Frank Gutch Jr: Mixtape Was Not Always an Ugly Word

They came to be called Mixtapes (or Mix Tapes) and were/are looked upon with scorn but they started out a way to share music without having to drag people to your house and forcing them to drink while you played records.  They were an outlet for frustrated disc jockeys and vinyl junkies because even though an unusually high percentage of tapes passed from hand to hand were never played, a person had poured over an entire music collection to put together “sets,” a DJ term regarding playing certain songs in a certain sequence.  I know.  I made them and passed them out like candy.  I am sure most who received them rolled their eyes and exited at first chance, but for me it was about the music.  For vinyl junkies, it is always about the music.

Frank Gutch Jr: Musicians on a Mission: Dan Phelps, Julian Taylor, Wes Swing, and Jimmy Lee (formerly Lee’s Company)… Plus a lugubrious panorama of Notes

Meet Dan Phelps, if you have not already done so.  I first ran across him over a decade ago when he was working with both Bill Pillmore and his daughter Jess Pillmore on their respective albums, Look In Look Out and Reveal.  Bill was an original member of Cowboy and I had heard through Scott Boyer, another original member of that venerable band, that he was recording for the first time, to my knowledge, since Cowboy‘s excellent 1971 release, 5’ll Getcha Ten.  When I contacted him, he was in full recording mode, working with Phelps, whom he had chosen to produce.  To my amazement, Phelps did more than just produce.  He was a sideman and a damn good one, a creator of good licks and solid musical ideas.  It was a first look at a musician I would follow from that point on.

Frank Gutch Jr: Emitt Rhodes; Why Bluegrass Needs Gold Heart; Is Getty Images the Spotify and Pandora of Photography; Plus Notes…..

 

Emitt Rhodes is not a god, but he is as close as anyone I have found, in music at least.  To me, he is right up there with Buddy Holly, Elvis, Paul McCartney and the other musicians people seem to want to elevate to godlike status.  Decades ago I wrote a short piece comparing Rhodes’ albums to McCartney’s first solo album, largely because they each chose to play all of the instruments, and, well, McCartney did not fare well, but that is just me.  Become a superstar and you had better produce like a superstar and while McCartney did become one and hasn’t produced, Rhodes never even had a real chance.  His music, though?  Quarter notes through the heart.  No, he is not a god, but he is among the best of the humans.

Frank Gutch Jr: Majors Creek (Australia) Music Fest Carries On Without Founder Peter Gillespie, Memories of the Eugene Pop Festival of 1969, and E.J. Simpson— The Most Base of Bassists… Plus the Ever-Wondrous Notes…..

If you live in the States or Canada, you can be forgiven for not knowing about Majors Creek, for there are plenty of people who live in Australia who know little or nothing about it.  Here is a DBAWIS primer for those in the dark.

Frank Gutch Jr: They Come From Edmonton— Science Fiction of the Most Musical Variety… Plus Notes

They were Jesse Dee & Jacquie B when I first heard them— two waifs supposedly in the outbacks of the Yukon surviving by hunting and survival skills, living off the land, playing bars for beer.  They ate raw meat, sometimes frozen if there was no way to thaw it (there evidently isn’t, on the whole), but skirted moose and squirrel out of respect.