Frank Gutch Jr: A Journey and the Soundtrack to my Life; Angharad Drake’s New Album; The Big Bright In the Studio; Plus Notes…

 And I don’t mean the band Journey recently inducted into the supposed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  God knows what those clowns think when they make their choices but when I look at the possible choices they could have made besides those guys… well, I won’t go there.  Let me just say that I understand when people are upset when I make such statements because they have a soundtrack to their lives as well, but this isn’t their column, is it?  I look at it this way— Journey had hits, yes, and made CBS one hell of a lot of money, but they didn’t have an original bone in all of their collective bodies and you will never change my mind.  Hall of Fame?  Not even close.  Not while the hundreds more deserving are locked out.  Change that to thousands.

Frank Gutch Jr: I Got Blistuhs on Muh Finguhs!!! (Plus Notes)

… 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.

Frank Gutch Jr: 50 Albums Which Impacted My Life— Scratch That. Plus Notes…..

My original plan was to list fifty albums which totally bowled me over and, in a way, took me in directions I never would have gone— until drummer/writer Bobby Gottesman derailed that idea for what will inevitably be another romp through who knows what to an end which could as easily be a train wreck as a party.  Gottesman published a short piece about the old farts in music these days and the blanket idolatry they are afforded in spite of arthritic hands and the need to step behind the stack of amps to hit the oxygen mask, not to mention the voices which on the whole are maybe one-tenth the strength and accuracy of what they were in their prime.

Frank Gutch Jr: Music For a Rainy Day, Free Research Turtles Download Reminder, and Notes…..

I sit in a small enclosed room and await the first rain in a few months, feeling sorrow for those who live in drought-infested areas and have to wait for the life-giving water which falls from the sky.  It is a wondrous thing, rain.  I cannot imagine living without it, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest where rain and indeed weather is such a factor in life.  In the past more than the present, of course, because the State of Oregon depended upon farming and logging for so many decades and God knows that farmers and loggers constantly looked and look to the sky, hoping that the gods are friendly.