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 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.
The reason Charlottesville is being (Revisited) is because I do believe that somewhere out there in the ether Charlottesville has already been Revisited and, hell, I am sure I confuse people often enough without reusing headers. It would be akin to writing a book and naming all the chapters “Chapter One,” which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good idea. But the second Revisited, placed in parentheses, separates the first from the second, does it not?
The quote in the header is from Frank Secich‘s Circumstantial Evidence, a look back at a life which could easily have been one long stint at various penal institutions instead of sixties and seventies music venues. Secich (pronounced SESS-ich, by the way) admits in his book that he was on the cusp but never really made the leap, thanks to music and the people involved with it. One such person was Ray Chizmar, a musician and early idol to Secich who would always greet him with “What do you say, Ray?” to which Chizmar replied “Whatcha got in the bank, Frank?”
I am going to send everyone a “He went to the computer shop and all I got was this lousy column” button because most of you will have little clue as to whom I am writing about and also because Bill Gates and his shit company has sent my other computer to the repair shop courtesy of their “this will be a snap and your files will be right where you left them” update hypocrisy. I am only assuming that my files are where I left them because when I tried to get into my computer the day after the update all I got was this little circle of swirling dots on a pale blue screen and while I used to like pale blue, it fast became a color of doom.
It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep and part of it has to do with Spotify. Not Spotify specifically, but all of the music subscription services that have come along since digitization: Mog and Pandora and Rhapsody and Sony and others. What set me off was a musician who posted on Facebook that maybe you should log on to Spotify and check out a certain artist. Why would that set me off, you ask? Because I have just recently turned my back to such “services”. Because if they are a better way to find music and artists, they are also cutting off the hands that feed them. The hands of musicians and the hands of songwriters ans indeed the hands of all involved in the musical process, for it is a process.
That’s what one of my old girlfriends used to call hanging out at my place. The Depths of Hell. Of course, as far as I could tell, anyplace which did not exclusively play everything Los Angeles was hell to her. Linda Ronstadt. The Eagles. Joni Mitchell. Jackson Browne. Gawd, but I always thought if there was a hell on Earth, it was Los Angeles. Soft Rock hell. Bland hell. Mediocre hell. Just plain hell.
I sit in a small enclosed room and await the first rain in a few months, feeling sorrow for those who live in drought-infested areas and have to wait for the life-giving water which falls from the sky. It is a wondrous thing, rain. I cannot imagine living without it, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest where rain and indeed weather is such a factor in life. In the past more than the present, of course, because the State of Oregon depended upon farming and logging for so many decades and God knows that farmers and loggers constantly looked and look to the sky, hoping that the gods are friendly.
I know a go-go girl. Not one of those Studio 54-types who more than likely considered it a job or a chance to take her dancing to a higher level, but an honest-to-God go-go girl who danced because it was (and still is, thankfully) in her blood. Her name is Elaine McAfee Bender. I will be writing about her go-go life soon. I know a girl who sings about go-go girls. Well, about go-go girls in the modern world. Her last album, in fact, is titled A Go-Go Girl In a Modern World. Her name is Laurie Biagini. I will be writing (more) about her soon, too.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 