THE PIONEER OF SOFT ROCK & THE REST THAT FOLLOWS.....

RETROSPECTIVE : Bread emerged at a time when pop music was steering away from psychedelic excess and towards more acoustic based sounds. Their first album went nowhere but their second album produced a No.1 smash in 'Make It With You'. With the hits that followed mostly provided by David Gates, he gradually took the spotlight as the group's balladeer par excellence. 'It Don't Matter To Me', and the archly romantic ' If '. Thought David Gates exceeded in writing ballads, he was equally adapt at writing rockier songs like 'Been Too Long On The Road', 'Let Your Love Go', 'Mother Freedom' and 'Daughter' .
My personal favorites are 'Everything I Own', 'Baby I-A Want You', and 'Guitar Man'. James Griffin is not too bad as with Robb Royer, he's responsible for 'Look What You've Done', 'Down On My Knees' which he composed with David Gates and the beautiful gospel like 'Just Like Yesterday'. Ironically, one of their most successful song was credited to Fred Karlin, Robb Wilson and Arthur James due to publishing reasons. The song was recorded by The Carpenters and went on to win an Academy Award for best original song in 1971.

Bread broke up in 1973. David Gates went on to a relatively successful solo career scoring big with 'The Goodbye Girl' from the movie of the same name. My favorite David Gates songs are 'Sail Around The World', 'Ann', 'I Used The Soap' and 'Never Let Her Go'. Bread reformed for one more album "Lost Without Your Love" in 1976, but it was a pretty tentative album that was not enough to justify a follow up. And with that, Bread was no more.

I saw David Gates performed once. He still sounds good and cracked lots of jokes in between songs. Time well spend. DOP : Unknown.

MICHAEL LEARNED TO ROCK GREATEST HITS: PAINT MY LOVE : Bread pioneered the soft rock genre, Michael Learned To Rock followed up on it .Though not necessarily better, they were for a brief period, king of the genre.I used to like them too for a while but somehow, they just kept on producing the same kind of soppy love songs that I want to scream. Looks like there were stuck in a time zone. Now you couldn't get me to listen to any of their later albums even if you were to put a gun to my head. I bought this CD when they were still hot with 'That's Why You Go Away' which in my opinion were their best song and they should have changed direction. Other tune of interest were 'The Actor', 'Sleeping Child' and '25 Minutes'. I particularly like 'Out Of The Blue'  DOP : 8th October 1996.


AIR SUPPLY GREATEST HITS : This was given to me by a former colleague. 9 tracks in this day and age. The songs here are all winners but they have long since superseded by their later collection. I would get rid of this if I could but I couldn't 'cos it was a gift and it's not nice to get rid of a gift from anyone. DOP : 7th November 1992. A gift form Miss Peggy Chea.

AIR SUPPLY : FOREVER LOVE : Now this is more like it. The absolute complete Air Supply Collection. I would say Air Supply flared a little better than Michael Learned To Rock. Still a double CD of 36 mushy mushy love songs is just too much even for Rudolph Valentino. What's good here is actually very good and infectious to the ears. Who can resist such classics like 'Lost In Love', 'All Out Of Love' and 'Every Woman In The World To Me'. My personal favorites are 'Here I Am', 'Two Less Lonely People In The World' and 'Even The Nights Are Better'. One more song that I would like to have is 'Old Habits Die Hard' from their debut album. I have it on MP3. DOP : 3rd  

AIR SUPPLY / MICHAEL LEARNED TO ROCK : This CD completes my collection of MLTR's songs that was missing from their Greatest Hits CD. After their Greatest Hits CD, they have only two songs that interest me and they were 'You Took My Heart Away' yet another mushy love song but still bearable. I really loved their next song 'Take Me To Your Heart' which is actually a Chinese song with English lyric and it works splendidly. I don't really need the Air Supply tracks 'cos there were all on their collection. I bought this CD on discount, believe it or not. DOP : 22nd December 2005.