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: Generation Found; It Was a Long Walk Home (Thoughts Spurred By Separation From Viet Nam-Era Army); plus N-n-n-n-notes…

 

For years I have been telling you that music isn’t just music.  Some of you understand, mostly musicians who spend a lot of energy and time helping out those in need.  Others shrug it off because they know either that there is no good music anymore so what good would it do, or that musicians are either children avoiding growing up or are millionaires waiting for the train.  Don’t tell that to the people at Sweet Relief or Musicares or any of the other charity organizations out there.  There is a lot of hard work being laid down by scores of musicians and music people, aware that good fortune can turn sour at the drop of a hat.

Frank Gutch Jr: Charlottesville Revisited (Revisited),

The reason Charlottesville is being (Revisited) is because I do believe that somewhere out there in the ether Charlottesville has already been Revisited and, hell, I am sure I confuse people often enough without reusing headers.  It would be akin to writing a book and naming all the chapters “Chapter One,” which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good idea.  But the second Revisited, placed in parentheses, separates the first from the second, does it not?

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: Down By the Old Graveyard— Reviews of Albums I Thought For Sure Could Not Miss…..

I’ve been in an extremely retrospective frame of mind the last few weeks, digging through old photographs and reading old letters as well as watching old movies.  I don’t know why.  Sometimes I have a need to look back, I suppose, and lately I’ve had that kink in my neck for doing it a bit too much.  I have relived  a thousand moments and have heard songs in my head of artists and songs long past and no longer in my collection.  I have thought of old girlfriends and old buddies and have re-experienced old highs and lows.  Highs and lows.  One thing I have been doing is revisiting reviews I had written over the years of music I loved at that moment, and still do, on the whole.  I hate to see good music go to waste.  I hate to see artists ignored.  I hate that we spend so much time going over and over the same old music and music histories we always have, ad infinitum.  I understand it.  I just hate it.  So just a few minutes ago, I decided right now, just for one column, I would give a few of those artists and albums a short-lived reprise.  Why not?  It is what I have been doing all my life in zines and papers like The Entertainer and Pop Culture Press and BOMP and Fusion and on the Net for sites like DBAWIS.  The truth is that I have started three different columns which have deflated like yesterday’s quiche and I have to write something, so you’re stuck.  Who knows?  Maybe you can find something in the old mine worth reading and/or hearing.  I hope so.  So let’s go.

Frank Gutch Jr: Who’s Making Up the Rules, Marc Cohn at the Aladdin Theater in Portland Oregon, and Whatever the Hell Else I Want To Write About…..

I’m tired.  I mention this at the outset because this inevitably is going to turn in to one of those stream-of-consciousness tirades in which logic does not play a part.  But I don’t care.  I need to get something off my chest and I don’t care if you stop reading right now, but the stench of what is wrong with the music business has me gasping for air and there is little oxygen available.  But before I start…..

Frank Gutch Jr: Grown in Charlottesville, An Early Look at Rounder Records (via Warner/Reprise and Peter Stampfel), and Notes…..

When I first started getting into music, really getting into music beyond AM radio and the string of hits I always thought was everything music, there were three cities.  Only three.  Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  Those were the three graced by the large offices of the major labels and those were the three which produced the vast majority of music which made it to the airwaves.  Or so it seemed.  Isolated in Oregon (and trust me, kiddies, it was isolation), the world looked so simple and yet so daunting, even on AM radio.  Generalizations were common.  Vocal groups all came from or at least came out of New York City.  Soul was courtesy of Detroit and Chicago and Detroit.  Surf music was West Coast and sand-infested.  Country was all Bakersfield or Nashville.  But they all were filtered through the Big Three:  Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  That’s where the major labels lived.  That’s where the money was.  That was where artists went to make it  big, no matter where they originated.

Frank Gutch Jr: Sometimes it’s About the Music and Sometimes it’s ALL About the Music….

…and today, I’m in the ALL state of mind.  What got me into this mood were two CDs I received in the mail fairly recently:  Winterpills‘ All My Lovely Goners and Lisbee Stainton‘s Go.  I am reluctant to say that I receive albums like this all the time but the truth is, I do.  Maybe not this good and maybe not with regularity, but I get them all the time.  There is so much good music out there that I can’t even begin to keep up, and that’s with my ignoring the major label, who hardly need my help to spread the word.  Are these two special?  They must be because I don’t think I’d feel right if I didn’t write about them quickly and in depth.  This is the quickly.  I shall save the in-depth for reviews.