Frank Gutch Jr: Consider These Reruns (Glimpses From the Past); Plus Notes of a Lugubrious Nature

Looking back has become a thing of the present lately.  It began when I felt a guilt sneak over me because so many of the artists I have written about have seemingly passed their buy-by date.  The listening public, it seems, only want the past in terms of oldies or the classics. God forbid they should let the music decide for them.  Add to that my inability at times to come up with fresh subject matter and a nostalgic bent and it seems the logical choice.  It is doubtful that many of you have read many of my columns from the distant past and those who have probably have lost the gist.  So why not visit the past here and there?  I have gleaned through many columns and have picked a handful of segments I believe will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.  Let us start with one overlooking the Pac Northwest, titled…

Frank Gutch Jr: Brian Cullman, David Bullock, Bill Jackson, and Tom House: People and Stories Behind My Favorite New Music, Plus Notes From the Musical Underground…..

 

I want to tell you about four musicians— people, really— but I don’t know if I can.  Oh, I could tell a few stories, wrangle up some comments and maybe tell you about their music, which is more than likely what I will attempt to do, but I will not be able to really tell you anything about them.  Does a resume ever say anything about the person?  I don’t think so.   But it may be the place to start.

Frank Gutch Jr: Psycho-Paths To the Heart (A Valentine’s Celebration of Musical Phobias and Neuroses), Deep Feedin’, What? Jon Gomm Again?, and Notezzzz…..

I’ve often wondered if previous generations of humans are as fucked up as we are about relationships.  I watch TV, go to movies and listen to music all the time and it appears to me we are a nation if not a world of basket cases.  We’re all self-involved and needy and greedy and sex-crazed and have so many phobias experts are identifying new ones all the time in an effort to keep up.  Growing up, I thought everything was laid out for us and it looked like gooey fun, but then when I was growing up we were in the era of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges and that strange teen phenomenon which circled around a mashup of James Dean and Marlon Brando (the young Brando and not the Godfather-era).  Were we fucked up then?  I suppose we were.

Frank Gutch Jr: Grown in Charlottesville, An Early Look at Rounder Records (via Warner/Reprise and Peter Stampfel), and Notes…..

When I first started getting into music, really getting into music beyond AM radio and the string of hits I always thought was everything music, there were three cities.  Only three.  Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  Those were the three graced by the large offices of the major labels and those were the three which produced the vast majority of music which made it to the airwaves.  Or so it seemed.  Isolated in Oregon (and trust me, kiddies, it was isolation), the world looked so simple and yet so daunting, even on AM radio.  Generalizations were common.  Vocal groups all came from or at least came out of New York City.  Soul was courtesy of Detroit and Chicago and Detroit.  Surf music was West Coast and sand-infested.  Country was all Bakersfield or Nashville.  But they all were filtered through the Big Three:  Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  That’s where the major labels lived.  That’s where the money was.  That was where artists went to make it  big, no matter where they originated.