Frank Gutch Jr: Terry Manning, A Look Back (with Pseu Braun, Bill Phillips and Max Wisley)… Plus Notes

I’m not going to blow smoke up your skirts about what a legend is Terry Manning.  Manning is just a man like other men but one who has been at the right places at the right times often enough to have had legend grow around him.  He is a musician, recording engineer, music producer and label owner all-in-one, and now adds photographer to the list, though that might have been there and I just missed it.  He has worked with unknowns and superstars and businessmen of various character. What he has had and done is a simple matter of longevity.  That’s not to say he isn’t a genius, of sorts (after all, he produced and played on one of my all-time favorite albums, Cargoe), but that he has lived long enough to make his past history in a real historical sense.

Frank Gutch Jr: Old Is Not Irrelevant

While working on this weeks column in which I had hoped to give insights into record labels and how they evolved, I realized that much of the music of the past and my attitudes toward it and the business surrounding it needed to be readdressed.

Frank Gutch Jr: Fun With 45s (Into the Depths of Hell), Jess Pillmore Breaks Her Silence, and Notes…..

That’s what one of my old girlfriends used to call hanging out at my place.  The Depths of Hell.  Of course, as far as I could tell, anyplace which did not exclusively play everything Los Angeles was hell to her.  Linda Ronstadt.  The Eagles.  Joni Mitchell.  Jackson Browne.  Gawd, but I always thought if there was a hell on Earth, it was Los Angeles.  Soft Rock hell.  Bland hell.  Mediocre hell.  Just plain hell.