2015: 'Unmasked!'

You will always have been here once. Today's epilogue episode is about commemoration, legacy, and staying warm inside the ripple. The song is John Darnielle's elegy for David Berman, 'Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review.'Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/epilogue-arguing-with-the-ghost-of 

Held to my vision all these days. Today's episode is about hateful instruments, careers in lo-fi, and things coming to an end. It's 2020 and the song is 'Getting Into Knives.'Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2020-getting-into-knives 

There's gonna come a day when you feel better. Today's episode is about a strong homemade edible, meeting the President of Ireland, and making the art you love your own. It's 2019 and the song is 'Up The Wolves,'  live at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, on 15th November 2019. Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2019-up-the-wolves-live-2019-11-15

Now I have everything I need. Today's episode is about self-reference, expanding ambition, and being further along in your own timeline. It's 2018 and the song is 'Younger.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2018-younger 

It'll take twenty years for the toxins to flush. Today's episode is about looking back at a lost age, earnestness and foolishness, and things which dim and flicker but won't stay dead. It's 2017 and the song is 'Stench of the Unburied.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2017-stench-of-the-unburied

This was my last and best idea. Today's episode is about work songs, desperation, and what an ageing wrestler can do when he can't see his way clear to a change in perspective. It's 2016 and the song is 'Blood Capsules.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2016-blood-capsules

A sort of unrestrained fantasia. Today's episode is about the public and the private, rituals of humiliation, and Roland Barthes' 'The World of Wrestling.' It's 2015 and the song is 'Unmasked!' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2015-unmasked 

New creatures with new hearts. Today's episode is about Ozzy Osbourne and the joy and shock of playing music all around the world when you never expected to make it beyond Birmingham. It's 2014 and the song is 'Song for Black Sabbath's Second North American Tour.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2014-song-for-black-sabbaths-second 

Clean slate. It's 2013, and I'm all over the place. Here are some Onegin stanzas. You can also read this episode at thirtyyearslater.substack.com. Unusually it doesn't have any references, but I'm drawing on Stanley Mitchell's Penguin translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin throughout.

Feast when you can. Today's episode is about the feasts in the books I've been reading, and the famine happening in the real world right now, spotlighting a poem by Hanan Al-Kafarna. It's centred around a walk through Portland in 2022 in the footsteps of our song for 2012: 'Steal Smoked Fish.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2012-steal-smoked-fishHanan al-Kafarna on Instagram, where a fundraising campaign link will be shared soon: https://www.instagram.com/_hanan._.jalal_/My poem 'John Clare Reaches the Pacific' on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/notrockyhorror.bsky.social/post/3lqafuiv4tc25 - and available to purchase in Nimrod magazine: https://nimrod.utulsa.edu/current-issue/ Links to Gaza aid organisations and fundraisers:https://www.map.org.uk/?form=FUNFXHDCJPKhttps://donate.wfp.org/1243/donation/regularhttps://www.zakat.org/https://chuffed.org/project/110294-please-donate-to-help-oday-halavahttps://4gaza.bugx0r.nl/lifeline4gaza/