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.
The world doesn’t always go my way and sometimes I get so pissed about that that I have to vent. GodDAMN if the world isn’t going the way of idiots and psychopaths as the Trump Generation attempts to destroy everything good, but I will be damned if I will let it happen to my music. That’s right. My music! Sure, you have your music— The Beatles and Floyd and Queen and even Beyonce and Kanye and whoever the hell else. YOU don’t have to worry. YOU can find that music and plenty of people who still love that music just walking down the street. Me, I have to work for it. I have to scrounge and search and listen and question at every turn. You think that’s easy?
But first, some incredibly sad news. Jim Manolides no longer wanders among us. Jim had been a longtime stalwart of Pac Northwest music, having played with James Henry & The Olympics, Dave Lewis, The Frantics, and Jr. Cadillac, among others. In addition to having played music in the Northwest for decades, he was also looked upon as a music historian of repute. I mean, he had been around since almost the beginning.
… and I’m looking for trouble because that’s just what you have to do sometimes. Tributes and covers are sucking the soul right out of me and probably out of the goddamn entire world but you soulless bastards have no clue! This whole I-got-to-see-the-best-bands and there-ain’t-no-good-music-anymore attitude is killing the listening floor (screw the dance floor) and I’ve had it up to my neck with the I-don’t-like-today’s-music-so-fuck-you memes on the social media and threads in the forums to the point that I’m thinking hell could not be a worse place to live— at least compared to this musical rotgut of a world we live in today.
Please allow me to start this column with an aside. Each year, I compile a list of albums I consider the best. Last year, I picked Lost Leaders‘ self-titled album because it had that indescribable something which made me come back to it again and again. I mean, I love this album!!!
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.
This past week I am working on two big articles, this column and have a stack of reviews waiting to be written and am wondering where I can find the time. I need a good 48 hours in a day to even think about keeping up, but if they gave them to me I would more than likely use them napping or watching Howard Stern make a judging ass out of himself on network TV (No, I wouldn’t. I hated him when he was doing his radio and TV shows. After watching him embarrass himself brown-nosing some poor schlep who was lucky enough to make it to the end of some lame circus act of song or dance, it reinforced my initial judgment.
I have learned my lesson. Numerous times over the past few years, I have been caught at my desk, coffee at hand, spewing said coffee in copious amounts thanks to the writings of my colleagues here at DBAWIS, sometimes through the mouth and sometimes through the nose. It is altogether possible that I have unknowingly spewed through various other orifices of my body as well, but by the time I get through laughing, everything is dry and, therefore, in the distant past, as it were.
I wasted 75 minutes of Sheldon Gomberg‘s time last week. Do I feel crappy about it? You bet. I suppose 75 minutes doesn’t mean that much to many of you but then you probably don’t work as much as Sheldon does. See, Sheldon is a recording engineer and runs his own studio and after talking with many of that ilk, time is always of the essence. You’re working when you’re not working— going over the day’s session(s), preparing for tomorrow’s, organizing, always organizing. What? You think those albums just appear on your shelves?
These guys crack me up. Even forty years later. Even after having been separated four decades, these guys are still brothers under the skin, and they are brothers. They lived as brothers and fought as brothers and even had various “heads of state” treat them as brothers whilst trying to keep them from getting screwed as a band. You look at the films and read the books of bands back in the late sixties and early seventies, you might think that life was all getting stoned and getting laid and flowers-in-your-hair, but that’s all surface.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 