Frank Gutch Jr: These Are People I’ve Known (But Who Try to Keep It a Secret); Plus Notes

The past week I have been revisiting some of my earlier DBAWIS columns and am shocked at how few people (as far as I can tell) know about them, even now.  When I write about musicians, it is usually personal, both the person or people and the music, and I feel that sometimes they are more water under the bridge than anything.  No one sends notes asking about someone I wrote about in 2012 unless something has happened since and there are so many truly talented people who deserve recognition.  So this week, I am going to point toward artists you may have missed whom I think are above the norm in terms of talent and/or personality.  And maybe I owe a few of them money, but that is neither here nor there.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Bluest Skies You Ever Seen: A View, Not a History, of Seattle Rock Music; Plus a Couple of Notes…..

And it’s my view.  It won’t mention Heart except to say that I knew their days were well past when they became a tribute band (and it was long before The Kennedy Center performance) and it won’t mention Nirvana because, let’s face it, Nirvana has already been mentioned enough (Okay, I might mention them once).  I might mention Perry Como, though, because he had the hit with those lyrics and I might mention Bobby Sherman (just for the hell of it).  I will mention many artists and bands of evidently little consequence outside of that fair city because I certainly do not hear them mentioned by people outside the Pac Northwest (by the people I know, anyway).  But first, should you think Seattle a mere backdrop for movies and TV programs, let us look at what the youth think, and before you start pounding the keyboard in protest, I have not vetted the information and don’t really care (though having lived in Seattle for over thirteen years, I can attest to the fact that everyone does love Dick’s… Drive-In, and how can you not love the fact that they have a train/trolley called the SLUT).  I’m just glad to see the youth making this attempt:

Frank Gutch Jr: Let’s Play Catch and Then Catch-Up Because It Was Opening Day Yesterday and, Man, Are We Behind When It Comes To Music!

It was opening day yesterday— for baseball, in case you’re wondering.  Time for the so-called Faithful to breathe in the aroma of Spring and pay homage to overpaid athletes who had better be as good as they can be because that home run that center-fielder just hit cost the club $27,102.56.  I don’t know what it is but even the intelligent lay aside any real maturity they gained since the last out of last years World Series.  Cubs fans talk of a pennant, Red Sox fans rejoice in the fact that they have yet another chance to win it all and Dodger fans— well, the Dodgers haven’t been the Dodgers since they left Brooklyn, in my opinion.  Major League Baseball died for me on the day they announced the move.  Walter O’Malley destroyed not just one childhood fantasy of mine— that baseball was a sport— but also what I had always thought the only major league worth caring about— The Pacific Coast League.

Frank Gutch Jr: Vinyl: It’s What’s For Christmas…..

Christmas.  It’s the time for joy and camaraderie and faith.  It’s the time of giving and sharing and, for most, receiving.  Debts are forgiven at Christmas, and people too.  Indeed, the power of Christmas could almost save the world and would, according to Hollywood, if given half a chance.

Frank Gutch Jr: Thank You Music (and other reasons I love the indies); Digital Streaming Heats Up; New Albums of Note; and a Note…

But before I begin passing out (No, wait!  There is more!) awards and kudos to those who made a huge difference in my attitude and my life, let me point you all to a problem we in America (including the hat— that be Canada) should embrace— the media.  Not that the media itself is the problem, but (as pointed out by Roxanne Tellier‘s DBAWIS column of just two days ago) how we have allowed politics to destroy it.

Frank Gutch Jr: Help! I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Reach My Turntable! featuring Jubal Lee Young, Anna Maria Rosales, Caitlin Canty and a Cast Of Thousands! oh, and notes too…..

Indiana Jones has nothing on me.  That big rolling ball chasing him?  That’s nothing compared to the mountain of carnivorous beasts chasing me in my dreams every night, each vying for that elusive review I promised what seems months ago.  It is the music reviewers equivalent to no pants in the schoolroom, the albums fighting one another to get to me, to rip flesh from bone, to make me pay for what they see as vinyl manslaughter— vinylslaughter, if you will— an offense so terrible as to consign innocent artists and albums to a certain death, so vile as to blast dreams to smithereens, so ghastly as to be— well— ghastly.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Forgotten Past, Recent and Otherwise; Plus a Few (Very Few) Notes

 

Joseph LeMay‘s album Seventeen Acres has been out how long?  Three months?  I wrote about it in an earlier DBAWIS column and have barely mentioned it since.  I have to wonder why.  I love some of the songs on that album and like everything about it.  It is beautifully recorded, masterfully produced and mastered and, even more important, made up of outstanding songs.  And yet I push it into the past.  So I started thinking— how does that happen?

Frank Gutch Jr: Lavacado, The Pick Brothers, Buster, Edie Carey & Sarah Sample, and Jenn Lindsay— It Ain’t All Hard Day’s Night & Pink Floyd Out There, Folks…..

Again, my column has been waylaid.  There is something in my universe which gets in the way of every other column I sit down to write.  This time it has to do with my favorite of the grunge bands in Seattle back when grunge was just a child— Son of Man.  I think that band and Screaming Trees were the only bands I paid close attention to back then, at least when it came to the up-and-comers.  Each had a certain undefinable something which made me sit up and listen.  Each has held up well as the years have passed.  One day I will post a list of my very favorite albums over the years and the Trees’ Sweet Oblivion will be there as will the lost “album” of Son of Man— I say lost because I am not really sure whether an album was the intention, they being handed to me on cassette as “demos”.