Frank Gutch Jr: Scott Boyer: A Message In the Wind; A Repeat About Vinyl; and Them Tasty Notes

Scott Boyer has died.  Since the summer of 1971 I have been spouting his name— his and Tommy Talton‘s and Bill Pillmore‘s and Tom Wynn‘s and George Clark‘s and Pete Kowalke‘s (now living and still playing music under his not-so-new moniker, Peter Giri). They called themselves Cowboy and were a six-pronged country rock outfit out of Jacksonville who signed with Capricorn Records right after The Allman Brothers Band— indeed, signed because of The Allmans.  I say Jacksonville because that is where they settled as the band was forming.

Frank Gutch Jr: Wayne Berry’s Past and Future; plus Spurious Notes of a Curious Nature

 

I woke up this morning and found this at the beginning of my newsfeed on the Book of Face:

Frank Gutch Jr: John Stewart— More Than Just “Gold”; Wayne Berry— Welcome Home

I picked up a turntable for my sister a couple of months ago.  She had found what she said was about twenty of her old albums (it was more like a hundred and fifty) and had the urge to once again hear them.  Mostly they were albums I remember her liking— Percy Faith, Rod McKuen, Enoch Light and the like.  She drove me nuts with those albums when we were kids but I secretly liked a lot of them.  (I did truly hate the Sound of Music, Colleen, but the others were okay).

Frank Gutch Jr: On the Road With The Lisa Parade and Maxine Dunn (Plus Them All-Important Notes)

I took a drive yesterday.  I had been sitting in front of the computer screen too long and accomplishing little of anything at all and I needed a break.  Usually when I hit the road I take music I need to hear for writing reasons but this time I needed time to myself.  I grabbed one I had the urge to review by Town Mountain which when I pulled open the CD cover discovered was minus the disc.  I had left it in my computer player at home.  I have lost more than one disc that way.  The other two were there though and I had heard neither all the way through for over a year:  Lisa Parade‘s Finding Flora and Maxi Dunn‘s Edmund & Leo.  I couldn’t wait.

Frank Gutch Jr: Three Noteworthy Reissue Labels Mining the Gold… and Silver… and Copper… and Tin… plus Notes

Music used to be all about hits, and before that, artists, and before that, publishing.  Recycling music was written into the process from the beginning, but when the LP came along, recycling became a way of life.  To be fair, early reissue albums were not reissues at all but were what they termed “budget” discs, a term also applied to albums of “generic” music by artists of little known or unknown cachet.  Labels such as Harmony and Pickwick and Design once filled drug store racks with albums of dubious distinction, filled with either deep tracks of a popular artist or tracks by bands put together in the studio to recreate hits of the day.

Frank Gutch Jr: Alcoholic Faith Mission: Sons & Daughter of Denmark… Plus Notes

Denmark.  Home of danish pastry.  Kind of.  The Danish, one of the States’ most treasured pastries, might easily have been labeled the Austrian but for the Great Danish Pastry Strike of 1850.  Seems like the strikers told the bakeries to take a flying suck at a rolling donut (or Danish, if you prefer), so the bakeries imported artisans from Austria.  Now that, sports fans, is interesting.  If you like Danishes, anyway.  Or Denmark.