Pat Blythe – Beautiful, Mariposa and ONES….

As I sit here ruminating on what should appear on my screen, I listen in silence to clacking on the keyboards and the chirping, binging, ringing and a kind of swishing/chiming sounds of messages coming in on various devices. Colleen and my sister Chrissie are busy standing, or perched on a chair, at my kitchen peninsula working away on their various gadgets and pieces of equipment. I am stretched out in my usual writing position on the couch with the fan keeping things comfortable.

The morning was spent running around the city dealing with the detritus that had accumulated in my backyard. Prepping for an my very first summer BBQ has started and is going to take the better part of the week (the prep that is, not the BBQ itself). Curtains closed against the bright heat of the sun, fans going, air conditioner in place, maybe I can get some writing done…….maybe…….

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.