Frank Gutch Jr: Music Millennium: Still Weird After All These Years; Meet Sid Hagan; Plus Them Glorious Notes

It plays like a loop in my head, the first time I visited Music Millennium. I remember the drive to Portland from Eugene, parking down the hill on East Burnside, the walk up the street and even opening the door. Had I filmed it, it could not be any more clear. I had been in many record stores before— in  fact, the guys with me were all denizens of Eugene’s House of Records— but this was different. This was the famed Millennium, the seller of imports, the mecca of what record stores should be as far as many of us were concerned. Tower Records may have had stores open at the time (it was the summer of ’72, though I have been saying ’71 for years and have only recently discovered my mistake) but the Pac Northwest didn’t know it. Why should we have cared? We had the Millennium!

JAIMIE VERNON – BOOM GO THE ‘80s

In a previous incarnation my label, Bullseye, was focusing on 1960s and 1970s Canadian re-issues but in the time that has elapsed since I folded the label (2010) and now, the pop culture zeitgeist has shifted. Classic Rock radio was put into suspended animation in 2014 by the major radio players (at least in Canada) and 1980s radio has picked up the ball. Oh, the 1970s is still getting a fair amount of airplay, but it’s mostly been ghettoized into bite-sized “The 70s at 7 !!!” type radio programming.

Doug Thompson: “TODAY THE PITS, TOMORROW THE WORLD.”

A few months back, not long after Stan Freberg died on April 7^th, I wrote a column about his early career as a voice actor for Capitol Records children’s records and Warner Bros. cartoons, TV shows like “Time For Beany” plus his hilarious 13 week CBS summer radio series as well as his many hit parodies for Capitol.  At the time, I promised (or threatened, I can’t remember which), to write a second column on Stan’s amazing adventures in advertisingland.

Doug Thompson: “YEP, LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY SURE CUT THROUGH THAT FENCE ALRIGHT.”

Stan Freberg passed away on Tuesday, April 7^th, 2015 in Santa Monica, California.  He was 88.  Despite his incredible success in the recording world (albeit in the 1950’s), radio, television and advertising (Freberg is in the Advertising Hall of Fame after all), somehow, Stan wasn’t hip enough for the TMZ generation.  They’d rather report on yet another lame Kardashian/Jenner photo op, so Stan’s passing didn’t even merit a mention on their popular website or TV show, although his obituary did make the New York Times.

JAIMIE VERNON – MEMORIES FADE

This week marked two important memorial milestones in Rock and Roll History. It was 51 years ago on February 9^th that the Beatles walked into the homes of America –and the world – via ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. The other was the 56^th anniversary of the Day the Music Died – with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper perishing in a plane crash on February 3, 1959 [in a sad coincidence, Holly’s bassist in The Crickets, Joe B. Mauldin passed away on February 7^th this year]. I’m of the generation that neither event was contemporaneous to me. I can only measure their importance by the impact crater they left on pop culture…and music specifically.