Frank Gutch Jr: Consider These Reruns (Glimpses From the Past); Plus Notes of a Lugubrious Nature

Looking back has become a thing of the present lately.  It began when I felt a guilt sneak over me because so many of the artists I have written about have seemingly passed their buy-by date.  The listening public, it seems, only want the past in terms of oldies or the classics. God forbid they should let the music decide for them.  Add to that my inability at times to come up with fresh subject matter and a nostalgic bent and it seems the logical choice.  It is doubtful that many of you have read many of my columns from the distant past and those who have probably have lost the gist.  So why not visit the past here and there?  I have gleaned through many columns and have picked a handful of segments I believe will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.  Let us start with one overlooking the Pac Northwest, titled…

Frank Gutch Jr: Pac Northwest Music History in Website’s Clothing; Plus Notes…..

Summers!  What a trip!  At least they were for me in my uber-enthusiastic youth.  Cutting the gut in Albany, two towns over, Radio Station KRKT blasting Sean & The Brandywines‘ She Ain’t No Good while my buddies and I looked for ladies.  Driving over the bridge into Corvallis, Radio KFLY doing the same with The Sonics‘ Louie Louie.  Late Spring on a drive home, Eugene’s Radio KASH giving us The Five Americans‘ I See the Light.  Driving with the windows down on a cold night listening to Fontella Bass (Rescue Me), Lou Christie (Lightning Strikes), Love (Little Red Book), and The Mojo Men (Dance With Me).  Man, could life get any better?

Frank Gutch Jr: Psycho-Paths To the Heart (A Valentine’s Celebration of Musical Phobias and Neuroses), Deep Feedin’, What? Jon Gomm Again?, and Notezzzz…..

I’ve often wondered if previous generations of humans are as fucked up as we are about relationships.  I watch TV, go to movies and listen to music all the time and it appears to me we are a nation if not a world of basket cases.  We’re all self-involved and needy and greedy and sex-crazed and have so many phobias experts are identifying new ones all the time in an effort to keep up.  Growing up, I thought everything was laid out for us and it looked like gooey fun, but then when I was growing up we were in the era of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges and that strange teen phenomenon which circled around a mashup of James Dean and Marlon Brando (the young Brando and not the Godfather-era).  Were we fucked up then?  I suppose we were.

Frank Gutch Jr: When I Want Country, I Want Country!

And not the crap they’re telling us is Country.  It seems like forever ago that I cared about Country music.  Nashville pretty much put me off my feed when they started promoting artists like Brad Paisley and Taylor Swift and The Jayhawks— whom I like, don’t get me wrong— or maybe what I mean to say is, I don’t hate.  But it just ain’t Country, my friends, and that’s the truth.