Frank Gutch Jr: Classic Rock— Not As Classic As You Might Think; Plus, In Keeping With the Theme, Notes of a Classic Nature

 

I would love to gather all of the music directors of so-called Classic Rock radio stations in the Roman Coliseum and turn the lions loose.  I was around long before the term Classic Rock was even phrased and as big a fan of rock radio as there was and I learned to hate everything radio tried to do after big money came in with all of their ideas to make radio “better.”  I suffered through a number of formats from the time of “Boss” radio to the present, the only one being worth a shit (to my mind) being Underground.  Ah, the days of underground.  I remember returning from the Army to Eugene and radio station KZEL and being floored with evening sets by The Wasted Potato (I think his name was Gary Parmentier) like War/Four Cornered Room, The Temptations/Masterpiece, and Funkadelic/Maggot Brain, back-to-back-to-back.

Frank Gutch Jr: Can’t You Smell That Smell; Meet Bob Blackburn (and Bob Blackburn); the Annual John Rocker Report; and Notes… It’s All About Baseball, Sports Fans

That’s right, sports fans, I smell baseball.  When I was a kid, sports were seasonal.  When the seasons changed, so did the sport.  It’s hard for me to relate to sports these days.  Football goes all the way into February.  God knows when basketball ends (seems like it goes on forever— in the Pros, at least).  And baseball ends about when the snow flies.  But it always begins in Spring and  it’s Spring now.  Almost.

Frank Gutch Jr: Random Thoughts On a Rambling Past (Plus Notes)

I watched/listened to a short clip of a Jim Dawson concert this past week.  Most of you don’t know the name, I am sure, but Dawson was at the forefront of my obsession with records back in 1971 and his Songman album is a treasure I would not part with except to Dawson himself.  He was part folkie as were so many back then— the beginning of the real singer/songwriter movement— and experimenting with layers of sounds.

Frank Gutch Jr: Dumpster Diving For 45s, Ken Nordine….. Plus Notes To Die For

I feel sorry for kids these days.  They do not know the pleasure of the 45 RPM record.  They do not understand the thrill of buying a hit and finding a song on the flip side that gets as much or more play time as the hit.  They do not know, in this day of pay-per-track that they should be getting two songs for the price of the one.  It’s the law.  Or should be.  I am sure that asshats at corporate chuckle every time us idiots order a song, knowing that they are shortchanging us.  Yep, we used to get two songs.  Like I said, it was the law.  Labels and distributors, though, write their own laws these days.  I know I’m a dinosaur, but anything less than two is a fuck you to us music junkies.  Well, fuck them.