Frank Gutch Jr: Lady Gaga? Really? How About the Real Women in Music?

My yardstick for music is a simple one.  If everyone likes it, it can’t be worth a shit.  Think Hitler as a rock star.  He, too, had a following, though few would own up to being part of it after the finale.  What is it that makes everyone so enamored with this musician as opposed to this other musician who is playing practically the same thing?  Hell if I know.  How does one become a hit overnight?  Hell if I know.  Why are people attracted to certain artists, en masse?  You guessed it.  Hell if I know.  But I can goddamn guarantee you that while you are talking about the Lady Gaga halftime show, and my guess is that most of you talking about music are, you’re missing a few thousand musicians worth hearing, some of them playing music way outside the formulaic box the Gaga has built for herself.  Taylor Swift?  I love some of her songs but there are songs as good as that out there if you take the time to listen.

Frank Gutch Jr: 2017? Bring It On!

Jesus Christ, but 2016 was a tough year!  The musicians (and people) we lost!  The impending doom of a Trump-inspired government!  The division of what was in some ways a country, a world even.  Ideals crushed beneath the boot heels of hate, news warped beyond any rational thought, a world based upon a semblance of logic now an anarchy of thought and emotion.

Frank Gutch Jr: 2013— A Look at the Best, plus Notes You Can Take To the Bank…..

After ending this last year cranking out two long columns about musicians we lost, I feel the need to counterbalance.  While I know that death is a part of life (indeed, life = death according to the laws of nature), it was not all that much fun to dig through the past year searching for musicians recently passed.  It was, in fact, a bit of a downer.  Reliving the news that I knew was not half as bad as discovering the news I had missed.  All too many musicians I admire tripped off this mortal coil without so much as a thank you, Frank, it’s been fun, and I was more than a little unsettled with each discovery.  But the past is the past, whether we like it or not, and it was not all bad.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Beginnings of Christian Rock— erm, Contemporary Christian Music, plus Notes…..

Yep.  Braindead again.  After struggling for four days and working my way through four— count ’em, four starts, I find myself without a column and already an hour past deadline.  How do these things happen, I keep asking myself, but they do and when they do I wish I was drinking again.  Back in the old days, if I couldn’t get something down in a certain period of time I would pop a cold one and before the six-pack was done, I didn’t care anymore so I would type until it looked like there were enough words (or I couldn’t see the keys anymore) and would hit ‘send’ and to hell with it, you know?

Frank Gutch Jr: The Re-Return of Nick Holmes; Oami: Back In the Game; Dan Miraldi: Rockin’ Cleveland; Lisbee Stainton: Bribing Her Way Into Next Week’s Column; and a Shitload of Notes…..

Nick Holmes is a friend of mine.  I have never met him nor have I even talked with him on the phone but he is a friend, nonetheless.  He sends me stuff.  Anyone who sends me stuff is my friend.  Send me some stuff and you’ll find out.  It seems like only yesterday (it was over two years ago) that he sent me CD copies of two albums I, up to that time, never even knew existed:   And it seems like just yesterday (because it was) that I received his brand spanking new CD, Sonar.  There is a story behind Nick and his music and I hesitate to tell that story here because I have told it a few times and hate to repeat myself too much, but if you want to read a fascinating story about his early years in New York and how we became acquainted, follow this link.

Frank Gutch Jr: From Africa With Love: Dirtmusic, Tamikrest and Gary Heffern; Pandora vs. Pink Floyd: The Digital Distribution Debate Continues; Music History 101; and Notes…..

I’m going back to school.  I’ve been going to school since I graduated, in fact, because if there is one truth in the world it is that as much as we know, we know too little.  About people.  About science.  About truth.  And about music, among a few thousand other subjects.  We are a defective lot which is to say in vinyl terms that we are warped or scratched or that we skip.  Us humans are, in effect, not the top but the bottom of the food chain as far as I can tell because we are the only species who think we know it all.