Yesterday I went through all of the private messages I’d shared with Frank Gutch Jr, since I’d first encountered him. It was in 2013, just after I’d begun writing this weekly column, and right from that first message, it was as though we were separated at birth.
My yardstick for music is a simple one. If everyone likes it, it can’t be worth a shit. Think Hitler as a rock star. He, too, had a following, though few would own up to being part of it after the finale. What is it that makes everyone so enamored with this musician as opposed to this other musician who is playing practically the same thing? Hell if I know. How does one become a hit overnight? Hell if I know. Why are people attracted to certain artists, en masse? You guessed it. Hell if I know. But I can goddamn guarantee you that while you are talking about the Lady Gaga halftime show, and my guess is that most of you talking about music are, you’re missing a few thousand musicians worth hearing, some of them playing music way outside the formulaic box the Gaga has built for herself. Taylor Swift? I love some of her songs but there are songs as good as that out there if you take the time to listen.
Jesus Christ, but 2016 was a tough year! The musicians (and people) we lost! The impending doom of a Trump-inspired government! The division of what was in some ways a country, a world even. Ideals crushed beneath the boot heels of hate, news warped beyond any rational thought, a world based upon a semblance of logic now an anarchy of thought and emotion.
Nothing says Christmas like a curmudgeon and nobody is more of one than Jaimie Vernon which makes me wish I knew some of the stories behind his long career in music and, also, in life. Regaling you with tales of chicken wire and whoopee cushions would make this a lot easier to write— nothing like fart jokes to liven up your reading— but it is Christmas season and I must put aside the slings and arrows, as humorous as they might be.
Lots of good stuff happening out there and it’s time we plugged in to some of it if only to counter the “real” musical happenings being covered by all of the sites who think that Kanye West canceling (or postponing) a show is news. I get it. No fun finding out your wife is being held at gunpoint. Just not headline news in my part of the world.
I took a drive yesterday. I had been sitting in front of the computer screen too long and accomplishing little of anything at all and I needed a break. Usually when I hit the road I take music I need to hear for writing reasons but this time I needed time to myself. I grabbed one I had the urge to review by Town Mountain which when I pulled open the CD cover discovered was minus the disc. I had left it in my computer player at home. I have lost more than one disc that way. The other two were there though and I had heard neither all the way through for over a year: Lisa Parade‘s Finding Flora and Maxi Dunn‘s Edmund & Leo. I couldn’t wait.
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In all my years in music, I never worked for a label. I wanted to. But I wanted to work only in A&R. Artists and Repertoire. They were the people who found the artists, who were liaison between the artist and label management, who groomed the performers and worked with them on the songs for their albums and maybe just the direction of focus. I knew a few A&R people in L.A. They loved it. They wouldn’t have done anything else. Most of them, when their A&R gigs ended, got out of the business because it was a sewer everywhere else. Sales? The pits. Promotion? Real work. Management? A path, most of the time, to disaster. I mean, A&R was where the adventure was. And is.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 