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I crossed with Geeker, but I also now realize I had the wrong last letter for 8a, so the sea is now obvious.

Aahhh, what a dummy I am!

18a - talk about over complicating things! I took "practically" to mean the answer was almost another word meaning "irrelevant"

8a - should have paid more attention in Chemistry lessons - (Rainman, the "sea" is the outside 3 letters)

24a - Of course! In my defence, I've only seen that verb/noun device 87.46 million time before!!

Many thanks Geeker, many thanks Rainman:-)

Brendan

Re the 24a verb/noun, yes we've all seen it countless times before but I think it was very well disguised this time

minty

Thanks Minty, and Kudos for realising the International Jazz Day connection:-)

Relieved I’m not the only one who had trouble with 18d and 24a. My last two in, in fact. In my defense, I did not know that meaning of royal. I was suspicious enough of does though to guess. The aforementioned 8a gets my COD. I’ve never seen that use of salt done in a crossword before. Applause.

Good fun I thought with an interesting theme.
CoD for me would be 7d/17a. 8a very good as well. I didn’t know the technical definition required for 24a but it’s in both Chambers and Collins I now see.

Pretty easy, with a theme that even I saw. but I thought it was unusually sloppy for a Brendan.
14a what's the last letter? It parses as one but the definition seems to require another.
20a the wordplay doesn't seem to be in the right order to give the answer.
24a without crossers there are two much more accurate answers than the one needed.
2d and 3d "so-called" in consecutive clues, and it doesn't seem to be needed in 3d.

I very much liked a new way to clue 5d, but COD for me was 8a (well, I am a retired chemistry teacher!)

On first pass I was torn between CARTING and TRACING for17a - both nearly work!

Chris, I did think of you when I saw 8a :-)
14 last letter has to be the plural indicated by singerS. ‘Highly’ indicates pitch. “is” needs to be part of the definition to make it work, I think.
20 3 letter word divides anagram of 4 letter word with one further letter inserted. I was ok with this.

The “so-called?” in 3d is perhaps a homophone indicator to excuse the lack of capitalisation of the name