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: The Pac Northwest— Not Just The Raiders, Sonics, and Wailers; and Notes, Notes and More Notes

One thing about history.  Given enough time, it is a shadow of its former self.  No matter what happens, importance of virtually everything is either magnified or diminished depending upon a number of factors.  By the time it has been filtered over the years, it is not even remotely what it started out to be.  The Twenties obviously weren’t all Gatsby and The Thirties weren’t all dust bowl and depression.  There was so much more than the War (that would be of the Second World variety, sports fans) and recovery from to the Forties and if the US had lived the Fifties like Hollywood said, we would have fought like hell to stay there.  Of course, by the time it got to us, it was Cliff’s Notes all over again.

Frank Gutch Jr: A Video Retrospective…..

It’s called introspection, sports fans.  We all feel it every once in awhile and I have been under its spell for the past week and the result has been a total lack of perspective and thus, no cohesive idea for a column.  I don’t know why it happens but I do know that it is indiscriminate, that it is sometimes a struggle to even look at the blank page without it beating you to a mental pulp.  For myself, the one thing I fear beyond misspelling a musician’s name is the inability to write at all and we are all under deadline, the scourge of any supposed journalist.  In the movies, the reporter is always able to crank out a barnburner of an article at the last second, saving his/her job and possibly the future of the newspaper itself.  Well, that’s Hollywood, folks, but it does give you an idea of what it is like to produce under pressure.