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.
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!
Let’s kick this weeks column off with a brand new video by guitarist Jon Gomm. This dude has worked his ass off to get where he is and deserves all the publicity he gets, which is a damn lot. Brand new and hot off the presses. If nothing else, Gomm is famous for spitting in Simon Cowell’s eye.
And it’s my view. It won’t mention Heart except to say that I knew their days were well past when they became a tribute band (and it was long before The Kennedy Center performance) and it won’t mention Nirvana because, let’s face it, Nirvana has already been mentioned enough (Okay, I might mention them once). I might mention Perry Como, though, because he had the hit with those lyrics and I might mention Bobby Sherman (just for the hell of it). I will mention many artists and bands of evidently little consequence outside of that fair city because I certainly do not hear them mentioned by people outside the Pac Northwest (by the people I know, anyway). But first, should you think Seattle a mere backdrop for movies and TV programs, let us look at what the youth think, and before you start pounding the keyboard in protest, I have not vetted the information and don’t really care (though having lived in Seattle for over thirteen years, I can attest to the fact that everyone does love Dick’s… Drive-In, and how can you not love the fact that they have a train/trolley called the SLUT). I’m just glad to see the youth making this attempt:
Remember when I said 2012 was the best year ever in music? 2013 is even at this early date biting 2012 on the ass. Artists are lining up with what I am sure is going to be a run and a half of outstanding and, in some cases, mindblowing offerings. Rather than wait and write about them pretty much after the fact, let us dig in now in a sort of anticipatory way, shall we?
I should be writing about important things but this week I thought I would take a left turn and explain how we got to where we are, musically. Or at least one small leg of the journey.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I printed a piece about reality and each person’s perspective of it. I used Big Star as an example of how reality can be warped (read it here). I used The Wailers and The Sonics in a similar piece (read that here). Is there no end to my ego?
Whaaa-a-a-at, you say? 2012 ain’t over yet? You’re right. It ain’t. But if the Mayans have it right, it will soon be all over so if you don’t mind the indulgence I’ve decided to do what I do every year— post my list of albums which have floated to the top a month early. I do it for a couple of reasons. One, I hate for my list to get mixed in with the rest of those end-of-the-year lists which swarm late December and early January. The timing is all too predictable and if there is anything I don’t like, it’s predictability (which is why I don’t go gaga every time Keith Richards adds another day to his fossilized remains or Mick Jagger farts).
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.
Boy, the things some of us have to do to find the free stuff, eh? I was sitting back enjoying college football Saturday when Erin Ivey busts down the door and starts screaming about this Emily Wolfe character and how I have to listen to her album and maybe I can get a free download or something. I was about to throw her out when she got to the “free” part and, well, you know me— cheapest sonofabitch in the lower 48— so I heard her out, checked out Wolfe’s music and then tossed Ivey out on her keister, after which I calmly downloaded Wolfe’s Director’s Notes. At least, that’s the way I choose to remember it and I’m sticking to it.
I sit in a small enclosed room and await the first rain in a few months, feeling sorrow for those who live in drought-infested areas and have to wait for the life-giving water which falls from the sky. It is a wondrous thing, rain. I cannot imagine living without it, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest where rain and indeed weather is such a factor in life. In the past more than the present, of course, because the State of Oregon depended upon farming and logging for so many decades and God knows that farmers and loggers constantly looked and look to the sky, hoping that the gods are friendly.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 