Frank Gutch Jr: If Music Is Dead, You Bastards Killed It! The Life— A Seattle Legend in My Own Mind… (plus notes)

That’s right.  You!  You, the Incipian Heed, the Flaccid Peni, the Ego Centered!  You, the ones who are always talking about how much they know about music and fart facts in concentric circles.  You, who complain that there is no good music anymore while listening incessantly to the decades-old— music which by all rights should have been put to bed long ago but instead is held high by listeners who stopped listening as examples of what music used to be.  Well, you can kiss my Rival Sons-loving ass!  All of you who don’t know that band, pucker up.

Frank Gutch Jr: YOU WANT A MASHUP? I’LL GIVE YOU A MASHUP!

That’s what they call it, is it not?  Where some needle-nosed geek sits behind a keyboard and threads Beatles and Michael Jackson songs together and comes up with the modern version of Stars on 45?  Hey, I admit that some of them are decent and a few have been downright creative, but let us face it.  It’s a fad.  No more nor less than the medley fad that pretended that what Stars on 45 was doing was musically viable.  Show of hands.  How many bought Stars on 45?  How many still have them?  That wind you feel is all those hands going down.

Frank Gutch Jr: That Stink You Smell…Or: The New Music Industry 101: A Primer.

Ten to one, you’ve not heard The Merry Minuet. It is a fun little ditty put together by one Sheldon Harnick and performed live by The Kingston Trio on their 1959 classic …from the Hungry i album and, man, is it prophetic! If not for the lyrics, it would be a happy-go-lucky romp through the tulips, skipping and all, but when you listen… Well, when you listen, it’s not. It’s funny. It’s extreme. It’s absurd. But mostly, it’s funny. Sung in basic Allan Sherman mode (Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!), it layers tragedy (lyrics) over ditty (music) and tells us, between the lines, that there is a little bit of truth in all humor. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around.