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 was a epiphanal moment, one where an aura engulfs something or someone with angelic choir background. In this case, it engulfed the first two albums released by new and tiny Ardent Records: Cargoe‘s self-titled classic and Big Star‘s #1 Record. I held them up and asked Gary Haller, co-owner of Eugene’s now famed House of Records if they were any good. They looked good, the slick glossy covers showing artsy pictures of the bands, the neon Big Star sign classy in an Andy Warhol sort of way. “Dunno,” Gary replied. “Nice artwork, though.” I brooded over them for the next hour or so, pulling other records from the racks to read liner notes I had already read numerous times, hoping that this time I would find inspiration. To buy. To listen. To covet.
It was opening day yesterday— for baseball, in case you’re wondering. Time for the so-called Faithful to breathe in the aroma of Spring and pay homage to overpaid athletes who had better be as good as they can be because that home run that center-fielder just hit cost the club $27,102.56. I don’t know what it is but even the intelligent lay aside any real maturity they gained since the last out of last years World Series. Cubs fans talk of a pennant, Red Sox fans rejoice in the fact that they have yet another chance to win it all and Dodger fans— well, the Dodgers haven’t been the Dodgers since they left Brooklyn, in my opinion. Major League Baseball died for me on the day they announced the move. Walter O’Malley destroyed not just one childhood fantasy of mine— that baseball was a sport— but also what I had always thought the only major league worth caring about— The Pacific Coast League.
I present to you music I have loved over the years and have written about but only a few have found. This is about music by artists who deserve more than they have gotten and are consigned to live in the shadow of what they should have been. In many ways, I wish they could have recorded back in the seventies when the music business was a real center of the public’s attention because had they, some would be stars of today.
Barry Diament. Odds are, you’ve never heard of him— or think you haven’t. The truth is, though, that if you have albums or CDs by Bad Company or Hoodoo Gurus or Led Zeppelin or Linda Ronstadt, you could have some of his work in your collection. Diament, you see, has mastered or remastered albums by those and many other musical artists. What is mastering? According to Hoyle (erm, Wikipedia):
That’s right, sports fans, I have once again rammed the ol’ cranium up against the proverbial brick wall. Four good starts on this week’s column and nothing to really show except four three-paragraph dead ends, at least for now. And deadline looms. What to do, what to do… After much thought (not really), I have decided to pack together a whole string of odds and ends for you to pick through, if you so desire— flotsam and jetsam, as it were. Ideas not long enough for a column, musical bits and pieces, brain farts and the like. Indeed, I looked up the term “flotsam and jetsam” on thefreedictionary.com just to make sure that I had the term right and, for once, I did. “Useless or discarded objects,” it said. “Odds and ends.” Well, I hope I stay away from the former, but the latter seems to fit. Just remember— no overlying theme. Whatever comes to (my) mind.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 