Frank Gutch Jr: Musicians to Corporate: This Is War!; Mad Anthony’s Brand-Spanking New Video; and Notes Even You Can Play

Strap yourselves in, sports fans, because this is going to get ugly.  The past few days have given us a flurry of  comments and actions to chew on in this fast growing chaos which is the new landscape of music.

Frank Gutch Jr: Psycho-Paths To the Heart (A Valentine’s Celebration of Musical Phobias and Neuroses), Deep Feedin’, What? Jon Gomm Again?, and Notezzzz…..

I’ve often wondered if previous generations of humans are as fucked up as we are about relationships.  I watch TV, go to movies and listen to music all the time and it appears to me we are a nation if not a world of basket cases.  We’re all self-involved and needy and greedy and sex-crazed and have so many phobias experts are identifying new ones all the time in an effort to keep up.  Growing up, I thought everything was laid out for us and it looked like gooey fun, but then when I was growing up we were in the era of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges and that strange teen phenomenon which circled around a mashup of James Dean and Marlon Brando (the young Brando and not the Godfather-era).  Were we fucked up then?  I suppose we were.

Frank Gutch Jr: Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Transistors! (and other fabled foibles of the time)

I should be writing about important things but this week I thought I would take a left turn and explain how we got to where we are, musically.  Or at least one small leg of the journey.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I printed a piece about reality and each person’s perspective of it.  I used Big Star as an example of how reality can be warped (read it here).  I used The Wailers and The Sonics in a similar piece (read that here).  Is there no end to my ego?

Frank Gutch Jr: Vinyl Coming Back? May-beeee, There Is Just Not Enough Time, Karl Fredrick Anderson Chimes In On Spotify Etc., and Notes…..

There are a large number of reasons I love writing for DBAWIS.  For one thing, I get to write amongst some of the best writers out there.  I have had it in my mind to put together a list of must-read columns with thumbnail reviews and easy links so others could read what I have read, though I am sure with different eyes.  You see, I found DBAWIS very early in its existence, when Bob Segarini was writing what was then his column for FYI Music in Canada.  At first, I was just following Segarini, a musician I much admired after having interviewed him for Pop Culture Press for their “Summer of Love” issue.

Frank Gutch Jr: Lost & Found

A few days ago, I saw a picture of a couple of Darrell Vickers‘ friends and fellow band members standing before a wall of vinyl, only a small portion of a collection which more than likely takes up a whole house.  Vickers has been digitizing and posting the most rare (and most odd) of the records under the guise of Radio Vickers, a hobby which thus far has handed many a fan of oddities music that which they might not have ever found.  You never know what you’re going to find when Darrell points the finger, but one thing I did find and am thrilled to have found, actually, is a collection of odd bands from down under recreating the original Nuggets: Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, this one titled Antipodean Interpolations of the First Psychedelic Era.  Bands like Velociraptor and The Gooch Palms and King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard and The Murlocs serving up covers of The Standells‘ Dirty Water and  Sagittarius‘s My World Fell Down and The Leaves‘ Hey Joe.  And that’s just the tip of the Vickers iceberg.

Frank Gutch Jr: Vinyl Presence & Presents (After All, Christmas Is Around the Corner) and Notes From Under the Ground…..

I don’t know what youth wants from us old farts, especially when it comes to music.  Many mock us for being Boomers, many laugh at our music.  I can understand.  I laugh at us, too.  Our insistence that stars are gods, especially rock and movie stars.  Our self-indulgence.  Our knowledge that we more than any others are omniscient.  God, but there have been times when I wished I had been borne of another generation (until I look at the other generations and realize that they are as fucked up as are we).

Frank Gutch Jr: Crushed Out: It Was a Party, Jess Roden’s Anthology, Audrey Martell, and Notes You Can Take To the Bank…..

Good ol’ Pandora.  Just when it looks like the whole digital music service thing is about to fade into the background, those asshats raise their whine level a few decibels.  This time, they’re asking to take a portion of the musicians’ cut from them, claiming that the musicians are cutting into their fair share.  Wait a minute!  Wha-a-a-aaat??!!!!!!!  Okay, they didn’t put it in those words, but you have to know that’s what they’re telling legal eagles behind closed doors.  I have to wonder about the reasoning, though.

Frank Gutch Jr: Fun With 45s (Into the Depths of Hell), Jess Pillmore Breaks Her Silence, and Notes…..

That’s what one of my old girlfriends used to call hanging out at my place.  The Depths of Hell.  Of course, as far as I could tell, anyplace which did not exclusively play everything Los Angeles was hell to her.  Linda Ronstadt.  The Eagles.  Joni Mitchell.  Jackson Browne.  Gawd, but I always thought if there was a hell on Earth, it was Los Angeles.  Soft Rock hell.  Bland hell.  Mediocre hell.  Just plain hell.