Frank Gutch Jr: On Writing About Music

 

It isn’t easy.  To most of you it must look that way.  Six, eight paragraphs about a band or an album, a few videos picked up off the Net.  Two hours, tops.  On the columns which didn’t go so well, maybe fifteen minutes (and a six pack of beer, after re-reading a few of them).  But it isn’t easy and it takes me a lot longer than you might think.  There have been times I’ve written five drafts and finally submitted the sixth out of pure frustration.  Three, four days and not a thing to show for it.  And then there have been the three hour jobs—- the ones in which I elucidate about the days of transistor radios and Fender amps (they were king when I was young).  Unfortunately, those are few and far between.

Frank Gutch Jr: Majors Creek (Australia) Music Fest Carries On Without Founder Peter Gillespie, Memories of the Eugene Pop Festival of 1969, and E.J. Simpson— The Most Base of Bassists… Plus the Ever-Wondrous Notes…..

If you live in the States or Canada, you can be forgiven for not knowing about Majors Creek, for there are plenty of people who live in Australia who know little or nothing about it.  Here is a DBAWIS primer for those in the dark.

Frank Gutch Jr: Down By the Old Graveyard— Reviews of Albums I Thought For Sure Could Not Miss…..

I’ve been in an extremely retrospective frame of mind the last few weeks, digging through old photographs and reading old letters as well as watching old movies.  I don’t know why.  Sometimes I have a need to look back, I suppose, and lately I’ve had that kink in my neck for doing it a bit too much.  I have relived  a thousand moments and have heard songs in my head of artists and songs long past and no longer in my collection.  I have thought of old girlfriends and old buddies and have re-experienced old highs and lows.  Highs and lows.  One thing I have been doing is revisiting reviews I had written over the years of music I loved at that moment, and still do, on the whole.  I hate to see good music go to waste.  I hate to see artists ignored.  I hate that we spend so much time going over and over the same old music and music histories we always have, ad infinitum.  I understand it.  I just hate it.  So just a few minutes ago, I decided right now, just for one column, I would give a few of those artists and albums a short-lived reprise.  Why not?  It is what I have been doing all my life in zines and papers like The Entertainer and Pop Culture Press and BOMP and Fusion and on the Net for sites like DBAWIS.  The truth is that I have started three different columns which have deflated like yesterday’s quiche and I have to write something, so you’re stuck.  Who knows?  Maybe you can find something in the old mine worth reading and/or hearing.  I hope so.  So let’s go.

Frank Gutch Jr: 50 Albums Which Impacted My Life— Scratch That. Plus Notes…..

My original plan was to list fifty albums which totally bowled me over and, in a way, took me in directions I never would have gone— until drummer/writer Bobby Gottesman derailed that idea for what will inevitably be another romp through who knows what to an end which could as easily be a train wreck as a party.  Gottesman published a short piece about the old farts in music these days and the blanket idolatry they are afforded in spite of arthritic hands and the need to step behind the stack of amps to hit the oxygen mask, not to mention the voices which on the whole are maybe one-tenth the strength and accuracy of what they were in their prime.

Frank Gutch Jr: Psycho-Paths To the Heart (A Valentine’s Celebration of Musical Phobias and Neuroses), Deep Feedin’, What? Jon Gomm Again?, and Notezzzz…..

I’ve often wondered if previous generations of humans are as fucked up as we are about relationships.  I watch TV, go to movies and listen to music all the time and it appears to me we are a nation if not a world of basket cases.  We’re all self-involved and needy and greedy and sex-crazed and have so many phobias experts are identifying new ones all the time in an effort to keep up.  Growing up, I thought everything was laid out for us and it looked like gooey fun, but then when I was growing up we were in the era of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges and that strange teen phenomenon which circled around a mashup of James Dean and Marlon Brando (the young Brando and not the Godfather-era).  Were we fucked up then?  I suppose we were.

Frank Gutch Jr: Dog Bites Band (Band Bites Back!) Reprise

Those who read my column from a month or so ago remember Pokey, my little canine pal who now runs through the cornfields.  Well, he and I had this agreement.  I would support the band (Maggi, Pierce & EJ) and he wouldn’t bite.  That worked out pretty well until MPE (as they are wont to call themselves) stepped to the side to allow bassist EJ Simpson to follow his music and Maggi Jane and Pierce Ternay top follow theirs (as Hymn For Her).  Giving up the trio pretty much out my knickers in a knot because they were and are one of my all-time favorite bands, having a range quite beyond the norm.

Frank Gutch Jr: RIP – Pocahontas Illinois Cloud (Plus a Retrospective of Maggi, Pierce & EJ and Hymn For Her), and That Elusive Research Turtles Release Becomes Imminent….

Yesterday was rough.  What should have been a fantastic day, one heralding the release of the long-awaited Research Turtles‘ Mankiller Pt. 2 EP, turned incredibly somber when I stumbled upon a post by Hymn For Her‘s Lucy Tight that Pokey had tripped off this mortal coil, and if that sounds a bit flippant, I assure you that it’s not.  Pokey was a dog, mind you, but not just any dog.  A very human dog.  Though I had only met him twice and only for short periods, we were friends.