Segarini – Michael Nesmith

Editor’s Note -Due to circumstances beyond my control, I cannot finish this tonight. I will finish it up within the next 24 hours and repost the finished column. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am sad and gutted due to Michael Nesmith’s passing, and I am angry and frustrated with the ongoing computer problems and other stress plaguing me at this time. My apologies for that, and my sincere condolences to all of you who cared for this man and his talent.

The irony of this moment is not lost on me.

After researching and working on a column addressing the “Get Back” documentary and the realities of John Paul George and Ringo at the time it was filmed to give it some context for well over a week, I was stopped in my tracks by the sudden unexpected loss of one of my heroes.

A hero who also needs some context, and whose body of work matches if not surpasses The Beatles influence on my life.

The Beatles can wait until next week …after 60 years, I don’t think another 7 days will matter.

Roxanne Tellier – The Long Strange Trip Continues

If you had told me, twenty years ago, that this last decade would be one of the most terrifying/interesting/instructive/growth inducing periods of my entire life to date, I’d have laughed uproariously, and then kicked you out of the room. 

GARY PIG GOLD – FOR PETE’S SAKE

Can it really be true that Rolling Stone publisher/magnate Jann S. Wenner has personally conducted a decades-long campaign to bar The Monkees from induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Peter Tork certainly thought so.

“He doesn’t care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit,” Peter told the New York Post in 2007. “It is an abuse of power. I don’t know whether The Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it’s pretty clear that we’re not in there because of a personal whim.”

Frank Gutch Jr: Dad Gave My Dog Away (A Look At Letting Go); A Music Tsunami (The Real Shade, Wilson Marks, Diane Patterson, Rich DePaolo, and— holy mackerel!— The Green Pajamas!); and The Irrepressible Ricky (Okay, Not Ricky, But We Got Notes, By the Gods!)

 

My dad?  Give my dog away?  Give me a break!  My dad was the coolest when it came to animals, though he didn’t want them unless it was necessary.  Sure, he caved when we were kids and begged and begged a dog, one my sister named Putsy after Slim Gaillard‘s hit Cement Mixer Putty Putty, but it wasn’t his choice.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Non-Science of Record Collecting; A Tip o’ the Hat To Dave Gray (RIP); and a short look at the Notes…..

I’m cleaning out portions of my record collection, or what is left of it.  At one time, I had over 10,000 albums (according to a friend who spent a couple of days counting them).  Over 10,000!  I woke up one day and realized that no one in their right mind would have that many, which brings me to the now-occasional columnist for DBAWIS, Darrell Vickers.  I am sure he has over 10,000 which proves that mental imbalance runs in his family.  He is the perfect dumpster for many of the albums I still have and will be a recipient of a few.  I kid, of course, because for both of us, record collecting has been and still is, in his case, an adventure.

Frank Gutch Jr: Consider These Reruns (Glimpses From the Past); Plus Notes of a Lugubrious Nature

Looking back has become a thing of the present lately.  It began when I felt a guilt sneak over me because so many of the artists I have written about have seemingly passed their buy-by date.  The listening public, it seems, only want the past in terms of oldies or the classics. God forbid they should let the music decide for them.  Add to that my inability at times to come up with fresh subject matter and a nostalgic bent and it seems the logical choice.  It is doubtful that many of you have read many of my columns from the distant past and those who have probably have lost the gist.  So why not visit the past here and there?  I have gleaned through many columns and have picked a handful of segments I believe will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.  Let us start with one overlooking the Pac Northwest, titled…

Frank Gutch Jr: Moments In Time— A Selfish Remembrance of Music…..

I  saw a photographic exhibition once in which a photographer attempted to lay out his life in black & white.  I don’t remember the person’s name but you wouldn’t know him anyway— he never reached any level of fame as far as I know— yet, anyway.  He was a nobody who loved taking pictures and being in pictures and he laid his whole life out in photos, mostly of himself and people who must have been nobodies too.

Roxanne Tellier: MonkeeMania! Part Deux

Critics called them “The Pre-Fab Four,” but a generation of little girls understood. Those of us coming into puberty, who had been just a little too young to have had fantasies about The Beatles, now had our very own super group. The Monkees were cute! They were funny! And really – could this quartet be more non-threatening? The worse that could happen would be that Davy might not get the girl … but he always did.

My best friends and I would loll around for hours, listening to their latest record, buying every copy of 16 Magazine and TIGER beat with a picture of one of the boys on the cover, and of course, watching the show every Sunday night. We’d squeal on the phone about their rumoured escapades, and dream of some day meeting a real live Monkee.

Frank Gutch Jr: Redefining (Or Maybe Taking a Closer Look at) Concept Albums… and Notes (as few as there are)!

Over forty years in the record business and I’m still agog at the conception of the industry from the outside.  People think musicians are rich (or if not rich, well off, because otherwise they would not be able to support themselves, right?).  People think stars are talented without demanding that it be proven (I hate to use the guy as an example, but the Bieber’s music will last no longer than the lives of his current fans because, and we all know this, his music is contrived crap).