One of the things that most impressed me about Frank Gutch Jr’s “nose for noise” is that he started finding this great music before the Internet, almost before electricity, in fact 😉. The Internet has made such a difference in our lives, connecting us mostly for good, but sometimes for bad, sadly. In any case, it has certainly eased our access to music of all kinds, genres and eras.
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.
I have described it as “the one place on earth where I’m happy to pay retail price for beer”! It has been a portal to a complete change in my life, introducing me to good times, great music and even greater people. It’s a venue that fosters a strong sense of community among this area’s indie musicians. I am talking about Cherry Cola’s Rock N Rolla Cabaret and Lounge.
My CMW is always a little bit different than most other people’s. Some go for the conferences, some are all about the music. Still others go for the trade show and the mentoring. But me – I go to people watch.
Like, on the first day I hit the Sheraton, to pick up my pass and get the lay of the land. Some people were looking for their friends, or checking out those who tend to get their names in newspaper bold face … Me, I was in the lobby of the crowded Sheraton Hotel, watching a young male couple dress their teensy tiny pocket puppy in all new Hudson’s Bay swag.
Funny, the thoughts that go through your mind. You can be watching some mindless entertainment, giving your brain a free ride between weightier tasks like deciding whether to have a cigarette or cook dinner, when suddenly you think …Whatever happened to Charlie Farquharson?
Toronto was a different place in the late 1970’s and early eighties. Although it’s easy to look back with rose coloured glasses, it was, in fact, a watershed time for Toronto musicians. Everywhere you turned, you were surrounded by outstanding music, made by dedicated and very talented players, who enjoyed the freedom to create their art, and make a living at the same time.
Critics called them “The Pre-Fab Four,” but a generation of little girls understood. Those of us coming into puberty, who had been just a little too young to have had fantasies about The Beatles, now had our very own super group. The Monkees were cute! They were funny! And really – could this quartet be more non-threatening? The worse that could happen would be that Davy might not get the girl … but he always did.
My best friends and I would loll around for hours, listening to their latest record, buying every copy of 16 Magazine and TIGER beat with a picture of one of the boys on the cover, and of course, watching the show every Sunday night. We’d squeal on the phone about their rumoured escapades, and dream of some day meeting a real live Monkee.
If there was one good thing about being without power for three days during the recent ice storm, it was discovering that it is indeed possible to live without the endless bombardment 
of email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, television and the like. With my trusty wind-up radio by my side, I kept up with what was important – my imminent salvation from the cold and dark. For a few days, I actually interacted with my family, with little more background sound than a news update.
2013 has been a long and tumultuous year, filled with many challenges, some failures, many successes, tons of new discoveries and an innumerable amount of wonderful memories made with the family and friends I love so very much. For my first DBAWIS article of 2014, I thought I’d highlight a few of the musical and otherwise amazing things that have come to be my “favourites” of this past year.
I have been thinking about trying this experiment for a couple of months. Proving once again that I have some sort of idiotic desire to make more work for myself than is necessary.
As usual, in theory, this looked like a good idea…in reality, it turned out to be a difficult, work-centric, time consuming exercise in frustration. This was not just 2 finger typing and adding pictures and links. This involved pictures, a stopwatch, a calculator, a pen and paper, and a goodly supply of patience, bourbon, and gumption.
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Bullseye Records of Canada
