Frank Gutch Jr: Got Them Ol’ Deadline Blues (featuring Philip B. Price, Caroline Cotter, Audrey Martells, and Jon Brion; Closing Down The Fabulous Rainbow; and Notes Not of the Underground

Deadlines suck.  I should just end this right here (the column, not my life, though there have been times when doing that would have been better than slogging my way through what finally ended up “on paper”, the equivalence to “on tape” in the world of recording).  Nothing is ever what it seems anymore, I guess.  And the older I get, the more it seems so.  Oh, to be a Darrell Vickers who seemingly grabs mosquitoes and turns them into eagles, except when they are just mosquitoes.  Even Vickers could not have saved some of my work.  And trust me, at times like this, it is work.

Frank Gutch Jr: Space Opera… the Final Frontier; Spotify Revisited (Revisited); Plus Notes

 

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.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Saga of a Rock Pioneer: Jim Colegrove— Chapter Five

The music business has always been such that the stars become super and the rest pretty much stay in the background.  A case in point would be The Funk Brothers and The Wrecking Crew and the many session men (and women) who do the grunt work while the headliners reaps the profits.  Not that the stars want it that way.  That is just the way it is.  And maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be.  The people within the music industry sure know the supporting cast by name, if the public doesn’t: the session men and the opening acts and the bands which didn’t get the chance or got the chance and didn’t make it for one odd reason or another.

Frank Gutch Jr: Flotsam and Jetsam, plus Notes…..

That’s right, sports fans, I have once again rammed the ol’ cranium up against the proverbial brick wall.  Four good starts on this week’s column and nothing to really show except four three-paragraph dead ends, at least for now.  And deadline looms.  What to do, what to do…  After much thought (not really), I have decided to pack together a whole string of odds and ends for you to pick through, if you so desire— flotsam and jetsam, as it were.  Ideas not long enough for a column, musical bits and pieces, brain farts and the like.  Indeed, I looked up the term “flotsam and jetsam” on thefreedictionary.com just to make sure that I had the term right and, for once, I did.  “Useless or discarded objects,” it said.  “Odds and ends.”  Well, I hope I stay away from the former, but the latter seems to fit.  Just remember— no overlying theme.  Whatever comes to (my) mind.