Daily Loaf

As a teenager in the 1980’s, I was the proverbial “kid in a candy store” when it came to all the great music that was at my fingertips for me to explore and experience. Many of the discoveries I made during the “decade of decadence” have stayed with me until this day and more than likely will until the day I hang up my rock ‘n’ roll shoes. I’ll never be able to deny the impact that Billy Idol and U2 had on me. They both helped define who I was and who I’ve become and they gave me a feeling of importance and belonging. I will always be eternally grateful to those artists for helping me achieve that.

The band that pretty much defined the decade wasn’t really a major player in my adolescence until the latter part of the ’80s, though. I owned a few 12″ singles by Duran Duran and that’s about where it ended. I loved “Girls On Film”; I thought it was the quintessential bridge between 1970’s Disco and present-day dance music. It fused loud guitars with syncopated dance rhythms and naughty lyrics to boot. I thought it was brilliant … and in all honesty, it still holds up and sounds devastatingly modern today. Read the rest of this entry »

As someone whose formative years were profoundly influenced by The Beatles, I just assumed that their music was so indelibly etched in my consciousness that I would never hear it in a new way. The songs — all of them, or nearly — had taken on such a mythic quality that spinning them every so often and letting their magnificence wash over me would do just fine. (Pictured: The Beatles circa 1967, (c) Apple Corps Ltd 2009.)

Then on 9.09.09 came the remastered catalogue — 22 years after the initial CD issue — and an opportunity for a new perspective. I was sorely tempted to plunk down the 200-some bucks for the boxed set, but ultimately found the purchase a bit too dear, so I’ve vowed to scrimp and save and acquire as many of the 14 individual CDs as I can.

Which titles to start with is a source of great debate among Beatles devotees, but for me it was easy: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Revolver. (Pepper wins as my favorite in a photo finish.) I was excited, of course, about the chance to hear “Getting Better,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Lovely Rita,” “She Said She Said,” “Good Morning Good Morning,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” et al in crisp new sonic dimensions that took an elite group of engineers four years to accomplish.

But I didn’t expect a revelation. Read the rest of this entry »