by Camden Joy
An in-town glamour rag here in our valley of tar tagged and feathered Frank Black as one of the hundred coolest Angeleno peoples—even though he is a recent immigrant—their high priests and scribes writing thusly of him—“phenomenal” and “eccentric”! And then these self-same journalists—to all their compliments off-set so they are not to be read as slobbering sycophants—they bring up his gigantic waistline, they offhandedly call him “stout” “corpulent” “lard-filled” he is to them “pear-shaped” “bloated” and “sickly-swollen” a “tub of goo.” But why, you ask, and how dare they and from whence doth such vitriol erupt, precisely? Is it from that undeniable truth that fat people are more jolly—does bitter envy spring forth from underfed, stick-like writers? Is each of us of such optimum weight that as readers we can abide perusing such ridicule? Who among us can truthfully say he has never stepped from a steaming bath with skin aggravated red as a big old beet and smelling as some fatty boiled dumpling? There is No Justice for Our Black Man—NO JUSTICE! To celebrate his music they insult his looks. To praise the greatest record album ever told they drop him from the label.
A friend I used to talk to talked to Black on the phone once—by accident really—but said he was odd. This, the world thinks. That Frank Black is odd—but I speak this loud he is not Odd but Normal and ours is the responsibility to catch up to him for like some H.G. Wells fictionalized individual Black has advanced in our time-space continuum advanced ahead of us so far in every direction—in all but the most unlucky manner—that only his physical corporeal self is being forced to inhabit our dim dimension to remind us from whence he originally came, thusly permitting him to be castigated, sent off, ridiculed, made to bear Job-like burdens—
If in fact—as some suggest—Richard Nixon invented Rock and Roll—which indeed reads preposterously but only means how the stifling political occurrences of the ’60s and ’70s—from the savage Nixon campaign against JFK which led to JFK’s death to Vietnam to Kent State et al.—repeatedly foisted new significances and purposes upon rock and roll and thusly in a sense our suppressive American dictator inadvertently was attributable for the granting to rock and roll of its merry eternal life, if this Nixon-Invented-Rock-and-Roll Maxim holds true well then how appropriate is my home-taped version of Teenager of the Year—I have it also on CD but I prefer this cassette better because of how it begins after a radio interlude somebody taped for me of Talking Spooks—McCord, Hunt, those types—ferreting out riddles of that Watergate scandal which dethroned our rock-and-roll–inventing Great Dictator—muttering of the Florida thing, the O’Brien thing, Haldeman’s diaries, Dem Nat’l Chair Lawrence O’Brien the consultant for “The Western Exterminator Co.” founded by one Howard Hughes whose agent Bob Mayhew “defused difficulties” arising from $100,000 Bebe Reboso Campaign Contribution—the Florida thing—and F. Donald Nixon’s receipt of suspicious loan from self-same Western Exterminators in the late ’50s—well-documented though later expurgated in pages of Haldeman diaries—all this mutters on then Teenager of the Year arrives and sets up and begins to play—
And oh dear reader have you never drunked chocolate milk that like candied paint went down, gooey and fine, for this best connotes that blissful day I first made the acquaintance of this Teenager of the Year. I cannot really put words to how life seemed before then: unpulled together, dreamy, disconnected, I believe it was fine but who can say, who can guarantee this vague past I recall is even my own and what is a true memory anyways anymore amongst the high-paid programmers and mind-controlling media agents of these 1990s I might say I remember how people would come up offering their assistance, children on swings, a blackbird takes flight, untold grief, one city with signs in Cyrillic, another full of carts and grumpy livestock, an embrace, a lazy cloud or two drifting over the sun, the nasturtium glance of Marie over and over, palm trees and fountains, the sun sharply yellow at some certain hour and envy, such envy, these pines, angry words and stamping off, pedestrian signals blinking don’t walk eight times, a glimpse of fishing boats in the bay, chatting weather with someone at a service station, an orangey landscape pity-flooded, trash-fish and pond-scum, Marie honey-necked and gleeful, rollerbladers cradling Slurpees, licorice wrappers, Disneyland tee shirts (—for everyone!), cars leaking pop songs, military planes low overhead—any of this could be accurate but it zips into focus “only” upon meeting Teenager of the Year to which thereupon ensued a close study of this here Frank Black factoid chart: Born same year as Beatles ’66, as a boy Charles Michael Kitridge Thompson IV is continually teased for having same name as one of the Monkees. In late ’80s Thompson meets Kim Deal and—envying her monosyllables—surreptitiously tricks her out of her name. She retaliates by writing band’s first hit “Gigantic,” found on a record album called Rosa-something (late ’80s), labeled by Sounds and Melody Maker “the best thing to come from Boston since ‘More Than a Feeling.’” This follows an EP which came out around then or before. Next comes another record album, called Doo-something, enters UK charts at Number so-and-so, labeled by Village Voice and Puncture “the best Boston record album period.” In bold parry, Deal seizes back name for all-girl record album celebrating girls and their cool names and record albums. No one buys this record album. In an unrelated event, to honor those killed in Dec. 3 massacre during Feast of St. Francis, Thompson now adopts mournful