Frank Gutch Jr: Got Them Ol’ Deadline Blues (featuring Philip B. Price, Caroline Cotter, Audrey Martells, and Jon Brion; Closing Down The Fabulous Rainbow; and Notes Not of the Underground

Deadlines suck.  I should just end this right here (the column, not my life, though there have been times when doing that would have been better than slogging my way through what finally ended up “on paper”, the equivalence to “on tape” in the world of recording).  Nothing is ever what it seems anymore, I guess.  And the older I get, the more it seems so.  Oh, to be a Darrell Vickers who seemingly grabs mosquitoes and turns them into eagles, except when they are just mosquitoes.  Even Vickers could not have saved some of my work.  And trust me, at times like this, it is work.

Frank Gutch Jr: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming; The Beginning and End of War; The Professor (Brady Earnhart) Is Back; and Notes…..

I was drafted in 1969 to fight a war I did not believe could even happen yet was embraced by the US of A as a way of stopping the dreaded Red Menace.  I knew it was coming and would have most likely headed for Canada but for a father my doing so would have destroyed, so I didn’t go.  I spent the previous four years at the University of Oregon with flammable draft card in my pocket (a 4-A college deferment marking me a coward in many people’s minds) and a growing hatred for conservatives willing to talk but not willing to go.

 

Frank Gutch Jr: Flotsam and Jetsam, plus Notes…..

That’s right, sports fans, I have once again rammed the ol’ cranium up against the proverbial brick wall.  Four good starts on this week’s column and nothing to really show except four three-paragraph dead ends, at least for now.  And deadline looms.  What to do, what to do…  After much thought (not really), I have decided to pack together a whole string of odds and ends for you to pick through, if you so desire— flotsam and jetsam, as it were.  Ideas not long enough for a column, musical bits and pieces, brain farts and the like.  Indeed, I looked up the term “flotsam and jetsam” on thefreedictionary.com just to make sure that I had the term right and, for once, I did.  “Useless or discarded objects,” it said.  “Odds and ends.”  Well, I hope I stay away from the former, but the latter seems to fit.  Just remember— no overlying theme.  Whatever comes to (my) mind.