By the time he retired from The Daily Vault in 2012, site founder Christopher Thelen had written well over 1,000 reviews for our pages. From the 26-review “A To Z” New Year’s Eve feature to a month devoted to the entire discography (at the time) of Frank Zappa, he wasn’t afraid to tackle anything – or ruffle people’s feathers. But after 15 years of running and writing for the site, he finally decided enough was enough, and went off quietly into the background with his dog, Sounder, and we thought we had (finally) heard the last from the old windbag. That is… until recently.
A few weeks ago, while going through the e-mail archives and deleting all the messages for low-cost Viagra and hot Russian women wanting to meet me, I discovered a trove of Chris’s reviews that, for some reason, never got published. Some of them were simply overlooked when we had a plethora of reviews in the can from other writers; some of them just escaped our attention at the time. And, some of them may have been in questionable taste… but you expected that, right?
Periodically, we will dip back into this hidden alcove of e-mail obscura, and pluck out one of Chris’s old reviews – “lost” nevermore. (And as for the ol’ Grumpus, as we called him? He’s still in retirement, contemplating the padded walls of his room and asking for a coat whose sleeves aren’t quite as long the next time. As long as we keep him away from a CD player and the Internet, we should be safe.)
6/2/14 – Bob Dylan / Dylan
6/16/14 – Mike Oldfield / Tubular Bells III
