Roxanne Tellier – Summer of Songs Redux

I’ve been overwhelmed, recently, with the events swirling around us. It’s too much. And today, although I had planned a look into trump and Ford’s plans to re-open schools this fall, I’m gonna take a pass, and a day off. Instead of current affairs, let’s enjoy the summer sun, and take a stroll down Memory Lane, to this slightly edited column that I first wrote in August of 2015.

How very different things look now, from the perspective of 2020, and this time of plague! Seems almost naughty to see people gathered together, without masks or social distancing! And I’m not sure if any of the places I mentioned then, are open now. Never mind… Take my hand, come along with me on the wayback machine, and forget about today for a while ….

Frank Gutch Jr: Music Millennium: Still Weird After All These Years; Meet Sid Hagan; Plus Them Glorious Notes

It plays like a loop in my head, the first time I visited Music Millennium. I remember the drive to Portland from Eugene, parking down the hill on East Burnside, the walk up the street and even opening the door. Had I filmed it, it could not be any more clear. I had been in many record stores before— in  fact, the guys with me were all denizens of Eugene’s House of Records— but this was different. This was the famed Millennium, the seller of imports, the mecca of what record stores should be as far as many of us were concerned. Tower Records may have had stores open at the time (it was the summer of ’72, though I have been saying ’71 for years and have only recently discovered my mistake) but the Pac Northwest didn’t know it. Why should we have cared? We had the Millennium!

Frank Gutch Jr: The Rain, The Park And Other Things I Didn’t Know About The Cowsills But Wish I Had; Top Albums of 2014, Thus Far; and Notes

It is time to eat some words and I do so with remorse.  Those words, spoken when I was young and somewhat foolish and also feeling a bit immortal, I suppose, were tossed at The Cowsills and other groups and artists I found somewhat wanting in terms of musical output.  They were pointed at a string of what I would call “manufactured” bands— those whose music supposedly came from the hit makers— I called it Hollywood music back then.  The Monkees took a big hit, the band put together not really for music but for TV.

GARY PIG GOLD has At Least 45 THINGS I BET YOU NEVER KNEW About THE COWSILLS

You heard me right…at least 45 things you never knew about the Cowsills even after watching Louise Palanker’s absolutely riveting Family Band documentary:

• · Susan Claire Cowsill is the youngest human being ever to score a genuine Billboard Top Ten hit.

• · John Patrick Cowsill, still the youngest male of the original family band, retains fond memories indeed of drumming four sets a night inside Rhode Island bars and wine cellars as a seven-and-a-half-year-old (“I remember the cops coming and shutting it down. We needed to get special permission from the mayor”).