Frank Gutch Jr: Consider These Reruns (Glimpses From the Past); Plus Notes of a Lugubrious Nature

Looking back has become a thing of the present lately.  It began when I felt a guilt sneak over me because so many of the artists I have written about have seemingly passed their buy-by date.  The listening public, it seems, only want the past in terms of oldies or the classics. God forbid they should let the music decide for them.  Add to that my inability at times to come up with fresh subject matter and a nostalgic bent and it seems the logical choice.  It is doubtful that many of you have read many of my columns from the distant past and those who have probably have lost the gist.  So why not visit the past here and there?  I have gleaned through many columns and have picked a handful of segments I believe will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.  Let us start with one overlooking the Pac Northwest, titled…

Frank Gutch Jr: Canada! Drake Is Coming! (Angharad Drake, That Is); The Omniverous Trailers;

There are musicians who are outstanding and there are musicians who are unique but seldom do you find one who is both.  I have found maybe a small bucketful during my lifetime who rise to the fly (as fly fisherman are wont to say) and most of those would be under your radar but they are there, regardless of cynics’ belief that music is dead.  My problem is that when they do come along, I am so like Chicken Little that few believe it.  Most take my loud cries of ecstasy as another of my many elaborate hoaxes, though I wonder how they know because they haven’t heeded my advice anyway.  You want to know what discouragement is?  Discouragement is posting a video or audio track, getting 17 “likes” but only three more views or listens than when you posted it.  I guess it is most times easier to click a button than to actually listen.

Frank Gutch Jr: Reprise Is Not a Label… Plus Notes

Before we get into the meat of this column, let’s talk Winterpills.  I have been a fan since hearing their 2010 EP Tuxedo of Ashes and have followed them since.  Their one album of covers, Echolalia, was good enough to make me toss aside my disdain of this current trend, their arrangements making up for the usual lack of creativity on most bands parts.  No such problem here.  Love Songs is an all-original triumph, Philip Price writing his best songs since Tuxedo, and the band is  in A-1 shape.

Frank Gutch Jr: Sweet Relief III: Cover Songs I Can Get Behind, Even In The Midst of This Covers/Tribute Glut… And If You Want Covers, I Have Some Right Here In the Hall Closet (Crash! Bang! Boom!) Plus Notes…..

If you understood the reference to the hall closet, you are a fossil like myself and ready for the wood heap.  Better start taking Geritol again (the Stone Age’s answer to Centrum).

It is a strange world in which I find myself these days and not one I am particularly fond of, especially since supposed music lovers (and the media) have jumped on this covers/tribute thing like it is more than a fad (it isn’t, at least the way in which the music is being approached).  I laugh— no, I guffaw— at the idea of bands bowing at the feet of other bands, thinking that signs of obeisance gives them any kind of credibility in the real world of music and musicians.

Frank Gutch Jr: My Own Little Bizzaro World

One of my favorite movie scenes is the one in Diner where this maniac vinyl junkie scares the hell out of his wife by going nuclear on her with his musical knowledge.  Know why?  Because I could have been that guy.  Like him, I would have had to have married straight out of high school because if you give girls a chance, they eventually soak up enough knowledge to steer clear of psychotic idiots like myself (and him) and make better choices, regardless how bad.  Was I that bad, you ask?  Sad to say, I must have been.  I always thought my life was normal and that I was actually a pretty average guy (though handsome as the dickens and with a sense of humor which could disable a battlefield with wit), but I may have been wrong, the key words here being “may have been”.