Roxanne Tellier – Mike McKenna, Guitar Legend

1969 or maybe early 1970.A darkened Montreal rec room, outside sound dulled by faux wood paneling and shag carpeting, with the ubiquitous mirrored bar off to the side. My girlfriend, Colleen, and I slink into the room, prepared to be kicked out by her big brother Bill, the music maven of her family, if we giggled too much.If we behaved, we’d be allowed to listen, at least for a while, to the new record Bill had brought home to enjoy with some of his cooler (and older, so therefore hotter)  friends.  We crept into the darkness, wide eyed.

Frank Gutch Jr: Reprise Is Not a Label… Plus Notes

Before we get into the meat of this column, let’s talk Winterpills.  I have been a fan since hearing their 2010 EP Tuxedo of Ashes and have followed them since.  Their one album of covers, Echolalia, was good enough to make me toss aside my disdain of this current trend, their arrangements making up for the usual lack of creativity on most bands parts.  No such problem here.  Love Songs is an all-original triumph, Philip Price writing his best songs since Tuxedo, and the band is  in A-1 shape.

Frank Gutch Jr: Sweet Relief III: Cover Songs I Can Get Behind, Even In The Midst of This Covers/Tribute Glut… And If You Want Covers, I Have Some Right Here In the Hall Closet (Crash! Bang! Boom!) Plus Notes…..

If you understood the reference to the hall closet, you are a fossil like myself and ready for the wood heap.  Better start taking Geritol again (the Stone Age’s answer to Centrum).

It is a strange world in which I find myself these days and not one I am particularly fond of, especially since supposed music lovers (and the media) have jumped on this covers/tribute thing like it is more than a fad (it isn’t, at least the way in which the music is being approached).  I laugh— no, I guffaw— at the idea of bands bowing at the feet of other bands, thinking that signs of obeisance gives them any kind of credibility in the real world of music and musicians.