Frank Gutch Jr: Canada! Drake Is Coming! (Angharad Drake, That Is); The Omniverous Trailers;

There are musicians who are outstanding and there are musicians who are unique but seldom do you find one who is both.  I have found maybe a small bucketful during my lifetime who rise to the fly (as fly fisherman are wont to say) and most of those would be under your radar but they are there, regardless of cynics’ belief that music is dead.  My problem is that when they do come along, I am so like Chicken Little that few believe it.  Most take my loud cries of ecstasy as another of my many elaborate hoaxes, though I wonder how they know because they haven’t heeded my advice anyway.  You want to know what discouragement is?  Discouragement is posting a video or audio track, getting 17 “likes” but only three more views or listens than when you posted it.  I guess it is most times easier to click a button than to actually listen.

Frank Gutch Jr: They Come From Edmonton— Science Fiction of the Most Musical Variety… Plus Notes

They were Jesse Dee & Jacquie B when I first heard them— two waifs supposedly in the outbacks of the Yukon surviving by hunting and survival skills, living off the land, playing bars for beer.  They ate raw meat, sometimes frozen if there was no way to thaw it (there evidently isn’t, on the whole), but skirted moose and squirrel out of respect.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Music That Made Me Who I Am…..

It was my birthday last week.  I’m not saying it because it matters much to me— less and less as each year passes.  I mention it because of the things friends tell me, most of which reminds me of who I am and the paths I have taken to get here.  I mean, none of us plan to be who we are— it just evolves.

Frank Gutch Jr: They Shoulda Been Contenders… And, Per Usual, Notes…

Funny.  We always remember the stars, the champions, and we always place them at the head of the class even if they were no more than a part of one.  This last weekend I spent an inordinate amount of time pondering what the music world would have been like if, say, Led Zeppelin had not become gods to so many and Hendrix and Clapton and Beck had not headed the infamous “best guitarists” lists outfits like Rolling Stone Magazine always roll out when they have nothing else to capture readers’ attentions (seriously, how do you compare Tommy Emmanuel, Eric Clapton, Christopher Parkening, and Phil Keaggy— all exceptional guitarists, all deserving of attention from most who really love the instrument and yet living in completely different worlds.

Frank Gutch Jr: Flotsam and Jetsam, plus Notes…..

That’s right, sports fans, I have once again rammed the ol’ cranium up against the proverbial brick wall.  Four good starts on this week’s column and nothing to really show except four three-paragraph dead ends, at least for now.  And deadline looms.  What to do, what to do…  After much thought (not really), I have decided to pack together a whole string of odds and ends for you to pick through, if you so desire— flotsam and jetsam, as it were.  Ideas not long enough for a column, musical bits and pieces, brain farts and the like.  Indeed, I looked up the term “flotsam and jetsam” on thefreedictionary.com just to make sure that I had the term right and, for once, I did.  “Useless or discarded objects,” it said.  “Odds and ends.”  Well, I hope I stay away from the former, but the latter seems to fit.  Just remember— no overlying theme.  Whatever comes to (my) mind.

Frank Gutch Jr: Zineville: The Words Behind the Music…..

Hear me when I tell you that No Small Children is a force with which to be reckoned (that’s literary speak for “force to be reckoned with”, sports fans).  Solid music, good vids and a dedication to doing music the way they want, and they’re schoolteachers by day!  I mean, I had my fantasies about my teachers, but if they had played in a band?!!!  I don’t know if I would have made it through.  This time around, they pull a handful of punches aimed at old music vids and have me rolling on the floor laughing.  I would tell you that they are, but why should I? You have a mouse and (hopefully) a hand with which to operate it.  Click on the video below and treat yourself.

Frank Gutch Jr: Anti-Microbials Made Me Do It (and if you think they’re not a problem, maybe you’re listening to the wrong music)…..

I sit here, a pool of phlegm and what would be blood if the body would allow enough into the mix, feeling like six buckets of shit.  My right eye is a stream of tears and swells each night.  In the morning, the eyelid is a peacock feather dried to perfection against cheek, awaiting its morning ablutions necessary for it to even be and eyelid.  I don’t know how it happens because with all of the coughing racking what is left of my body, there shouldn’t be enough time for the tears to dry.  It certainly doesn’t feel like it, sleep coming in short and shorter bursts, the phlegm either stopping life-giving breaths on a fairly regular schedule or spewing itself in massive quantities on pillowcase or wall (both, when a sneeze takes control).  Here’s the thing:  I can’t sleep.  I can’t eat.  I can’t stop coughing.  I feel like those six buckets multiplied by ten and would sell my soul to the devil but there never seems to be one around when you need one.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Best of 2012, Vinylly— The Shoes!, and Notes…..

Whaaa-a-a-at, you say?  2012 ain’t over yet?  You’re right.  It ain’t.  But if the Mayans have it right, it will soon be all over so if you don’t mind the indulgence I’ve decided to do what I do every year— post my list of albums which have floated to the top a month early.  I do it for a couple of reasons.  One, I hate for my list to get mixed in with the rest of those end-of-the-year lists which swarm late December and early January.  The timing is all too predictable and if there is anything I don’t like, it’s predictability (which is why I don’t go gaga every time Keith Richards adds another day to his fossilized remains or Mick Jagger farts).

JAIMIE VERNON – November DISCoveries

Now that the institutional insanity of Black Friday has passed and everyone was thankful to get a discount on a Made in China television using a year’s worth of minimum wage, might I suggest some inexpensive independent music to give to everyone else as Xmas gifts? And you don’t have to stand in line or need a shotgun to do it.

Frank Gutch Jr: Lighthouse Revisited, Wilderness Road, What Were the Odds (Game & Ratchell), and Notes…..

“I have to tell you, New York is just like a chick.  When she hates you she beats you to death, but when she loves you you know you’ve been loved…”  I don’t know exactly who said that but it was a member of Lighthouse and is but one line of many out of a radio documentary on that bandyou need to hear (assuming, of course, you have any interest in the history of rock and/or jazz music at all).  It was recorded during the band’s very first live gig at, of course, New York’s Carnegie Hall, a gig so impressive that fans and critics alike thought that this was the beginning of something incredibly huge.  Huge it became— in Canada, at least— but the States had better things to do than to listen to the new and the odd and, to the American mainstream, horns and this jazz/rock fusion was both new and odd.  Skip Prokop and crew, you see, took it further than Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago ever did.  Way further.