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.
The first record store I ever frequented was in Eugene, Oregon— Thompson’s. I wanted to put “Record Mart” behind it but I am not sure how they labeled themselves. A building on the north end of the city, not too far from Skinner’s Butte, it was small, square and as I remember it, white, with large storefront windows behind which racks of records were displayed, mostly 45s, a small wall of listening booths, and stereo equipment— lots of it. I have no idea how I found out about it, being a small town boy who hardly ever visited the big city (and to me Eugene was big and a city), but I found myself one day, after much begging and emotional pyrotechnics, entering this Taj Mahal of vinyl. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was looking through the Book of Face pages the other day and ran across a post about The Sidewalk Scene. I remember them, friend Ray Brandes having been a frontman for them how long ago? Two years so? Three years? The post linked to a page which showcased four studio-produced tracks, all jangly and sixties-oriented. Music, in fact, that I remember fondly.
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.
In a way. In a very meaningful way, too. It changed the world. More specifically, it changed the United States. I’m convinced. I studied it in college. I have been studying it ever since, though now it is called communications (or do they have some other newfangled name) and includes the Internet and God knows what else. As much as some of my friends think I was there at the beginning, I was not. I was there when it was forced to adapt to the new kid on the block, television, though, and I hung on as long as I could. The idiot box was unfortunately too strong and kicked radio to the curb where it reinvented itself into a provider of music, sports and talk— mostly music. Without the radio, the music business might have been just another part of the entertainment conglomeration, but for awhile, in spite of the attempts to push it into the background, it ruled the roost. There were reasons and it was regional, at first, but it did. More on that later.
The quote in the header is from Frank Secich‘s Circumstantial Evidence, a look back at a life which could easily have been one long stint at various penal institutions instead of sixties and seventies music venues. Secich (pronounced SESS-ich, by the way) admits in his book that he was on the cusp but never really made the leap, thanks to music and the people involved with it. One such person was Ray Chizmar, a musician and early idol to Secich who would always greet him with “What do you say, Ray?” to which Chizmar replied “Whatcha got in the bank, Frank?”
I have been so overwhelmed with videos and new releases this week that I’ve decided to hit you all with nothing but Notes. Videos you might want to see, news (mostly about new releases), and thoughts. I am taking a week to get away by myself to hopefully get caught up. Tons of reviews to write and notes to arrange. I will be back on track next week. In the meantime, if you don’t have the time to look this over now, save the link and do it when you have a few seconds. No sense in forcing it now when you could actually enjoy it at a later time. There are some cool things here. I know. I screened them myself.
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I got a message! Yep, I got a message from someone who was not trying to steal my identity or sell me penis enhancement medication! I mean, this does not happen as much as you would think, even with my superior intellect and excellent writing skills. I am sure most of you picture me at a desk overflowing with fan mail— buried in it, in fact.
I’m like the A-Team’s Hannibal Smith in that I too love it when a plan comes together and love it even more when it balloons into an epic tale of adventure, lust and romance. The romance part, of course, would be my endless fascination for the music of the bands (past, present and future) which came out of the musicians who comprised Notary Sojac, the band few knew and even fewer knew about.
Indiana Jones has nothing on me. That big rolling ball chasing him? That’s nothing compared to the mountain of carnivorous beasts chasing me in my dreams every night, each vying for that elusive review I promised what seems months ago. It is the music reviewers equivalent to no pants in the schoolroom, the albums fighting one another to get to me, to rip flesh from bone, to make me pay for what they see as vinyl manslaughter— vinylslaughter, if you will— an offense so terrible as to consign innocent artists and albums to a certain death, so vile as to blast dreams to smithereens, so ghastly as to be— well— ghastly.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 