Pat Blythe – Where do we go from here? ……and music

Throughout the past two years we’ve all tried to predict, guess, envisage, calculate, even hope what the future of music will be, once we are no longer struggling and fighting this global pandemic. We have been living in a world that seems surreal…..like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from, just by rubbing your eyes. That anything like this could happen in the 21^st century seems rather absurd and unbelievable. Thing is…..it did. We are not impervious, but we are arrogant in thinking that we are. Lately, events have proven that we still have a long way to go. There remains, in all parts of the world, a whole level of uneducated obtuseness that exists even after we’ve heard from Archimedes, Aristotle, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawking and their ilk. Baby…..we have a looooong way to go.

Frank Gutch Jr: You’ve Got Your Heads On Backwards, Babies; Indie Labels You Should Pay More Attention To; Rich McCulley and Dan Miraldi— Bookends of the Pop Spectrum; and Whatever Else Comes To Mind…..

But first, a word from our sponsor.  Well, not sponsor, exactly.  In fact, just the opposite.  Well, not exactly opposite.  A few weeks ago, you might remember that I posted a few words about Sheldon Gomberg, the man behind Sweet Relief III: Pennies From Heaven, an album recorded for charity (all proceeds will go to Sweet Relief, an organization committed to helping musicians in need), and before that, I devoted a column to that organization through an interview with Sweet Relief‘s Rob Max.

Frank Gutch Jr: The ACMA’s, The Majors, The Seven-Second Rule, and Music As Education…..

Normally, I do not watch award shows.  I didn’t watch the ACM Awards show last week either, but by happenstance clicked by and hit a moment I wish I could forever erase from my mind.  As I remember it (and I am trying hard to disremember, trust me), Reba McEntire introduced KISS (wait a minute, was this the Academy of Country Music Awards?) who spent way too long looking and acting like primadonnas in full makeup and halloween attire opening an envelope so that they could announce a winner, and it would have made no difference who because if Nashville is about nothing else these days, it’s about formula.

Frank Gutch Jr: INDIE LABELS… The Phoenix Rising?

We have been standing by the rubble of the once mighty and proud music industry for some time now and while we all have theories as to what happened and why, it does not change what is, and that is a gutted and rotting carcass slowly feeding on itself.  Does Universal own everything yet?  The last time I looked, they were like vultures, awaiting the estate sales of EMI and whatever other labels were left (I lost track long ago, having tossed major labels to the curb along with their stable of “stars”) and trying to stem the bleeding results of their own ignorance.