Frank Gutch Jr: Notes Are All I Have Left….

It has been another one of those days.  I struggled with what I thought was a good idea all day but it turned to dust in my hands.  Pure drivel.  Which leaves me with what I consider the best part of my column anyway— The Notes.  Feel free to take your time, enjoy the news and videos, maybe take it a step further if you have a mind to.  The artists I feature in my columns are always meant as a fingerpoint.  Seriously.  I am still searching for the music of Lisa LeBlanc, one of my discoveries from last week.  The good ones deserve the scrutiny.  For right now, I am going to take my tired carcass to bed.  It has been frustrating, to say the least.  I only wish my dog had eaten my homework.

Frank Gutch Jr: Music To Stuff Stockings By… And With; Plus No Notes… Consider It a Lump of Coal

It’s that time of year again, sports fans.  Santa has been on the radio for the past two months, robot disc jockeys and purveyors of everything muzak beating us senseless with varying renditions of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, hoping to lighten our mood enough to loosen the old purse strings.  Hallmark Channel have kicked into full Christmas mode, plastering their channels with their cookie-cutter movies which vary mostly by the changing of leading ladies (this year’s favorite, by far, is Hilarie Burton, whom I saw in an old Castle episode and was floored by not only her beauty but the fact that the casting could not have been more right).  I wish they had more creativity over at Hallmark, their overuse of the five plots and rotating stars coming very close to consumer abuse.  But, hey, I’m a sap.

Frank Gutch Jr: Darth Radar? The Dirty Gospel? Bragging Rights? Music Is Even Better Than I Thought!… Plus Notes

New and impressive albums are piling up on me and I have been on a listening tear.  I cannot even imagine how far you are behind.  Way behind, if you’re still giving time to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.  I would have thought you had memorized those by now.  Like our fearless leader Bob Segarini is always saying, there’s more great music out there than ever, whether you choose to believe it or not.  Set yourself.  This column skims what I think are the best and most overlooked over the recent months.  Starting with…..

Frank Gutch Jr: Bubbling Under in the Swinging Sixties; My Father and the War; Plus Notes

Rock ‘n’ roll radio.  There was nothing like it.  It was fresh and exciting and exposed teens to a whole new world beyond their doorsteps.  If the fifties had cracked the egg, the sixties had spilled the eggs guts.  All over the place.  Humpty Dumpty magnified.  Omelet City.

Frank Gutch Jr: Chris Ashford, The Gears and the L.A. Punk Scene (But First, Some Background;

I hadn’t been in L.A. a month when I met Chris Ashford, a skinny, gangly high school kid who was bugging people on the sidewalk of Wilshire Boulevard handing out flyers for rival Music Odyssey, the store three doors west of Licorice Pizza where I had just started working.