks out there putting Atmos mixes out, and they’re phenomenal, doing more with the material that even the most dense and complex Zappa arrangements aren’t touching. Pink Floyd finally officially released Live In Pompeii and holy CRAP Wilson (yeah, he pops up A LOT on these Atmos mixes) knocked it out of the park with both the new stereo mix and the Atmos mix. We also have this year Jethro Tull releasing Still Living With The Past, and they continue to be the high-water mark for reissues with – you guessed it – Steven Wilson handling the mixing. No Atmos, but the 5.1 sounds great.
Was that all? Hell no – I was shocked considering the lack of multi-tracking how great the Atmos mix was for Axis: Bold As Love, but to be fair the real jewel from the recent Jimi Hendrix Experience box set was the mono mix. Unbelievable. Less impressive was the much-delayed box set for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which is made all the more inexplicable when you factor in how long it took Genesis to get it out as well as how amazing the live performance of the album from the Shrine Auditorium in 1975 is. All that plus the new Atmos mix of Gentle Giant and their live album, Wilson’s great Atmos mix for The Grateful Dead and Blues For Allah, Marillion’s Brave, and for new music, man the Atmos for Dream Theater and Parasomnia is outstanding, with killer visuals to match for each song.
I haven’t even mention the recently released Doors set…
Finally, Looking Ahead
We’re already closing in on 2,000 words, so I’ll make it brief. My resolution this year is to just keep writing, keep thinking about what this whole media thing means to me as a husband, a father, and a soul trying to find his way. I’ll make plans, break them, and probably not get to half of what I want to get to, and perhaps the biggest resolution is to try and not care when that happens.
I’ll just write, and that starts with getting the 2025 lists out here, and then happily looking at this massive pile of “to be listened to” records and CDs and cassettes and get to work.
Thanks for joining me. I can’t believe I started this blog six years ago. It’s been a lot of up and downs, but there are few things in this world I enjoy more than sitting back, putting something on, turning it up and just getting lost.
Thanks for getting lost with me. Let’s do it again in 2026.
Consuming the Tangible 