JAIMIE VERNON – SUNTAN LOTION: AN AMERICAN PARABLE

The United States is going to decide on Tuesday who gets to live in the White House. That’s it. It’s a fight over curb appeal. It comes with a desk job related to maintaining the façade of Leader of the Free World. The outcome is already foretold in the ancient scrolls. Americans call it The Constitution. It’s like the Get Out of Jail Free card in Monopoly. Invoke the incantation called ‘The Second Amendment’ and men with guns appear as protectors of freedom.

Frank Gutch Jr: Amy van Keeken Releases All The Time EP; Jack Meussdorffer Talks Sand, Quarterflash and More; and, Of Course, Them Pesky Damn Notes (There Will Be a Quiz)…

 

There was probably a time when one release would not have meant as much to me as it does today.  I worked in the record business for so many years I became jaded, the major labels releasing numerous albums each month and the independents trying to squeeze the few that they had through the stampede.  I never really cared about the really big ones— it is a part of me I have had since I was very young, this aversion to the stars— and have learned only within the past ten to fifteen years to really appreciate the significance of the lesser-knowns.  I get tired of all the pissing and moaning about how the “new” music biz has watered down the quality of music and allowed the less talented to record massive amounts of lesser works.  As if they were lesser.

Frank Gutch Jr: Old Is Not Irrelevant

While working on this weeks column in which I had hoped to give insights into record labels and how they evolved, I realized that much of the music of the past and my attitudes toward it and the business surrounding it needed to be readdressed.

Frank Gutch Jr: Pac Northwest Music History in Website’s Clothing; Plus Notes…..

Summers!  What a trip!  At least they were for me in my uber-enthusiastic youth.  Cutting the gut in Albany, two towns over, Radio Station KRKT blasting Sean & The Brandywines‘ She Ain’t No Good while my buddies and I looked for ladies.  Driving over the bridge into Corvallis, Radio KFLY doing the same with The Sonics‘ Louie Louie.  Late Spring on a drive home, Eugene’s Radio KASH giving us The Five Americans‘ I See the Light.  Driving with the windows down on a cold night listening to Fontella Bass (Rescue Me), Lou Christie (Lightning Strikes), Love (Little Red Book), and The Mojo Men (Dance With Me).  Man, could life get any better?

Frank Gutch Jr: Notary Sojac: The Band and the Legend, Plus Notes…..

These guys crack me up.  Even forty years later.  Even after having been separated four decades, these guys are still brothers under the skin, and they are brothers.  They lived as brothers and fought as brothers and even had various “heads of state” treat them as brothers whilst trying to keep them from getting screwed as a band.  You look at the films and read the books of bands back in the late sixties and early seventies, you might think that life was all getting stoned and getting laid and flowers-in-your-hair, but that’s all surface.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Best of the First Half of What the Hell Do I Know (It’s 2012, I Think) and That Dorm Guy…..

I’m sitting here piecing together the albums I think are the best of the year so far and ready to sing the praises of Sydney Wayser and her magic kingdom, Bell Choir Coast, when the Craig Elkins train t-bones me and scatters what could have been an easy column to the winds.  Who am I kidding?  It is never easy to write this column, especially when I’m comparing apples to oranges which is pretty much what any “Best Of” or “Greatest” list is.  The Truth is, there is no greatest or best of because music is so intensely personal and of the moment that what anyone chooses today they might not choose tomorrow (or even one side) later.

Frank Gutch Jr: I May Be Old, But I Got To See All the Good Bands!

It’s a T-shirt thing but it says way more than most people will ever know.  Sure, the vast majority of you out there are thinking, yeah, The Beatles at Shea, or maybe Woodstock.  Maybe Led Zeppelin at The Forum in L.A.  I yawn.  I suppose they were good and all, but music is an adventure and sitting in the midst of thousands to barely hear music played not nearly as good as the record (not to mention exposing yourself to possible burn damage from those lighters idiots used to hold up in the air at the oddest moments) is hardly my idea of adventure or even a good time.

Frank Gutch Jr: YOU WANT A MASHUP? I’LL GIVE YOU A MASHUP!

That’s what they call it, is it not?  Where some needle-nosed geek sits behind a keyboard and threads Beatles and Michael Jackson songs together and comes up with the modern version of Stars on 45?  Hey, I admit that some of them are decent and a few have been downright creative, but let us face it.  It’s a fad.  No more nor less than the medley fad that pretended that what Stars on 45 was doing was musically viable.  Show of hands.  How many bought Stars on 45?  How many still have them?  That wind you feel is all those hands going down.