I don’t have a ton to discuss but I figured I’d do a quick update on what’s coming to the site next year. For the first while things will go at a routine clip – an album on Monday, a song on Wednesday and then a standalone post about whatever on Friday. That formula will hold for awhile, I don’t have any big series planned until later on in the year.

I had been considering some changes to the regular things I post but I’ve decided against that. It’ll be easier for me to keep with the status quo for now and nothing I was thinking about changing was that big of a deal anyway, the routine will be the easier way forward.

1984

One recurring theme for next year – it’s been 40 years since 1984, and that was probably the most influential year in terms of music and what I listen to, with only 1991 being a rival to that statement. There is no concrete plan for this, but occasionally I will highlight an album or discuss some other aspect of the year. 1984 and its impact will have it own post as well, there’s a lot to go over there.

The next Iron Maiden series

I’m gonna give the gents a bit of “time off” for a bit. The next upcoming series is the song ranking, which in this case will be every original song they wrote. I have already been fiddling with it some but I’m not in a hurry so I expect this to pop up around May or so. I might blitz this one out, just fill the days of the week where nothing else is being posted in order to get it out of the way, I don’t feel like this one benefits from a “once a week” approach.

After that the only other really big one would be a look at the videos, I don’t really have the planned out for this year. I may get started on it, as there’s a lot of material to watch, but the actual series probably won’t start until 2025. I may drop a bootleg run at some point but I’m not in a huge rush for that.

A really dumb idea that will eventually happen

I dropped a small bit about this earlier – I have some dumb and ambitious plan to review every single Neil Young album. I can “limit” myself to studio albums only, but between his regular releases and a handful of “lost” archive albums, I think the count is 51. And no, this doesn’t include CSNY or Buffalo Springfield, only Young with or without Crazy Horse.

I don’t really plan for this to kick off until 2025 but there’s a chance I get it wrapped up and launched in 2024. It’s actually going a little quicker than I anticipated, it’s not like a lot of these require a scholarly dig to review. It’s a lot and it’s probably too much and a real stupid idea, but it’s just stupid enough for me to execute, so it’ll come around at some point.

Other far less dumb ideas

Beyond that I don’t have any grandiose schemes, stuff coming up will be album rankings, song rankings (only a top 20 or so), and talks about various issues in music going on. I’ve put off a lot of discussion as the past few months of the year have really been getting to me and just keeping things going as they have was enough of a challenge. But I’ve reached a fair point of equilibrium now and I’m looking forward into getting into a bit more variety of content with the Maiden live series almost out of the way.

A few other visual and other improvements

One thing I’ve wanted to do since I’ve started is gussy up the site a bit with some visuals, banners and a logo and such. I’m still using the same default picture that came with the theme when I set this up in 2021. I will finally dedicate some time to cleaning up the visuals early next year.

I will also kick off a new feature pretty soon – really it’s just a band index for a central place to catalog the posts and series I’ve made about a single act. Obviously there are tons of Iron Maiden posts, but there are also quite a few on bands like Slayer, Oasis, Metallica, and several others who’ve appeared multiple times. This is more for the benefit of people who show up for the first time, as well as me, so I know what I’ve already written about. This should pop up in the next few weeks as I phase out some old pages and get some old post re-worked, then the band index will come along.

That about covers it for what’s coming up in ’24. I don’t have much left for this year, just the Iron Maiden live album wishlist coming on Friday. Enjoy the rest of the year and we’ll see you in 1984 plus 40.