Frank Gutch Jr: I Got Blistuhs on Muh Finguhs!!! (Plus Notes)

… and I’m looking for trouble because that’s just what you have to do sometimes.  Tributes and covers are sucking the soul right out of me and probably out of the goddamn entire world but you soulless bastards have no clue!  This whole I-got-to-see-the-best-bands and there-ain’t-no-good-music-anymore attitude is killing the listening floor (screw the dance floor) and I’ve had it up to my neck with the I-don’t-like-today’s-music-so-fuck-you memes on the social media and threads in the forums to the point that I’m thinking hell could not be a worse place to live— at least compared to this musical rotgut of a world we live in today.

Frank Gutch Jr: Emitt Rhodes; Why Bluegrass Needs Gold Heart; Is Getty Images the Spotify and Pandora of Photography; Plus Notes…..

 

Emitt Rhodes is not a god, but he is as close as anyone I have found, in music at least.  To me, he is right up there with Buddy Holly, Elvis, Paul McCartney and the other musicians people seem to want to elevate to godlike status.  Decades ago I wrote a short piece comparing Rhodes’ albums to McCartney’s first solo album, largely because they each chose to play all of the instruments, and, well, McCartney did not fare well, but that is just me.  Become a superstar and you had better produce like a superstar and while McCartney did become one and hasn’t produced, Rhodes never even had a real chance.  His music, though?  Quarter notes through the heart.  No, he is not a god, but he is among the best of the humans.

Frank Gutch Jr: Moments In Time— A Selfish Remembrance of Music…..

I  saw a photographic exhibition once in which a photographer attempted to lay out his life in black & white.  I don’t remember the person’s name but you wouldn’t know him anyway— he never reached any level of fame as far as I know— yet, anyway.  He was a nobody who loved taking pictures and being in pictures and he laid his whole life out in photos, mostly of himself and people who must have been nobodies too.

Frank Gutch Jr: Jock Talk: KAKC Tulsa’s Jim Peters Talks About Radio In the Sixties—

A simple recipe it was.  Sprinkle a few hundred radio stations throughout the United States and Canada, mix with rock ‘n’ roll and stir.  Stir up would be a more apt term because when the music hit the airwaves, the shit hit the fan— the music fan, that is.  Not a big deal, you say?  You’re probably right.  In the grand scheme of things, a handful of traditionalists screaming McCarthyisms in a world already changed beyond their understanding would turn out to be flies on a horse’s ass, so to speak, and to scream them at teens plugged into a jukebox or record player at full volume was, well, laughable, but scream them they did and, as they say, the rest is history.

Frank Gutch Jr: Picture The Ocean— What Portland Missed (including more views on venues and musicians)… The Positive Side of Bottomfeeding (Hits Most of Us Missed)… and Notes You Can Put in the Bank…..

With a nod to Neil Young:  “’Live music is better’ bumper stickers should be issued!”  God knows how few of us realize what we are missing out there these days.  The bars and taverns and music listening rooms are being stocked with an amazing array of excellent artists and we are either sitting at home with our fingers up our ass or hanging out in some bar with no music beyond that hooked up to stereo speakers on walls, bitching about there being no good music.  For all of you who do that (and you know you do), I have a finger for you and you can bet which one.