Frank Gutch Jr: Will You Still Feed Me: A Look Back at the Music of My Teen Years… Plus Notes

 

I looked in a mirror this morning.  I am no longer that lanky young teen anxious to conquer the world but am instead the Metamucil blob of phlegm beaten into submission, almost, by an uncaring world.  Don’t ask me when the world changed but it changed drastically and I have been spit out the other end, not all that changed mentally but a physical time bomb with littler and littler time available.  So excuse me while I take a little tiptoe through the tulips, music-wise, in an effort to wrap up the year.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Pac Northwest— Not Just The Raiders, Sonics, and Wailers; and Notes, Notes and More Notes

One thing about history.  Given enough time, it is a shadow of its former self.  No matter what happens, importance of virtually everything is either magnified or diminished depending upon a number of factors.  By the time it has been filtered over the years, it is not even remotely what it started out to be.  The Twenties obviously weren’t all Gatsby and The Thirties weren’t all dust bowl and depression.  There was so much more than the War (that would be of the Second World variety, sports fans) and recovery from to the Forties and if the US had lived the Fifties like Hollywood said, we would have fought like hell to stay there.  Of course, by the time it got to us, it was Cliff’s Notes all over again.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Pacific Northwest…That Sound!

They call the sound “garage” these days.  The sound of The Sonics and The Fabulous Wailers (who were always referred to as just The Wailers in the Pac Northwest) and Mr. Lucky & The Gamblers and Paul Bearer & The Hearsemen and so many more who relied on that harder edge to get teens to dance.  Older people called it garbage and maybe it was, but by the gods, teens would have said (if they’d thought of it) it is our garbage, and they hung onto it like it was the last order of fries they might ever get.  Not all teens, but enough of them.  Enough to pack the various National Guard Armories which were the core of the NW venues allowing rock ‘n’ roll.  Enough to place bands like The Gentlemen Wild and The Live Five and The Dimensions on the rock charts— the local rock charts.  Was there ever really anything but local?  Not then and not up here.