Frank Gutch Jr: Let’s Talk Notary Sojac; The Return of Highlight Bomb; Jeff Ellis (Plus Notes)

I was twenty-three, fresh out of the Army and full of frustration and cynicism.  I had spent the last one year, nine months, two days, four hours and thirty-five minutes in what I considered a military prison.  Before I was drafted, I was a radical, a hippie, an idealist.  Staunchly anti-war, I isolated myself from old friends and family.  I smoked dope, joined The Resistance and demonstrated on and off the University of Oregon campus.  When I got out of the Army and returned to Eugene, I learned that I hated everyone who displayed bumper stickers or posters which heralded “America— Love It Or Leave It” or “My Country, Right or Wrong” as if they were the Eleventh and Twelfth Commandments.  Those who upheld vocal groups like Up With People as true American music became my enemy.

Frank Gutch Jr: M-M-M-Metal Is All You Ever Play, Get Research Turtles’ Mankiller Pt. 1 of 2 While You Can— Free! and Notes, Notes and More Notes!!!!!

With apologies to The Records (that’s the band, sports fans) and their song Teenarama.  I was sitting here plowing my way through one of my more favorite albums of the past few weeks by one Sandrider and wondering what it is that makes us turn right or left when mood strikes us— to bang heads with Freedom Hawk and Sandrider and then slither into the sixties and early seventies pop garden with The Records and The Shoes.  It’s a hell of a jump from “Cut down these heathens” to “C-c-c-c-c-cola is all you ever drink,” from “Hold not your blades to our sad thirsty throats” to “Teenarama/All that melodrama/Gimme gimme gimme gimme/Teenarama” but it is a jump I make all the time.  It’s no wonder I’m screwed up.  I can’t walk a straight line.  Hell, sometimes I can barely walk!