Segarini – Part One: A Short Dissertation on the Cult of Sgt. Pepper and Why I am Totally Sick of The Beatles

The Family Tree had just played a one night stand at Portland, Oregon’s Crystal Ballroom, a beautiful recently cleaned up and renovated dance hall on the 3rd or 4th floor of a landmark bldg, complete with floor to ceiling windows and a ball-bearing sprung dance floor that moved and undulated under the dancer’s feet.

It was the end of the night, and time to head to Hung Far Low for Chinese food, or back to the motel to get high or crash, just as soon as the Fugs (the headliners of the show) cleared their gear off the stage so we could tear down our PA and pack up.

It was just after 1:00am on the 31st of May, 1967

That’s when David Crosby walked into the ballroom with a 10 inch reel of tape under his arm….

Frank Gutch Jr: Paradise Is Paved, Here Comes the Parking Lot… plus a Voluminous Collection of Note(s)

Goldband Studios is gone.  Here I have been spending the past few years singing the praises of Research Turtles— I call them the boys from Lake Charles— without realizing that the city/town/parish also was home to Eddie Shuler and Goldband.  Dumb me.  I have known of Goldband since I was in college, having found them through That Dorm Guy who was somehow plugged into anything and everything musical.  I look back now at him and wonder how he was able to find so much music in a land with pretty much nothing but Billboard Magazine to guide him, but he did.

Frank Gutch Jr: Between Assignments? A Look at a Few Bands Which Weren’t, Really… Or Were They? Plus Them Nefarious Notes

I was looking through the Book of Face pages the other day and ran across a post about The Sidewalk Scene.  I remember them, friend Ray Brandes having been a frontman for them how long ago?  Two years so?  Three years?  The post linked to a page which showcased four studio-produced tracks, all jangly and sixties-oriented.  Music, in fact, that I remember fondly.

Frank Gutch Jr: Mixtape Was Not Always an Ugly Word

They came to be called Mixtapes (or Mix Tapes) and were/are looked upon with scorn but they started out a way to share music without having to drag people to your house and forcing them to drink while you played records.  They were an outlet for frustrated disc jockeys and vinyl junkies because even though an unusually high percentage of tapes passed from hand to hand were never played, a person had poured over an entire music collection to put together “sets,” a DJ term regarding playing certain songs in a certain sequence.  I know.  I made them and passed them out like candy.  I am sure most who received them rolled their eyes and exited at first chance, but for me it was about the music.  For vinyl junkies, it is always about the music.

Frank Gutch Jr: A Journey and the Soundtrack to my Life; Angharad Drake’s New Album; The Big Bright In the Studio; Plus Notes…

 And I don’t mean the band Journey recently inducted into the supposed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  God knows what those clowns think when they make their choices but when I look at the possible choices they could have made besides those guys… well, I won’t go there.  Let me just say that I understand when people are upset when I make such statements because they have a soundtrack to their lives as well, but this isn’t their column, is it?  I look at it this way— Journey had hits, yes, and made CBS one hell of a lot of money, but they didn’t have an original bone in all of their collective bodies and you will never change my mind.  Hall of Fame?  Not even close.  Not while the hundreds more deserving are locked out.  Change that to thousands.

Frank Gutch Jr: Musicians on a Mission: Dan Phelps, Julian Taylor, Wes Swing, and Jimmy Lee (formerly Lee’s Company)… Plus a lugubrious panorama of Notes

Meet Dan Phelps, if you have not already done so.  I first ran across him over a decade ago when he was working with both Bill Pillmore and his daughter Jess Pillmore on their respective albums, Look In Look Out and Reveal.  Bill was an original member of Cowboy and I had heard through Scott Boyer, another original member of that venerable band, that he was recording for the first time, to my knowledge, since Cowboy‘s excellent 1971 release, 5’ll Getcha Ten.  When I contacted him, he was in full recording mode, working with Phelps, whom he had chosen to produce.  To my amazement, Phelps did more than just produce.  He was a sideman and a damn good one, a creator of good licks and solid musical ideas.  It was a first look at a musician I would follow from that point on.

Segarini: Raising Amy – The Annual Hippo Birdie Two Ewes

“Your Son is your Son ‘till he takes a wife, but your Daughter is your Daughter for the rest of your life”

No one seems to know who first uttered this quote, but it has definitely stood the test of time. The first time I ever heard it was from my mother when my wife and I had our one and only child. At first I thought my mother was just being (as always) supportive, because, being Italian, it is assumed I wanted a boy child to carry on the family name and be a ‘chip off the old block’. The truth of the matter is that I prayed for a little girl…and we were blessed with one of the best.