Month: January 2017

As I walked on with a heavy heartThen a stone danced on the tideAnd the song went onThough the lights were goneAnd the North wind gently sighed --The Pogues, “Lullaby Of London,” written by Shane MacGowan  Out of all the reviews I wrote for the Daily Vault, my favorite was my last one: La Roux’s self-titled album. It contained, of course, the shortcomings and failures evident in all my writing at the time, and the album deserved a much higher grade than I gave it. But, to my surprise some time later, it expressed a premonition of sorts for my…

To me, the Daily Vault was another window that allowed me to be creative. I was able to share my passion for the bands and records I was writing about. Also, it gave me an opportunity to write about bands that I couldn't write about in any other publication. Where other publications were restricted to a certain style, the Daily Vault was wide open to any musical type and trend. Being a music lover, I found it very fitting. I completely admire the people behind the Daily Vault for their perseverance and belief. Two decades of music reviews – that's very…

Have you ever left a job that you really liked, and occasionally gone back to where you worked? Chances are, you felt a mixture of happiness to be back, sadness that you're no longer part of it, and confusion as to why you left in the first place. Every time I type in the URL of this little website that I founded and launched 20 years ago, I have some of those feelings myself. Over a decade ago, when I was married and my twins were babies, I made the decision that I had to refocus my time towards my…

Here is a list of 20 albums that influenced me. They are not listed in chronological order of release, nor sorted by most to least influential. They are simply in the order that I first heard them. 1. AC/DC – Back in BlackThis was my first love. I was six years old when I got it, on vinyl. This laid down the foundation for a lifelong love of music. It is the perfect rock and roll album. My musical life was off to a hot start! 2. Joan Jett And The Blackhearts – I Love Rock And RollBack in the early…

The albums in the list below (chronologically arranged, but in no special personal order) mark key milestones on my journey to discovering rock ‘n’ roll itself, growing up in India in the ’80s and ’90s. 1. Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine (1978)The Man-Machine was probably one of my very first exposures to music of any kind, period. My father picked up a cassette tape of this album on one of his trips abroad in the early ’80s (I forget where) on the recommendation of one of his friends. Of course, he didn’t know what Kraftwerk was! I still remember playing with Matchbox…

Twenty albums do not a lifetime make, but they sure help it over the rough edges...1. Eddy Arnold – Have Guitar Will TravelI told my grandson a few years ago that my family did not own a television set until I was 10 years old. I’m not sure he believed me, as he has never known a world without computers, never mind one without a television set. That meant that the radio and phonograph were the king and queen of the house; my grandfather was in charge of both, and he loved Eddy Arnold. It was country music at its…

As I sit here on Christmas Eve, thinking about the 20 years of Daily Vault and the almost 31 years I’ve spent on this planet, I look back on some of the most influential and life changing music I’ve ever heard. This list brings back plenty of memories for me and hopefully, dear reader, it will do the same for you! 20. Tripping Daisy – Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb (1998) Not the type of record I was expecting after hearing “I Got A Girl,” but it’s a record I’ve always liked. It’s one of those records I bought on…

Let’s be clear from the start what this list is and isn’t. It isn’t a list of my favorite albums, or the best albums by my favorite bands, or anything at all like that; kindly banish such thoughts from your mind. What this is, is a list of albums that reached me at a critical point along my journey and changed the way I heard music. Also, while the list itself is chronological, it’s not in the way you might expect; albums are listed in the order in which they had an impact on me, not the order in which…

In 2004, I was an eighth grader with a newfound obsession with Queen and an equally strong desire to avoid doing my trigonometry homework. Over the course of 12 years, the obsession deepened into the longest-lasting love of my life; I never used trigonometry again, but Queen’s A Night At The Opera has been a constant companion, and I’ve spent all of my young adult life trying to put those feelings into words. Back when the Vault first emerged in 1997, it was a rarer thing to have your own little corner of the world to share and connect with…

You just never know. In one of the reviews referenced in my entry in our 20th Anniversary feature “20 Albums That Influenced Me,” I tell the story of getting to know the “girl next door” (actually three doors down) in my freshman-year college dorm, becoming friends before either of us had an inkling there might be higher stakes involved. Thirty-six years later, we have three grown children and a new grandchild. Neither of us saw that coming at the time; it just happened. You could say the same for my relationship with the Daily Vault, and writing about music. In…