Frank Gutch Jr: Classic Rock— Not As Classic As You Might Think; Plus, In Keeping With the Theme, Notes of a Classic Nature

 

I would love to gather all of the music directors of so-called Classic Rock radio stations in the Roman Coliseum and turn the lions loose.  I was around long before the term Classic Rock was even phrased and as big a fan of rock radio as there was and I learned to hate everything radio tried to do after big money came in with all of their ideas to make radio “better.”  I suffered through a number of formats from the time of “Boss” radio to the present, the only one being worth a shit (to my mind) being Underground.  Ah, the days of underground.  I remember returning from the Army to Eugene and radio station KZEL and being floored with evening sets by The Wasted Potato (I think his name was Gary Parmentier) like War/Four Cornered Room, The Temptations/Masterpiece, and Funkadelic/Maggot Brain, back-to-back-to-back.

Frank Gutch Jr: Terry Manning, A Look Back (with Pseu Braun, Bill Phillips and Max Wisley)… Plus Notes

I’m not going to blow smoke up your skirts about what a legend is Terry Manning.  Manning is just a man like other men but one who has been at the right places at the right times often enough to have had legend grow around him.  He is a musician, recording engineer, music producer and label owner all-in-one, and now adds photographer to the list, though that might have been there and I just missed it.  He has worked with unknowns and superstars and businessmen of various character. What he has had and done is a simple matter of longevity.  That’s not to say he isn’t a genius, of sorts (after all, he produced and played on one of my all-time favorite albums, Cargoe), but that he has lived long enough to make his past history in a real historical sense.

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: Fun With 45s (Into the Depths of Hell), Jess Pillmore Breaks Her Silence, and Notes…..

That’s what one of my old girlfriends used to call hanging out at my place.  The Depths of Hell.  Of course, as far as I could tell, anyplace which did not exclusively play everything Los Angeles was hell to her.  Linda Ronstadt.  The Eagles.  Joni Mitchell.  Jackson Browne.  Gawd, but I always thought if there was a hell on Earth, it was Los Angeles.  Soft Rock hell.  Bland hell.  Mediocre hell.  Just plain hell.

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”.