Let’s kick this weeks column off with a brand new video by guitarist Jon Gomm. This dude has worked his ass off to get where he is and deserves all the publicity he gets, which is a damn lot. Brand new and hot off the presses. If nothing else, Gomm is famous for spitting in Simon Cowell’s eye.
This morning was cold and wet with a chill that went to the bone, the clouds threatening, the rain off and on but somehow consistent. I knew it would be. Yesterday, my friend John Hicks had posted a message that Buck Ormsby had died. No way, I thought, because I had had contact only a few days previous— just a note, but contact. When I approached Hicks, he said that he had found out from Ormsby’s son’s page. He sent me the link and there it was. We are sorry to report… and the words became a blur. While it hardly seemed possible, Buck was gone. Is gone, for none of us will hear from him again and that is truly a sad thing.
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He is! And I will tell you why! Read this— the beginning of an email he titled 7 Short Notes on Sandy Denny. Wait! I shouldn’t. You see, Brian is a good friend and lets me in on creative works long before they are ready for public consumption. Some works. Sure, some are just one-liners, but always one-liners of consequence. Others are long and involved thoughts squeezed through fingers or thumbs (unlike myself, he has mastered the craft of the smartphone), dancing around topics but never reaching the core, leaving that task to others.
It’s that time of year again, sports fans. Santa has been on the radio for the past two months, robot disc jockeys and purveyors of everything muzak beating us senseless with varying renditions of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, hoping to lighten our mood enough to loosen the old purse strings. Hallmark Channel have kicked into full Christmas mode, plastering their channels with their cookie-cutter movies which vary mostly by the changing of leading ladies (this year’s favorite, by far, is Hilarie Burton, whom I saw in an old Castle episode and was floored by not only her beauty but the fact that the casting could not have been more right). I wish they had more creativity over at Hallmark, their overuse of the five plots and rotating stars coming very close to consumer abuse. But, hey, I’m a sap.
One hell of a year for music. Not so much for musicians— at least the musicians no longer with us. Hard to balance a year like that, pluses and minuses popping up like ads from a virus, canceling one another out or piling one on top of the other ad infinitum until the system collapses from the weight. We all felt the weight whether we all know it or not. So many musicians now on the other side but, lucky for us, so many new musicians taking their places. Jesus. My head spins.
I was drafted in 1969 to fight a war I did not believe could even happen yet was embraced by the US of A as a way of stopping the dreaded Red Menace. I knew it was coming and would have most likely headed for Canada but for a father my doing so would have destroyed, so I didn’t go. I spent the previous four years at the University of Oregon with flammable draft card in my pocket (a 4-A college deferment marking me a coward in many people’s minds) and a growing hatred for conservatives willing to talk but not willing to go.
It is time to eat some words and I do so with remorse. Those words, spoken when I was young and somewhat foolish and also feeling a bit immortal, I suppose, were tossed at The Cowsills and other groups and artists I found somewhat wanting in terms of musical output. They were pointed at a string of what I would call “manufactured” bands— those whose music supposedly came from the hit makers— I called it Hollywood music back then. The Monkees took a big hit, the band put together not really for music but for TV.
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).
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.
The Strawberry Alarm Clock just recorded and released a new album. What’s that, you say? The who? No, not The Who. The Strawberry Alarm Clock! You know… Incense and Peppermints? Sit With the Guru? The boys from Santa Barbara? Loose fitting Nehru shirts and white pantaloons? Paisley gone wild? Sigh. Sometimes I think I’ve lived too long.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 