Frank Gutch Jr: I Have Seen the Future and It Wasn’t This…..

 

Not the political future, which has turned out bad enough, but the music future which is floundering.  I saw it going awry in 1992 when I left the retail record business as it morphed to a “music industry” I never recognized.  I tried to make sense of it then, wondering why the decisions being made by not just major labels but by what then was becoming an entertainment conglomerate were so unerringly ridiculous.  I need to watch the documentary on Tower Records, All Things Must Pass, in detail.  I need to revisit the individual instances which brought down radio, records and everything else entertainment around our ears.  I need to understand who was in power, if indeed anyone was, and who made the monumental mistakes which gave us the chaos we now have.

Frank Gutch Jr: Bryan Thomas: The Dreamweaver; Dave McGraw & Mandy Fer Play Eugene; plus Notes

I have had this idea in the back of my head for awhile now of writing a column with musical accompaniment.  My most fun times at the keyboard are when the mind flows free and the ideas pop up organically— a stream-of-consciousness style, if you will.  My old Army buddy Michael Marino does it as a matter of course, cranking out articles of chaotic beauty whilst explaining the positive sides of marijuana and/or wine or the death knell of democracy in Roswell, New Mexico, of all places.  He is what I always wanted to be— a freethinker— one who allows the words to write themselves out of a sense of moral obligation or whatever he thinks it is.

Frank Gutch Jr_ Gott In Himmel!!! Is It Christmas Already? (A Collection of Reasons I Have To Be Grateful); Drew Gibson’s Shot Across the Bow; Clips From the SF Underground; and just a bit more…..

I got a message!  Yep, I got a message from someone who was not trying to steal my identity or sell me penis enhancement medication!  I mean, this does not happen as much as you would think, even with my superior intellect and excellent writing skills.  I am sure most of you picture me at a desk overflowing with fan mail— buried in it, in fact.

Frank Gutch Junior: The Saga of the Coolgroove, Part Three: Jim Colegrove in Dreamland; New American Farmers: The Farmacology Sessions; Revisiting My Past: an Interlude; and just the skimpiest of notes…..

Judging by the positive reactions to the various music documentaries being filmed these days, I am assuming that music history is not a bad thing.  I mean, we have always had the tomes and films of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and their like to while away our time and before that there had been real movies documenting the different eras, but a large portion of the music public seems to be open to more today, some enough to follow film festivals for early screenings of films about The Wrecking Crew and Big Star, to name two of the most popular.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Forgotten Past, Recent and Otherwise; Plus a Few (Very Few) Notes

 

Joseph LeMay‘s album Seventeen Acres has been out how long?  Three months?  I wrote about it in an earlier DBAWIS column and have barely mentioned it since.  I have to wonder why.  I love some of the songs on that album and like everything about it.  It is beautifully recorded, masterfully produced and mastered and, even more important, made up of outstanding songs.  And yet I push it into the past.  So I started thinking— how does that happen?

Frank Gutch Jr: My Journey As Brought To You By…..

The Corona School of Writing, Weinhard’s Private Reserve, record labels (major and independent) and just about everyone I have ever really known.  So I sit here quaffing the ice cold Weinhard, waiting for that writing buzz and wondering where I will go with this because I have no real idea where I am going, only where I have been.  I have been lucky, lucky like I cannot believe, but not lucky of my own making.  I have been surrounded by good people— no, people more than good— and it is time I pay tribute to those and those things which have made me who I am.

Frank Gutch: Lost Sounds Montana: Mining Gold… Time For Dinner: Michael Dinner, That Is… A Night at the Bombs Away With Rich McCulley… And Notes…..

History?  A waste of time?  I have heard that said way too many times over the years.  Admittedly, most of those years were academic years.  I loved the time I spent in school, elementary on, and even considered taking classes at the University of Washington during my tenure at Peaches Records back in the eighties (for fun, not for credit).  There is something about the smell of a campus, be it major college or small technical school, which makes my heart beat a bit faster.  Just the act of learning changes things for me and I love watching people expand their horizons— in positive ways, of course.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Stores Are Alive With The Sound of Music….. plus Notes!

I still get asked why I love record stores.  Still.  Older people shrug their shoulders and the young— well, let us just say that rolling of the eyes seems to be part of their DNA.  Every time it happens, I think, hey, I wasn’t like that.  Well, except for the time that Momma pointed out that Ernie Fields‘ rockin’ In the Mood was a cover of a Glenn Miller song.

Frank Gutch Jr: My Love Affair With the 45, Susan James (A Lady You Really Need To Hear), and Notes (The Door To the Music and Music News You May Be Missing)…..

I look back on my life and understand why music has taken up most of my life, though few others do.  I am an anomaly to them– an outcast in a world of careers and families and politics and so many other things so more important and I can see that like Red Green and all of the excellent male role models on The Red Green Show, they accept me like I am, even if it’s not what they usually accept, and only if they have to.  They have had to, I suppose, for I am who I am and that is not said as pure statement but with the realization that over the years I have tried to change.