I’m not sure how to start today’s column. Sitting listening to Eddie Bullen’s smooth jazz and picturing Oregon in my mind. There are long pauses between each sentence I type. Wrapping up someone’s life…..it’s not easy. It’s deeply personal and highly emotional. Frank put everything he had into his writing, almost desperate to “spread the word” about the music and artists he loved. I knew he struggled with his own demons as well so I wasn’t sure what pieces of Frank I was going to find.
Preface …..
The loss of Frank Gutch Jr. has affected so many people both in and out of the music industry. For many, it’s a deeply personal loss.
Frank was a prolific writer and reviewer and there weren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish whatever he wanted to do. There was always a new artist, brand new music or a new release from someone he was following. His dedication was and is unbeatable. His love for the music and for those who created it yet went unnoticed who, in his estimation, should be world famous by now and “why weren’t they?” There was absolutely no one like him. Irreplaceable, unique, exceptional, matchless…..Frank would blush, lower his head and say he was just doing what he loved and believed in. (I can hear his “aw shucks”) and then change the subject. He had an intense and genuine curiosity about other people’s lives and not only loved hearing about them but in many respects took great joy in living vicariously through all of us.
Yesterday I went through all of the private messages I’d shared with Frank Gutch Jr, since I’d first encountered him. It was in 2013, just after I’d begun writing this weekly column, and right from that first message, it was as though we were separated at birth.
I have had this idea in the back of my head for awhile now of writing a column with musical accompaniment. My most fun times at the keyboard are when the mind flows free and the ideas pop up organically— a stream-of-consciousness style, if you will. My old Army buddy Michael Marino does it as a matter of course, cranking out articles of chaotic beauty whilst explaining the positive sides of marijuana and/or wine or the death knell of democracy in Roswell, New Mexico, of all places. He is what I always wanted to be— a freethinker— one who allows the words to write themselves out of a sense of moral obligation or whatever he thinks it is.
Well…. This was supposed to be Part Five of The Women of Rock. However, I’m going to take a break and fill you in on some of the sights and sounds of this dynamic city I call home….Toronto…. Hogtown… Muddy York…. The Big Smoke…. Tdot…. where I’ve been going, who I’ve been seeing, what I’ve been drinking (G&T w/lemon if you must know. Bombay Sapphire is the chosen one.) AND update you about an exciting event that’s coming to Toronto. Yep….it’s another Toronto Scrapbook!
While I won’t apologize for this column (which reads more like a review), I do want people to know that I am aware that columns are not a place for reviews. This didn’t start out this way in my head, but the words came out a review of sorts anyway, and I can only make an exception for artists like Tom House and albums like Winding Down the Road. This is a special album, an album which I have no doubt will gain cult status within a very short period of time. You know what cult status is, don’t you? Respect given to music way outside the accepted— music for which you have a profound appreciation and a personal attachment. Welcome to the personal:
Boy, did Bob Segarini get the gears moving in my head with his recent column about The Doors and Jim Morrison. Very few people who spent a couple of decades in the music business didn’t have their brushes with greatness, as some scribes tend to call them. I guess greatness is one thing to one person and another thing to another. Wait a minute… guess? Of course, it is. I am learning that as I interview various rock musicians for history pieces I am writing. Ask five members of a band about something thirty or forty years ago and you are as likely to get five different answers or pictures as you are to get a perception of what really happened.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 