A Year in Music – 2024 – John Hunter (Author)
by Killian Laher

How are you, what sort of year have you had?

I’m doing well, I had a minor health scare this year, but am feeling much better now.

What are the albums you enjoyed most this year?

I’m sad to say that I’ve become that older person who struggles to keep up with new music. My favourite albums of the year were Propeller Records’ reissues of the dB’s’ Stands for Decibels and Repercussion, both of which sound as fresh and timeless today as they did upon their initial release some forty years ago.

I also enjoyed Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Live at the Fillmore East 1969, the fiftieth-anniversary reissue of George Harrison’s Living in the Material World, and the Doors’ 4-LP Record Store Day release of Live in Detroit. I hate Boomer nostalgia, but here I am living it.

The one new release I really connected with was David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s Woodland.

Do you get to many gigs these days?

My wife and I try to go to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville once a year to see a favourite artist there. It is the best-sounding, most intimate, most magical music venue I have ever been to.

Do you think it will get to the stage where the ‘big concert’ is unaffordable for most of us?

Speaking for myself, I’m already at that stage.

What’s your reaction if Stairway To Heaven comes on the radio?

Grudging admiration.

Anything interesting in the works yourself?

After spending most of the year struggling to write a book about the hippie Christian/Jesus Music phenomenon of the 1970s, I have set that project aside and begun to write a book about the magical music scene of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that produced a host of bands, the most well-known of whom are the dB’s and Let’s Active.