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: It’s Gone, Man… Real Gone; Plus Notes That If You Blink, You Might Miss

 

I know, I know.  I was the one screaming the loudest and the longest about local news hyping first the Microsoft system upgrades and the the latest iThing of the moment, but this ain’t no news program and I am promoting this for a reason.  I try to get you guys interested in music, which isn’t always easy, and the I have to listen to the “there ain’t no good music anymore” and “it’s all been done before” excuses.  Well, here we are, then.  I have some music for you which not only precludes the music that was good before good became bad, but it’s on sale.  That’s right.  Until October 2^nd, Real Gone Music is pumping some of my favorite music, this time not of the day but of the past.  Sale items are CDs, folks.  Whether you like them or not.

Frank Gutch Jr: Not Rolling Stone’s Top 100

I just took another stroll through Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists.  I do so occasionally just to remind me of what a fools errand such lists are.  I realize that it sells “magazines” (are they a magazine these days?), people being suckers for Top of’s of 50 Best’s if for no other reason to compare choices with theirs.  Jimi Hendrix?  Sure.  #1.  Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck?  Automatic Top Ten.  James Burton and Buddy Holly?  You have no choice but to throw in the originators on occasion.  John Fahey?  Can’t leave out the cool artist who never really sold in terms of the numbers necessary to chart.

Frank Gutch Jr: The War I Did Not Fight (and the One I Fought In My Head) Plus Notes…..

I got a haircut the other day and the guy before me asked for white sidewalls.  For those who don’t know, white sidewalls is a euphemism for a buzzcut which pretty much eliminates hair from neck to crown.  Marines are poster boys for the style and I jerked my mental knee and mentioned The Marines.  Yes, he said, I was a Marine.  I looked closely at him and I could see a hard life written on his face, the cracks deep and ancient.  His life hadn’t been easy.

Frank Gutch Jr: Bryan Thomas: The Dreamweaver; Dave McGraw & Mandy Fer Play Eugene; plus Notes

I have had this idea in the back of my head for awhile now of writing a column with musical accompaniment.  My most fun times at the keyboard are when the mind flows free and the ideas pop up organically— a stream-of-consciousness style, if you will.  My old Army buddy Michael Marino does it as a matter of course, cranking out articles of chaotic beauty whilst explaining the positive sides of marijuana and/or wine or the death knell of democracy in Roswell, New Mexico, of all places.  He is what I always wanted to be— a freethinker— one who allows the words to write themselves out of a sense of moral obligation or whatever he thinks it is.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Anatomy of a Masterpiece, Part Two: Jess Pillmore, Plus Notes…..

Like I said last week, you don’t have to sell millions of albums to get my vote.  The quality just has to be evident, and in 2005, Jess Pillmore‘s Reveal earned my pick as the best album I heard that year.  It surprised myself as much as anyone, to be sure, for Pillmore was a somewhat unknown quantity to me, outside of one previous album I had received a few weeks before titled Slightly Skewed, an album leaning much more toward folk and pop than the new one.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Anatomy of a Masterpiece, Part One: Dan Phelps, Plus Notes…..

 

The masterpiece in the header is none other than Jess Pillmore‘s Reveal, a 2005 release which swept me away and earned my pick for Album of the Year.  I don’t think there is a person out there who would not raise the brow, but like that old crusty umpire, I call them as I hear them.  I undoubtedly have most if not all of you at a disadvantage.  You have not heard the album and even if you have you have not studied it.  You are therefore unaware of the sweat and blood and emotion and, yes, genius which sets this album apart from so many others.  At first listen, even I had little inkling what was beneath the songs themselves.  At twenty listens I began to have an idea.  By one hundred, I knew.

Frank Gutch Jr: Will You Still Feed Me: A Look Back at the Music of My Teen Years… Plus Notes

 

I looked in a mirror this morning.  I am no longer that lanky young teen anxious to conquer the world but am instead the Metamucil blob of phlegm beaten into submission, almost, by an uncaring world.  Don’t ask me when the world changed but it changed drastically and I have been spit out the other end, not all that changed mentally but a physical time bomb with littler and littler time available.  So excuse me while I take a little tiptoe through the tulips, music-wise, in an effort to wrap up the year.

Frank Gutch Jr: Let’s Play Catch and Then Catch-Up Because It Was Opening Day Yesterday and, Man, Are We Behind When It Comes To Music!

It was opening day yesterday— for baseball, in case you’re wondering.  Time for the so-called Faithful to breathe in the aroma of Spring and pay homage to overpaid athletes who had better be as good as they can be because that home run that center-fielder just hit cost the club $27,102.56.  I don’t know what it is but even the intelligent lay aside any real maturity they gained since the last out of last years World Series.  Cubs fans talk of a pennant, Red Sox fans rejoice in the fact that they have yet another chance to win it all and Dodger fans— well, the Dodgers haven’t been the Dodgers since they left Brooklyn, in my opinion.  Major League Baseball died for me on the day they announced the move.  Walter O’Malley destroyed not just one childhood fantasy of mine— that baseball was a sport— but also what I had always thought the only major league worth caring about— The Pacific Coast League.

Frank Gutch Jr: Jack Bruce Is Gone and the World He Inhabited Will Soon Be Gone Too; Prediscovering Elliott Randall— Still Reelin’ In the Years; The Mess That Was ‘Baker Street’; and them freakin’ Notes you just cannot live without…..

Jack Bruce is dead.  Long live Jack Bruce.  And long live the musical era he lived in though that will soon be dead, too.  As dead as Bix Beiderbecke.  As dead as Glenn Miller.  As dead as Frank Sinatra.  As dead as … well, you get my drift.