Frank Gutch Jr: Music Millennium: Still Weird After All These Years; Meet Sid Hagan; Plus Them Glorious Notes

It plays like a loop in my head, the first time I visited Music Millennium. I remember the drive to Portland from Eugene, parking down the hill on East Burnside, the walk up the street and even opening the door. Had I filmed it, it could not be any more clear. I had been in many record stores before— in  fact, the guys with me were all denizens of Eugene’s House of Records— but this was different. This was the famed Millennium, the seller of imports, the mecca of what record stores should be as far as many of us were concerned. Tower Records may have had stores open at the time (it was the summer of ’72, though I have been saying ’71 for years and have only recently discovered my mistake) but the Pac Northwest didn’t know it. Why should we have cared? We had the Millennium!

Frank Gutch Jr: A Journey and the Soundtrack to my Life; Angharad Drake’s New Album; The Big Bright In the Studio; Plus Notes…

 And I don’t mean the band Journey recently inducted into the supposed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  God knows what those clowns think when they make their choices but when I look at the possible choices they could have made besides those guys… well, I won’t go there.  Let me just say that I understand when people are upset when I make such statements because they have a soundtrack to their lives as well, but this isn’t their column, is it?  I look at it this way— Journey had hits, yes, and made CBS one hell of a lot of money, but they didn’t have an original bone in all of their collective bodies and you will never change my mind.  Hall of Fame?  Not even close.  Not while the hundreds more deserving are locked out.  Change that to thousands.

Frank Gutch Jr: I Have Seen the Future and It Wasn’t This…..

 

Not the political future, which has turned out bad enough, but the music future which is floundering.  I saw it going awry in 1992 when I left the retail record business as it morphed to a “music industry” I never recognized.  I tried to make sense of it then, wondering why the decisions being made by not just major labels but by what then was becoming an entertainment conglomerate were so unerringly ridiculous.  I need to watch the documentary on Tower Records, All Things Must Pass, in detail.  I need to revisit the individual instances which brought down radio, records and everything else entertainment around our ears.  I need to understand who was in power, if indeed anyone was, and who made the monumental mistakes which gave us the chaos we now have.

Frank Gutch Jr: Meet The Duck (and Other Tales of Woe); A Node to Billy Miller (RIP);

 

His real name is Steve Suhadolnik but they called him The Duck after a weekend in Seattle with his buddies Newman Newman and Dahlgreen left all three of them practically penniless because of Newman Newman’s hours-long call to his girl back in Indiana while the Duck and Dahlgreen took in a double-feature and (I am sure) trolled Pike Street for hookers.  See, The Duck had this thing for hookers, having spent a year in Bangkok living with one.  Number One, in fact.  He always told me, you ever make it to Bangkok go down to the Thermay Lounge and ask for Number One.  Then he would smile, just like in this picture, and smack his lips.

Frank Gutch Jr: 1971: It Was a Very Good Year… Plus Notes

But first, Brian Cullman has a pretty cool video I would like you to watch.  He just released his first album in some years (The Opposite of Time) and is actually attempting to put a band together to play a few live gigs.  This is something you don’t want to miss, though the audience may be limited to New York where Brian lives.  Anyway, just so you know what Brian has to offer, watch this!

Frank Gutch Jr: My Journey As Brought To You By…..

The Corona School of Writing, Weinhard’s Private Reserve, record labels (major and independent) and just about everyone I have ever really known.  So I sit here quaffing the ice cold Weinhard, waiting for that writing buzz and wondering where I will go with this because I have no real idea where I am going, only where I have been.  I have been lucky, lucky like I cannot believe, but not lucky of my own making.  I have been surrounded by good people— no, people more than good— and it is time I pay tribute to those and those things which have made me who I am.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Stores Are Alive With The Sound of Music….. plus Notes!

I still get asked why I love record stores.  Still.  Older people shrug their shoulders and the young— well, let us just say that rolling of the eyes seems to be part of their DNA.  Every time it happens, I think, hey, I wasn’t like that.  Well, except for the time that Momma pointed out that Ernie Fields‘ rockin’ In the Mood was a cover of a Glenn Miller song.