BEATS EDITION: Keep Yourself Alive - Best of 2009

Like many of you music junkies, I spent a lot of time obsessing with music when I was young. If we ever sit down to count up the hours it would blow our minds. From listening to radio, mixing tapes, talking to friends, going to shows, writing reviews, dj’ing, time in records stores, surfing, downloading, sharing, tweeting – blow our minds! Never mind if you are in a band to boot. For some of us it tapers off once we get older and settle down as you can tell from one’s music collection where the Bodyguard soundtrack is the most recent disc around. Today I feel like I’m taking more music in than ever before but it is not taking up as much of my time. I think artist/producer Chin Injeti said it best, “Now I can record a song in one day and then with a press of a button I can make it go to a thousand different places.”

Unconditional Soul in Haydain Neale

Today music is all over my brain. The last two nights I woke up in the morning with Jacksoul’s ‘Unconditional’ song stuck in my head. Haydain Neale, lead singer for the group, sadly passed away Sunday night at the young age of 39.

I’ve been replaying the last time he and I spoke over and over in my head. It was early on in my days working in the music industry in Toronto. I was working at PolyGram Music Publishing at the time searching the country for great songwriters just like Haydain. First time I saw the band at the Bamboo on Queen St. I was blown away with the musicianship on that stage and my arm was filled with goose bumps on hearing Haydain’s voice sing Unconditional.



We met again weeks later where we discussed music publishing, the Canadian music scene and Haydain being a father.

Julie and Julia, and Chico

It has been over a month since I last wrote, which does not bode well for a blog with the word DAILY in it. In truth, I have been struggling with direction lately. Well, my immediate direction and concentration hasn’t been a problem, taking on the stay at home father role, but leaping to the next direction of generating income again has been the challenge. Yet, it feels like I’m going to give birth to something great over the next little while.