Yesterday I went through all of the private messages I’d shared with Frank Gutch Jr, since I’d first encountered him. It was in 2013, just after I’d begun writing this weekly column, and right from that first message, it was as though we were separated at birth.
One of the jobs I have laid out before me is writing reviews, not just of music I love but books and other things which give me delight. It is fun most of the time but lately I am beginning to wonder if I have not taken on more than I can handle. Mentally, I find my self flagging, stacks of CDs and numerous digital files and the occasional vinyl LP/EP, ready to review when I first received them, still there, not reviewed. I want to get to them but for some the words don’t come and for others there is just not enough time. The problem is the listening. I have always prided myself on listening to each album numerous times before putting word to paper, as it were, but if I continue that I will eventually either quit out of frustration or guilt.
If I hadn’t known rock radio was cool before I saw Gentleman Jim Hunter, drivetime disc jockey for KRKT Radio in Albany Oregon, lean out and wave to the crowd which had gathered beneath the huge T&R sign, I would have known it then. The sign was HUGE, the main section trucked in on a double-flatbed , and was the talk of the Willamette Valley as it was erected right next to Interstate 5, then a fairly new project itself.
… and I’m looking for trouble because that’s just what you have to do sometimes. Tributes and covers are sucking the soul right out of me and probably out of the goddamn entire world but you soulless bastards have no clue! This whole I-got-to-see-the-best-bands and there-ain’t-no-good-music-anymore attitude is killing the listening floor (screw the dance floor) and I’ve had it up to my neck with the I-don’t-like-today’s-music-so-fuck-you memes on the social media and threads in the forums to the point that I’m thinking hell could not be a worse place to live— at least compared to this musical rotgut of a world we live in today.
One hell of a year for music. Not so much for musicians— at least the musicians no longer with us. Hard to balance a year like that, pluses and minuses popping up like ads from a virus, canceling one another out or piling one on top of the other ad infinitum until the system collapses from the weight. We all felt the weight whether we all know it or not. So many musicians now on the other side but, lucky for us, so many new musicians taking their places. Jesus. My head spins.
Indiana Jones has nothing on me. That big rolling ball chasing him? That’s nothing compared to the mountain of carnivorous beasts chasing me in my dreams every night, each vying for that elusive review I promised what seems months ago. It is the music reviewers equivalent to no pants in the schoolroom, the albums fighting one another to get to me, to rip flesh from bone, to make me pay for what they see as vinyl manslaughter— vinylslaughter, if you will— an offense so terrible as to consign innocent artists and albums to a certain death, so vile as to blast dreams to smithereens, so ghastly as to be— well— ghastly.
I am a lost Son of Canada. I must be. I love Canadian bacon, though bacon it not really be (except maybe technically). I love Jennifer Dale, an actor who deserved much more than she has been afforded, respect-wise (I reveled in her work on Canadian TV and film during Comcast’s all-too-short span of including CTV and CBC on their cable lineups in the ’80s). I love Due South, one of the most creative and funny-on-so-many-levels series TV has ever created (the transition of Ray to Ray— David Marciano to Callum Keith Rennie— a work of pure writing craftmanship).
After last night’s No Small Children gig, drummer Nicola B made a statement I have been waiting to hear for the past couple of decades. Remarking about the previous night’s show in Seattle at The Central Tavern, she said that they had “turned the room.”. Basically, it means that while, at first, no one paid much attention, by the last song, everyone was on board. Even dancing, she said (quite enthusiastically, I might add).
Want to know how stupid we are? Us Americans, anyway? Pretty damn, as far as I can see, and all it took was sitting down and taking ten minutes to map out one day. I have had people tell me that if I really want to know what is happening, I should sit down every day and write down everything I did. Not in detail but with enough to show me what really happened and not just what I thought happened. When I did, I was stunned. See, I live on a very limited budget (What? You think we get paid for all the fun we have here at DBAWIS?) and I thought I was doing pretty well navigating through life. One days list and I’m not so sure.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 