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.
The world doesn’t always go my way and sometimes I get so pissed about that that I have to vent. GodDAMN if the world isn’t going the way of idiots and psychopaths as the Trump Generation attempts to destroy everything good, but I will be damned if I will let it happen to my music. That’s right. My music! Sure, you have your music— The Beatles and Floyd and Queen and even Beyonce and Kanye and whoever the hell else. YOU don’t have to worry. YOU can find that music and plenty of people who still love that music just walking down the street. Me, I have to work for it. I have to scrounge and search and listen and question at every turn. You think that’s easy?
The stars have finally aligned, sports fans! You can delete my queries about Carrie Biell because I have found her after a ten year search. I should say that my buddy at KEXP radio, Tom Smith, found her. Well, maybe a friend of Tom’s. Or a friend of Tom’s friend. Ach! It doesn’t matter. The important thing that she is found. The other important thing is that she is writing again and has already jumped back into the deep end of the musical pool.
But before we get started, it’s time once again to plug one of my favorite bands of all-time— those crazy elementary school teachers who change into demonic rockers at night: No Small Children. Coming off of a successful run playing the title tune from the movie Ghostbusters II, they pluck another rocker out of the air and it’s a beaut! Lay back (if you can) and listen to what the percentage of us not tied to our iThings are hearing. I Feel Better!!!
Or fours or fives or sixes, depending on what they are, but for the purpose of this column I limit it to threes. After all, there are three strikes in baseball, three downs in Canadian football (which is a much better and more exciting game than American football as far as I am concerned), and three goals to a hat trick. Tony Orlando and Dawn knocked three times, the third time’s the charm, and there were three blind mice.
It isn’t easy. To most of you it must look that way. Six, eight paragraphs about a band or an album, a few videos picked up off the Net. Two hours, tops. On the columns which didn’t go so well, maybe fifteen minutes (and a six pack of beer, after re-reading a few of them). But it isn’t easy and it takes me a lot longer than you might think. There have been times I’ve written five drafts and finally submitted the sixth out of pure frustration. Three, four days and not a thing to show for it. And then there have been the three hour jobs—- the ones in which I elucidate about the days of transistor radios and Fender amps (they were king when I was young). Unfortunately, those are few and far between.
I was sitting here navigating the social media this past week when I noticed a rockumentary I thought I had seen before— one on Ed Dougherty, who had headed up Oregon’s connection to rock music back in the sixties, booking acts both local, regional, and national in the Pacific Northwest. I was sure I had seen it, having written about it in more than one of my columns, but I was feeling nostalgic and took the plunge anyway.
Before we get into the meat of this column, let’s talk Winterpills. I have been a fan since hearing their 2010 EP Tuxedo of Ashes and have followed them since. Their one album of covers, Echolalia, was good enough to make me toss aside my disdain of this current trend, their arrangements making up for the usual lack of creativity on most bands parts. No such problem here. Love Songs is an all-original triumph, Philip Price writing his best songs since Tuxedo, and the band is in A-1 shape.
The first thing David Bullock said to me when I asked about his new EP, In the Waking World, was, and this is paraphrased, “How do I write my bio without emphasizing Space Opera?” I wanted to say hell if I know but the more I thought about it the easier it seemed. Only because I probably know more about that band than maybe a dozen people out there (beyond the crazies who go out of their ways to find out what a musician has for breakfast).
Before I begin this, a little heads up. Fort Worth, that bastion of musical lugubriation which has been producing worthy quarter and eighth note treatises since before Rock was born, is gracing us with two projects of which you need to be aware. One involves Jim Colegrove and cohort Roscoe West (and a cast of others) who have come together in a group calling themselves Men of Extinction. With music dipped in Country & Western and old-time Rock with a little Soul thrown in on the side, they have put together a very tasty and sometimes humorous album titled We Made It Ourselves. And they did.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 