Alienated in Vancouver top 10 (+1) for 2025

In addition to the stuff I do for Montecristo Magazine, the Georgia Straight, Big Takeover (these days for print only) and occasionally for Germany's Ox Fanzine (print only and translated into German), I keep, obviously, this very blog. It's the "unedited" me -- the more personal writing, the more spontaneous stuff, and sometimes the place I put outtakes to build on things I've done for one of the above publications. Thanks for visiting it! 

So here are my top 10 blog posts of 2025, if anyone is curious, pretty much in order, with the most-read at the top, and one that is not top 10 (but needs to be included as it relates to one of the other pieces):

Notes on Eggers' Nosferatu. It's weird, this film sort of has disappeared from public consciousness, hasn't it? But there was some keen interest at the time and this ended up my most read piece, accidentally plugging into the buzz around something current:
https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/01/robert-eggers-nosferatu-impending-doom.html

Efrim Menuck and others re the sample on "East Hastings" (expansion of Montecristo article). Some of the Exu Nazares material in here is actually kind of important to me and has a bearing on an upcoming piece I'm doing. I'm presuming this piece will continue to have legs into the New Year -- the Montecristo article was my favourite thing to do of 2025: https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/05/efrim-menuck-interview-of-godspeed-you.html

Markus Reuter interview re: Stick Men and Robert Fripp (expansion on a Georgia Straight article): this was a pretty recent story, so it's actually probably going to have a lot of life in the next few months: https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/11/markus-reuter-interview-part-two-of.html

Black Flag live review, second time seeing them live, before their current incarnation:
https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/01/black-flag-again-rickshaw-2025-sorry-ron.html

Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures interview (!):
https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/04/russian-tim-and-pavel-bures-wild-but.html

Neil Young live review, the first night, when they screwed up the entry to the park:
https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/09/neil-young-deer-lake-live-review.html

(But the part two is better -- there were no problems getting in and I got some wicked pics. This one isn't technically top 10, but I feel a bit bad that the "negative review" had the more reads): https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/09/neil-young-deer-lake-live-review-night-2.html

Live review of Paul Pigat, the Vanrays, Melody Mangler and Los Furios: https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/02/paul-pigat-vanrays-and-los-furios.html

Ethan Miller and Shelley Orcutt Miller (also an expansion on a Straight thing with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth; we got talking a bit about the Crucifucks in that one!): https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/09/ethan-miller-interview-unknown-unknown.html

Review of the new Thor album, which I enjoyed way more than I expected. I ended up in the rock video promoting the album, which was shot at Neptoon: https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/05/thor-rock-universe-review-plus-guilty.html

And weirdly, this trivial thing I did after watching the original Conan the Barbarian movie! It's really nothing I care about, just something I blurted to keep myself entertained while Erika was in the washroom after we watched the movie (!), but it got almost 500 views this year:
https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2025/02/seven-reasons-to-revisit-conan.html

So those were the most-read things I did that WEREN'T for the bigger publications at the top. We remain add-free over 20 years into this blog journey but I seriously wonder what effect monetizing things would have... would my search results be higher if someone was making money on it? Would *I* be making a meaningful payday? 20+ years of content... no income... am I crazy? 

Don't answer that. Happy New Year!