Scott Gorsuch Appreciation Thread

Many years ago, Bark and I were dedicated members of a semi-secret music messageboard. The shenanigans that went on would fill a book; at one point or another various participants in that board became involved in everything from felony assault with a beer bottle to an extremely odd foot-fetish romance. The guy who ran the board would put in word filters and substitutions to discourage certain topics or recurring tropes. One of those topics was the band "The Darkness", which would be automatically changed to "The guy I sucked off last night." This led, some time later, to one of our more sensitive members telling a story about a childhood nightmare that was filtered to "I woke up screaming, with only the guy I sucked off last night to comfort me."

Also, Bark hooked up with this very mouthy groupie who was recovering from scoliosis, and some idiot put up photos of his toddler son with whipped cream smeared all over his face and then tried to kick the whole Internet's ass when people made the predictable jokes. Once in a while, however, we would all take a break to have an Appreciation Thread. The purpose of these threads was to discuss things without everybody trying to score smart-ass points.

Today, therefore, we are reviving that tradition. My old friend Scott Gorsuch, pictured above with my Ocean Fade Private Stock PRS guitar, is one of the finest pop musicians I have ever heard. His 2000 release, Purple, made it onto indie rock stations all over the Midwest. He stopped by the house this afternoon to show me and my other pal Chris an absolutely unique double-neck guitar that he's designed and built. After hearing it for a few minutes, Chris and I immediately signed up to be his sixth and seventh customers. You'll be hearing more about that in the near future.

More importantly to those of you who aren't guitar collectors however, Scott has released all three of his albums for a free download on Soundcloud. I'm going to spend some time this week getting acquainted with his newest release, but here are my recommendations from the first two albums:

• Popular was the single from Purple. It's vicious and delicious all at once.

• The Ghost Of St. Ashes Harmony in the service of anger.

• Mimosa One of my top twenty favorite songs by anyone, anywhere. Just brilliant, all the way through.

• Miss Behave I thought of this as a personal anthem for a while. The bridge is awesome.

• Once Again My idea of a power pop song.

Scott's a one-man jukebox --- during his short time at the house he played everything from his own tunes to an ear-blasting cover of For Your Life --- and you can catch him periodically around Columbus when he's not busy with his day job. Which is repairing and building pipe organs, of course.

So this is a Scott Gorsuch Appreciation Thread. Nice comments about Scott and his record will be cherished; mean comments will result in my son using a quadcopter to slice your corneas. You've been warned.