Frank Gutch Jr: Thoughts on Big Star, The Little Band That Wasn’t Until One Day, Forty Years Later, It Was; Plus Updates and Voluminous Notes of a Lugubrious Nature

It was a epiphanal moment, one where an aura engulfs something or someone with angelic choir background.  In this case, it engulfed the first two albums released by new and tiny Ardent Records: Cargoe‘s self-titled classic and Big Star‘s #1 Record.  I held them up and asked Gary Haller, co-owner of Eugene’s now famed House of Records if they were any good.  They looked good, the slick glossy covers showing artsy pictures of the bands, the neon Big Star sign classy in an Andy Warhol sort of way.  “Dunno,” Gary replied.  “Nice artwork, though.”  I brooded over them for the next hour or so, pulling other records from the racks to read liner notes I had already read numerous times, hoping that this time I would find inspiration.  To buy.  To listen.  To covet.

Frank Gutch Jr: A Spoon Full of Estrogen Helps the Music Go Down (Easier)— A Glance at The 81s with Luella, Elouise, and Goldie Wilson; Plus Notes…

Women.  You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em, so the general attitude seems to be.  These days, it’s a topic I would rather not broach, so many ready to take offense at the drop of a hat, but who can blame them?  The United States, in my mind one of the most open cultures in the world (until the Orange Shitgibbon came along), never gave them their just due.  We said we did, but saying and doing are so far apart anymore.  Maybe always was.  I was fortunate enough to have grown up in a family which was as close as you could probably get to democratic.  Not in the early days, of course, but who would want to put a family at the mercy of a five- or eleven-year old?  Still, us kids were included in most decisions— the ones which involved us kids, anyway.

Frank Gutch Jr: Getting Your Fa-La-La-Las (Christmas Compilations & Suggestions); Plus Notes

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.

Frank Gutch Jr: Travels With Farley: Canada’s Legacy in Words— Plus Notes

I have this very large book sitting on my shelf titled Canada: A Modern History.  At the time I purchased it, I was beginning a journey into Canadian literature thanks to a bookstore in Seattle known as Magus, a large store in the University District of Seattle containing books of all sizes and flavors, mostly paperbacks.  I had stumbled upon this book quite by chance at the first Friends of the Library sale I attended upon arriving in Seattle and, having this unquenched thirst for what I now know as America’s Hat, purchased it on a whim.