How do you even begin recapping a year like this one? I suppose we should start with being thankful that it wasn’t just like last year. Like most folk, I have phenomenal highs and dark lows to remember this year, as well as a large amount of nothingness in between. My brain is torn in two between wanting to remember every bit of this year and to learn from it and wanting to redact it and toss it into the sun to never be spoken of again.
It’s also a bit weird to be writing this while we still have most of the month to go but I’m getting married this week and I don’t think I’ll have the emotional or mental capacity to focus on a large task like this for the rest of the year so this is what you get. Thanks for being along for the ride.
January was basically 2020+, with political strife taking most of our attention. February saw the 30th anniversary of Losing My Religion, amongst other local anniversaries. March was when things looked like they might turn around with vaccinations becoming available. In April, I think I hit a nerve when we chatted about fan-based communities and how we miss them.
May was very hopeful with new actual music shows on the horizon. Then in June we had more shows announced for outdoor venues AND new inductees to the Athens Music Walk of Fame. July was mostly spent worrying about how UGA’s ridiculous policies were going to impact local shows. And then our hopeful summer hit August and the Delta variant and things began the downhill slide again.
September was heartbreaking, no two ways about it. We lost good people and good events. It was a blow to morale and I’m not sure I’m over it yet. October was a little better because we were able to RUMPUS. November just sorta existed? Still not sure what day it is. December is still unfolding so we’ll see about that.
On a personal-ish note, here’s some cool shit I did music wise:
My radio show on WUGA won a Gabby! That’s a big deal! Details here!
I was on the podcast You, Me, and An Album to talk about U2’s POP.
In other Patron Saint of Lesser Loved Albums news, I wrote this piece for God is in the TV on R.E.M.’s Reveal.
I was also the resident “millennial R.E.M. fan” voice on the R.E.M. episode of the podcast bandsplain.
And I went back to talking about U2 for the podcast 1991: The Year AOR Ate Itself. That’ll be out soon.
Overall, I’m happy to have survived this far and kept my promise of posting every Monday on this blog. Yeah, the content varies wildly but any consistency in a pandemic is amazing to me. I’m hoping next year to revamp AMJ a bit and do some more non-AMJ writing/guesting.
athensmusicjunkie.com 