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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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

[Editor's Note: Former Contributing Writer Darren Paltrowitz has authored two ongoing columns for the Daily Vault over the years. Both the original model (Moving In Stereo) and the more recent Keeping Up (With Darren Paltrowitz), which ran 50 episodes from 2008 through 2011, featured an eclectic mix of news and observations about musical and pop culture doings. For the site's 20th anniversary, Darren returned with a characteristically wide-ranging and quirky set of albums that influenced him.] 1. Superdrag – Head Trip In Every Key Superdrag had one of the key rock radio hits in 1996 with "Sucked Out." In turn,…

They say it’s better to burn out than fade away. Switchfoot continues to burn brightly after 20 years and 10 studio albums because this band has never stood still; the restless vision of frontman/lyricist Jonathan Foreman won’t allow it, and co-founders Tim Foreman (bass) and Chad Butler (drums) and longtime cohorts Jerome Fontamillas (keyboards/guitar) and Drew Shirley (guitar) are enthusiastic collaborators in the ongoing experiment that is Switchfoot. A key component of that experiment is that Switchfoot—shades of Schrodinger’s cat—both is and isn’t a Christian band. Foreman’s lyrics dig deeply into questions of philosophy, morality, purpose and faith without ever…

Morphine: Journey of Dreams documents the career of Morphine, the acclaimed “low-rock” trio of saxophone, bass and drums that blew up in the indie alt-rock scene of the ’90s. The band—drummers Jerome Deupree and Billy Conway, sax man extraordinaire Dana Colley and bassist/singer/songwriter Mark Sandman—released four critically touted albums before Sandman tragically died of a heart attack on stage in Rome in the summer of 1999. The film follows the band’s journey from Boston bar band to indie rock darlings to the aftermath of picking up the pieces following Sandman’s death. The film doesn’t really offer much that wasn’t previously…