Frank Gutch Jr: On the Road With The Lisa Parade and Maxine Dunn (Plus Them All-Important Notes)

I took a drive yesterday.  I had been sitting in front of the computer screen too long and accomplishing little of anything at all and I needed a break.  Usually when I hit the road I take music I need to hear for writing reasons but this time I needed time to myself.  I grabbed one I had the urge to review by Town Mountain which when I pulled open the CD cover discovered was minus the disc.  I had left it in my computer player at home.  I have lost more than one disc that way.  The other two were there though and I had heard neither all the way through for over a year:  Lisa Parade‘s Finding Flora and Maxi Dunn‘s Edmund & Leo.  I couldn’t wait.

Frank Gutch Jr: Daisy House— An A&R Dream

In all my years in music, I never worked for a label.  I wanted to.  But I wanted to work only in A&R.  Artists and Repertoire.  They were the people who found the artists, who were liaison between the artist and label management, who groomed the performers and worked with them on the songs for their albums and maybe just the direction of focus.  I knew a few A&R people in L.A.  They loved it.  They wouldn’t have done anything else.  Most of them, when their A&R gigs ended, got out of the business because it was a sewer everywhere else.  Sales?  The pits.  Promotion?  Real work.  Management?  A path, most of the time, to disaster.  I mean, A&R was where the adventure was.  And is.

Frank Gutch Jr: If Nothing Else, Today’s CDs Are Tomorrow’s Collector’s Items….

And if you don’t think so, just look at the past.  What do you want?  78’s?  45’s?  Disc cylinders?  Vinyl?  Oh, so you think that CD’s are different?  I hate to tell you this (actually, I don’t), but no, they’re not.  You who are so anxious to kill the CD format shall suffer the same fate as those who killed (or greatly wounded) vinyl and every other outdated form of getting music.  You shall be committed to the hell of limitations beyond your wildest expectations placed upon you by the technocrats who toss out updates and new formats like acid at a Grateful Dead concert.