Frank Gutch Jr: Consider These Reruns (Glimpses From the Past); Plus Notes of a Lugubrious Nature

Looking back has become a thing of the present lately.  It began when I felt a guilt sneak over me because so many of the artists I have written about have seemingly passed their buy-by date.  The listening public, it seems, only want the past in terms of oldies or the classics. God forbid they should let the music decide for them.  Add to that my inability at times to come up with fresh subject matter and a nostalgic bent and it seems the logical choice.  It is doubtful that many of you have read many of my columns from the distant past and those who have probably have lost the gist.  So why not visit the past here and there?  I have gleaned through many columns and have picked a handful of segments I believe will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.  Let us start with one overlooking the Pac Northwest, titled…

Frank Gutch Jr: Answering the Questions, Where Do Houseflies Socialize; You Only Believe Me When I’m Lying; Rolling Stones Magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All-Time? Seriously?; Plus Notes

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?

Frank Gutch Jr: Vinyl: It’s What’s For Christmas…..

Christmas.  It’s the time for joy and camaraderie and faith.  It’s the time of giving and sharing and, for most, receiving.  Debts are forgiven at Christmas, and people too.  Indeed, the power of Christmas could almost save the world and would, according to Hollywood, if given half a chance.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Rain, The Park And Other Things I Didn’t Know About The Cowsills But Wish I Had; Top Albums of 2014, Thus Far; and Notes

It is time to eat some words and I do so with remorse.  Those words, spoken when I was young and somewhat foolish and also feeling a bit immortal, I suppose, were tossed at The Cowsills and other groups and artists I found somewhat wanting in terms of musical output.  They were pointed at a string of what I would call “manufactured” bands— those whose music supposedly came from the hit makers— I called it Hollywood music back then.  The Monkees took a big hit, the band put together not really for music but for TV.

Frank Gutch Jr: My Head Is Leaking! My Head Is Leaking!

I have plugged every hole I could find, but my head is still leaking!  I’m not really sure what to do short of listening to Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber simultaneously, or maybe at the same time.  I noticed it the other night when I was doing some research.  Every time I poured info in, it leaked out.  Radio charts, rock ‘n’ roll history, new artists, digital distribution buffoonery— no matter what, it wouldn’t take!  So I guess you’ll have to take potluck this week.  Maybe I can catch a few mental morsels to print here before the skull empties.  Speaking of empties, I’m a bit short this week.  Anybody got any pop bottles or beer cans I can recycle?

Frank Gutch Jr: New Albums: Lost Leaders, Zoe Muth, Chris & Gileah, Joseph LeMay, and Others; and Voluminarious Notes (there will be a quiz)!!!

If this was a real job, I would have been fired long ago.  I spent a whole day and night piecing together the research for this weeks column which was intended to be fun and games with radio charts because, man, when you get into them (especially the ones from the fifties and sixties), they are fun as hell and, boy, the tricks you have to know to understand them, but once again things came along to kick the idea to the curb.  It happens every week, swear to God, so I took a little trip down computer lane and counted the columns and column ideas I have started and not finished and it came to 27.  The good thing is that I still have 27 ideas set aside for future columns.  The bad news is that I haven’t worked on any one of them since. Sigh.

Frank Gutch Jr: Perspectives… Music— Does the Past Control Our Future? Music Snobbery. Lyricists, Take Note. Nightmare @ 20,000 Watts. And Information You Can Eat For Breakfast (Meaning, Notes…..).

Here I go on one of my cerebral journeys, most of which run into a brick wall and consign themselves to the ash heap.  I, like most of the world, have a very short attention span, it seems, and while I have bursts of genius (I swear!) little of it makes it to the outside world.  This time, the message(s) is(are) spurred by a link posted by friend Greg Phipps, with whom I worked at Peaches Records in Seattle in the 80s (Phipps, btw, records under the name Palestinian Israel-Jones, should you desire to visit his planet), who has been on a roll finding and posting or reposting questions and videos worth my, if not your, attention.  For instance, a couple of weeks ago, he asked about the negativity toward celebrities “selling out,” whoring their wares for profit.

Frank Gutch Jr: Flotsam and Jetsam, plus Notes…..

That’s right, sports fans, I have once again rammed the ol’ cranium up against the proverbial brick wall.  Four good starts on this week’s column and nothing to really show except four three-paragraph dead ends, at least for now.  And deadline looms.  What to do, what to do…  After much thought (not really), I have decided to pack together a whole string of odds and ends for you to pick through, if you so desire— flotsam and jetsam, as it were.  Ideas not long enough for a column, musical bits and pieces, brain farts and the like.  Indeed, I looked up the term “flotsam and jetsam” on thefreedictionary.com just to make sure that I had the term right and, for once, I did.  “Useless or discarded objects,” it said.  “Odds and ends.”  Well, I hope I stay away from the former, but the latter seems to fit.  Just remember— no overlying theme.  Whatever comes to (my) mind.

Frank Gutch Jr: MB Is For Music Biz

After reading what I consider Cam Carpenter‘s best column ever this past week (if you missed it, read it here), I could not help but look back over my years in the business.  The big difference between Cam and myself is that I spent all of my years on the bottomside, i.e. retail, and started those years looking longingly at the labels, hoping to score that most wonderful and elusive job in A&R (Artists & Repertoire— the people who spend ungodly amounts of time listening to live tapes and demos and sucking in smoke in scuzzy bars looking for that next big thing in music).  Cam did that.

Frank Gutch Jr: We’re Missing Too Much, You and Me (a look at music already slipping into the past), Plus Notes To Knock Your Socks Off…..

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.