Frank Gutch Jr: Paradise Is Paved, Here Comes the Parking Lot… plus a Voluminous Collection of Note(s)

Goldband Studios is gone.  Here I have been spending the past few years singing the praises of Research Turtles— I call them the boys from Lake Charles— without realizing that the city/town/parish also was home to Eddie Shuler and Goldband.  Dumb me.  I have known of Goldband since I was in college, having found them through That Dorm Guy who was somehow plugged into anything and everything musical.  I look back now at him and wonder how he was able to find so much music in a land with pretty much nothing but Billboard Magazine to guide him, but he did.

Frank Gutch Jr: If You Don’t Like To Read, Maybe You’re Reading The Wrong Stuff: Books On Music… Plus Notes

I worked with a guy for four or five years who had never read a book after college.  He read, he just didn’t read books (which had me scratching my head until I developed a bald spot).  Books have always been part of my life.  As a child and even toddler, books were a never ending source of pleasure.  So how is it, I ask myself, that people hate to read?  And I think I have found the answer.  They haven’t found anything which, to them, is worth reading.  Books are like music in the forest for the trees idiom.  There are so damn many choices, one has no idea where to start.  Well, for people who love music, the obvious starting point is books about music (or would that be “are”?).  Like soul?  Find a book about soul music.  Love country?  There are tons of biographies of country artists, past and present, and even books about country’s musical past.  Blues?  The same.  Rock?  Too many to count.