Frank Gutch Jr: Music To Stuff Stockings By… And With; Plus No Notes… Consider It a Lump of Coal

It’s that time of year again, sports fans.  Santa has been on the radio for the past two months, robot disc jockeys and purveyors of everything muzak beating us senseless with varying renditions of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, hoping to lighten our mood enough to loosen the old purse strings.  Hallmark Channel have kicked into full Christmas mode, plastering their channels with their cookie-cutter movies which vary mostly by the changing of leading ladies (this year’s favorite, by far, is Hilarie Burton, whom I saw in an old Castle episode and was floored by not only her beauty but the fact that the casting could not have been more right).  I wish they had more creativity over at Hallmark, their overuse of the five plots and rotating stars coming very close to consumer abuse.  But, hey, I’m a sap.

JAIMIE VERNON – AMERICAN SINGERS, AMERICAN LEGENDS (BOP BOP BOP)

Those who’ve known me a long time – including the pre-curmudgeon me in the days before the intertoobs – can attest to my unapologetic, jingoistic rah-rah All Canadian mantra. I love my country. I love my music. But despite my seemingly anti-‘Merika crusade dating back to Ronnie’s Rocket Regalias in the early 1980s, I do love my American pop music.

Frank Gutch Jr: Nothing But Notes…..

 

I have been so overwhelmed with videos and new releases this week that I’ve decided to hit you all with nothing but Notes.  Videos you might want to see, news (mostly about new releases), and thoughts.  I am taking a week to get away by myself to hopefully get caught up.  Tons of reviews to write and notes to arrange.  I will be back on  track next week.  In the meantime, if you don’t have the time to look this over now, save the link and do it when you have a few seconds.  No sense in forcing it now when you could actually enjoy it at a later time.  There are some cool things here.  I know.  I screened them myself.

Frank Gutch Jr: Bullseye Canada— Let the Salvage Operations Begin: Conversations with Jaimie Vernon… Plus Notes (and One Really Cool Picture of Bow Thayer Guesting With No Small Children)

That would be Bullseye Records, Canada for those unaware, a label pieced together by DBAWIS‘s own Jaimie Vernon and friends— a record company caught in the digital tsunami which wiped out more than one music concern.  In fact, if you define being wiped out as being wiped out, you could probably number them in triple digits, many being “absorbed” by major labels if they could find anything worth adding to their already bloated catalogues.  I will tell you upfront that it is a tale of both success and crushing defeat, of both business and personal failure— not that it could have been avoided.  When the music business started crumbling, it took with it most everything in its path.  If you subscribe to the business as it was.  If your yardstick was measured by the same standards the major labels had set up and followed for decades.  Jaimie and his company took a beating, no doubt, but he is not down and out by a long shot.  He has just, shall we say, been regrouping.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Saga of Jim Colegrove, Chapter Six: Plus Notes…..

Having given you five chances to look behind the curtains of a life of a rock ‘n’ roller of more stature than most people these days could possibly know— that of Fort Worth’s Jim Colegrove— I have decided to give you a sixth.  Call I a bonus, if you will— a chance to experience second-hand an era of music most of you could not possibly know.  A chance to see the machinations of an industry, for that is what it became, in its growth stages.  So far it has involved a string of names many would recognize— Felix Pappalardi and Gene Pitney and Lou Adler and so many more.  Let us add a few more as the band he is in at this point of his career, Bo Grumpus, prepares to spark a major label career.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Pac Northwest— Not Just The Raiders, Sonics, and Wailers; and Notes, Notes and More Notes

One thing about history.  Given enough time, it is a shadow of its former self.  No matter what happens, importance of virtually everything is either magnified or diminished depending upon a number of factors.  By the time it has been filtered over the years, it is not even remotely what it started out to be.  The Twenties obviously weren’t all Gatsby and The Thirties weren’t all dust bowl and depression.  There was so much more than the War (that would be of the Second World variety, sports fans) and recovery from to the Forties and if the US had lived the Fifties like Hollywood said, we would have fought like hell to stay there.  Of course, by the time it got to us, it was Cliff’s Notes all over again.

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: 10 Ways Devon Sproule & Paul Curreri Can Kick Your Ass…..

Devon, you have no idea the trouble you have caused me over the years.  Since hearing your most excellent Keep Your Silver Shined album back in 2006, I have been a slave to your music.  I have written about it and promoted it and played it in the shower.  I have taken your music for long romantic drives and have used it as background music for romantic dinners.  I have listened to it, all of it, enough to have made it part of my DNA and I have even adopted the Smokey Mountains, though mountains they hardly seem to a guy who grew up at the base of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon.  That old Virginia block?  My heart broke when you deserted it.  You had me convinced that you would never leave the Blue Ridge.  I mean, you sang about it!