Épisodes

  • 2015: 'Unmasked!'
    Nov 27 2025
    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
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    15 min
  • 2014: 'Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour'
    Nov 11 2025
    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

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    11 min
  • 2013: 'You and Me and A High Balcony'
    Sep 1 2025
    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.
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    11 min
  • 2012: Steal Smoked Fish
    Jul 29 2025
    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-fish

    Hanan 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=FUNFXHDCJPK
    https://donate.wfp.org/1243/donation/regular
    https://www.zakat.org/
    https://chuffed.org/project/110294-please-donate-to-help-oday-halava
    https://4gaza.bugx0r.nl/lifeline4gaza/
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    43 min
  • 2011: ‘Beautiful Gas Mask’
    Mar 31 2025
    Only one kick drum. Today's episode is about ambiguous imperatives, glowing alien rocks, universal feelings, Universal Monsters, haunting presences in the background, and a group of British and American twenty-something getting drunk in a series of French apartments. It's 2011, and the song is 'Beautiful Gas Mask.'

    *

    'The Sink' - Chapter One of my Nantes-set novel, published by the Irish lit magazine An Capall Dorcha, is available to read on my university research page here - https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/files/125981534/Immersion_An_Capall_Dorcha_extract_v2.pdf - or you can buy the issue online here: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/an-capall-dorcha-issue-4


    Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://open.substack.com/pub/thirtyyearslater/p/2011-beautiful-gas-mask

    Live shows taped by Lyric: https://archive.org/details/@astrolyric?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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    29 min
  • 2010: ‘You Were Cool’ (Live, 2011-03-25)
    Feb 28 2025
    It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves. Today's episode is about songs and sonnets, the nuts and bolts of versification, and the dramas of archival preservation: nearly-lost media, and media that I'm happy has been lost entirely. It's 2010, and the song is 'You Were Cool.'

    My Jenny From Thebes review for PopMatters: http://popmatters.com/mountain-goats-jenny-from-thebes

    Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2010-you-were-cool-live-2011-03-25
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    26 min
  • 2009: 'Psalms 40:2'
    Dec 21 2023
    Sin as hard as you can. Today's episode is about Shane MacGowan, growing up Catholic in England in the 90s, knocking a few teacups off the shelves, and 'the life of the spirit' in John Darnielle's work from 'Stable Boy Song' to 'Satanic Messiah.' It's 2009, and the song is 'Psalms 40:2.'
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    32 min
  • 2008: 'Heretic Pride'
    Oct 24 2023
    Well, they come and pull me from my house. Today’s episode is about ‘Heretic Pride,’ monsters, pagans, ghost cowboys, how a comprehensive knowledge of unreleased Mountain Goats lyrics might come in handy when you least expect it, and a ‘large, eclectic crowd of gay people’ at the City Nightclub in 1986, enjoying ‘the best sound system in Portland & possibly the entire PNW.’

    Show notes

    A lot of today’s episode is about what life was like for queer teenagers experiencing homelessness on the streets of Portland in the 1980s - an organisation that serves this community today which Darnielle himself has recommended is p:ear, which stands for Project Education, Art and Recreation. While I was in town, programme director Tony Martinez was kind enough to give me a tour of the building and told me about the amazing work they do, helping young people to get anything from socks and basic hygiene products to food service qualifications and opportunities to sell their own artwork. It all starts with looking at ‘youth as youth, intentionally developing relationships’ as the basis for mentorship, rather than a model centered on transactions or case management.

    If you enjoy the episode, I don’t charge for any of my work on this project, but you might like to donate to p:ear - you can do so at pearmentor.org/donate. Or if you’re listening in the UK and want to give locally, the charity AKT works for ‘safe homes and better futures for lgbtq+ young people’: you can donate to them on https://www.akt.org.uk/Appeal/donate. If you make a donation to either organisation, tag me on social media - notrockyhorror on Twitter or Bluesky, thirty_years_later on Instagram - to let me know, and I’ll send you a photo. In Portland I didn’t quite manage to ‘shoot a roll of 32 exposures’ - disposable cameras these days seem mostly to come with rolls of 28 - but I do have spare copies of a good few pictures from my trip which I’d be happy to post out in exchange for your generosity if you get in touch.


    References: It turns out my hosting platform doesn't allow me to post as long a list of references as I need to here, given the amount of archival material I used in the episode. You can find the normal list of interviews, live shows, etc on this link instead, including persistent links and page number to all the historical newspaper sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRxvAze26mD0l7oh_P-TeAohyXmL_S7Evk9ZVasio4xrqrC2OIPmx7V4tekBdMbHsic8TwmMMI85Ska/pub
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    55 min