Frank Gutch Jr: Down By the Old Graveyard— Reviews of Albums I Thought For Sure Could Not Miss…..

I’ve been in an extremely retrospective frame of mind the last few weeks, digging through old photographs and reading old letters as well as watching old movies.  I don’t know why.  Sometimes I have a need to look back, I suppose, and lately I’ve had that kink in my neck for doing it a bit too much.  I have relived  a thousand moments and have heard songs in my head of artists and songs long past and no longer in my collection.  I have thought of old girlfriends and old buddies and have re-experienced old highs and lows.  Highs and lows.  One thing I have been doing is revisiting reviews I had written over the years of music I loved at that moment, and still do, on the whole.  I hate to see good music go to waste.  I hate to see artists ignored.  I hate that we spend so much time going over and over the same old music and music histories we always have, ad infinitum.  I understand it.  I just hate it.  So just a few minutes ago, I decided right now, just for one column, I would give a few of those artists and albums a short-lived reprise.  Why not?  It is what I have been doing all my life in zines and papers like The Entertainer and Pop Culture Press and BOMP and Fusion and on the Net for sites like DBAWIS.  The truth is that I have started three different columns which have deflated like yesterday’s quiche and I have to write something, so you’re stuck.  Who knows?  Maybe you can find something in the old mine worth reading and/or hearing.  I hope so.  So let’s go.

Frank Gutch Jr: Who’s Who In Rock Music, Maxi Dunn & The Lost Art of Arranging, Bryce Larsen Steals Jane (Again!), and The Lonely Wild…..

I sit at the desk a partial human being once again, the throat still coated with viscous fluids and the chronic hacking reduced to a wheezing irritation of the I-think-I-can variety (irritating but not life-threatening).  I am drinking Royal Crown Cola (as opposed to the preferred Crown Royal) to reduce viscosity, the mind is somewhat sharp though I could easily use another eighteen hours sleep before writing this (I have been waking at 3 A.M. these past few nights) and wonder how far I will go before losing energy and direction.

Frank Gutch Jr: It Has Barely Started and Already 2013 Is a Kickass Year…..

In fact, this may damn well be the year I kick the bucket.  My life has pretty much been music, or music at its core, and it has never been better and I have to say that this next year promises to be the best yet.  Ever have that feeling that you can’t lose?  I not only have that feeling but am overwhelmed by it, politics be damned!  So pardon me while I crawl into my hole and surround myself with a future major labels only dream about.  Pay attention.  There will be a quiz.

Frank Gutch Jr: Loose Ends, Even Looser Ends, Paige Anderson & The Fearless Kin, Green Monkey Christmas, and Those Pesky Notes (to which you should really pay more attention)…..

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep and part of it has to do with Spotify.  Not Spotify specifically, but all of the music subscription services that have come along since digitization:  Mog and Pandora and Rhapsody and Sony and others.  What set me off was a musician who posted on Facebook that maybe you should log on to Spotify and check out a certain artist.  Why would that set me off, you ask?  Because I have just recently turned my back to such “services”.  Because if they are a better way to find music and artists, they are also cutting off the hands that feed them.  The hands of musicians and the hands of songwriters ans indeed the hands of all involved in the musical process, for it is a process.

Frank Gutch Jr: We Are the World Done Local, Mining 45s, and Notes…..

Quick!  Without searching, answer a few questions.  Who recorded We Are the World?  Who benefited?  Who wrote it?  Was there a B-side?  Were there other projects similar?  Does anyone care?  Did anyone care?

For those born after the fact, it may surprise you to know that plenty cared.  Over 20 million people worldwide bought the record.  I mean, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, the writers of the song, were huge at the time.  So were producers Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian, though Jones significantly more than Omartian.