new name of Black Francis. This lasts until 1992 when once more he loses name, this time in tragic motorcycle accident. In the meantime, two more record albums that have names are released, each called “the best music ever made” by Rolling Stone. Disappointed by such comments and wanting to do still better (and encouraged by Lowery leaving Camper, Perry F. leaving Jane’s Ad, Roy Orbison leaving Tr. Wilburys), in early ’90s Black Francis tells bandmates to hide and promises he will find them by end of decade. He counts to ten and dutifully band disappears. Then tires skid on ice and motorcycle accident. At subsequent ‘recovery’ shows, he adopts moniker “Mr. Pixie” only next to find himself embroiled in federal lawsuit when candy manufacturer Topps Inc. (as maker of Pixie Sticks) files in U.S. District Court for “infringement of a trademarked character.” In resulting settlement arising from binding arbitration, Thompson drops the “Mr. Pixie” name in exchange for promise of receiving lifetime supply of Topps’ annual trading card series FAMOUS SAUCER ABDUCTIONS/ARCHITECTS THROUGH HISTORY. Thompson attempts comeback cabaret show as “The Artist Formerly Known as Kim Deal” but attendance wanes and tour is canceled in midpoint. Next Thompson, hearing Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets, reads where “Blank Frank” is a song that was written in reverse and so reverses it back to make new name “Frank Blank.” Unfortunately, his passport application is redrawn by clerk at Ellis Island to read “Frank Black,” because clerk prefers that name and possesses darker ink. Proof of family lineage (for possible later conversion to Church of Latter Day Saints) potentially problematic when Cilla Black (1943–) disavows all cognizance of any offspring “Frank” and each of Anne Frank’s surviving relatives deny having black descendants. Despite these setbacks, Elektra/Asylum (via smaller 4AD label) signs this “Frank Black” to solo career in late 1992 and expects great things.
Elektra/Asylum—Asylum?!—ha! there was none for Frank Black.—[I must now admit this how during the entire length of our relationship the whole time we were together myself—your beloved pamphleteer—and angel-haired, candy-mouthed Marie were watched over by this vast bunkered home of the Western Exterminator Co. which loomed high above us from its mighty mantel (Silver Lake at Temple) fenced in with electrical wire aloof and giving no clue to its mission but for its wall painted with a tall gent in top hat, cravat, and gloves waggling a finger at a subdued rodent while behind his back he hid a big tool and tiny neon mice blinked along the facade racing to get away but automatically they circled back to get squashed by that imperialist caricature, that cartoon capitalist with the oversized hammer—ah, how like living in the trail of Auschwitz ash this was and “how long,” I ask, could any love survive benea
th this ugly billboard prose of doomed mice when to come home each day meant to look out each evening upon the overwhelming vulture of the Western Exterminator Co. perched at our bedroom window—to see all night that rendition of killer cartoon capitalists, this was the plainest of signs that we had lost our everything and . . . ah well! Some few of us have since come quite accidentally to uncover impressive evidence of the Western Exterminator Co. as a sinister enterprise, its monies spread everywhere abundant—operating in effect as a present-day Dutch East India Co.—they who in the 1600s/1700s ran the spice trade, ran the high seas, ran everything—but Alas! said “Revelation” must await a more focused delineation in some later tract but I will eventually transmit that knowledge to you the reading public I promise!]
“BUT JUST WHAT ARE SIGNIFICANT SALES?”
Who out there is paying attention and why should this matter? 16 million viewers did not enough Nielsens provide to save the Last Good TV Show from cancellation; 16 million viewers! Sculptors, to get a showing, to draw a hundred, that is a success in the today world of sculpturing; great men of letters read by none but a handful of college kids; our best poets drinking themselves to sleep beneath freeway bridges, me behind the counter of your liquor store every damn hour, every damn day (I am not a hard boy to bear but when I am tired). And meanwhile “THEY”—these the same sorts as the Romanovs who merrily profited by restraining in serf-style backwardness Russia for upwards of four centuries—They dare play pong with our hearts and yank the inspirational Frank Black from our record album bins for his moving of only 75,000 units which they term insignificant sales and to tell us that the fat lady has sung on this fat boy’s singing career, that the difficult Frank Black is not a merchandisable commodity in fiscally conservative times, in the daunting arrhythmia of our cultural pulse. . . . Let them lose no money, these chicken Romanov bastards, for their faith in Art rises and falls on its investment return, they have no patience with integrity, cannot live—as the restless Black advocates during track three—on an Abstract Plain. They call you a genius in television simply if forty million peoples look at you continually, in music if you sell half a million, in literature if anyone reads you, in poetry, well, everyone’s a genius there once they’re dead. Right now in the darkest damp night I look out upon spooky silence scratching my itchy calf, all others are asleep in this shivering mid-morning premonition for there is no sound but that of the Money Counters running downtown and I stand here in this big swirl singing this lullaby alone but for you here alongside me, dear Reader, and how confidence might well dip if I had not begun listening in my Walkman just now FULL-BLAST to Frank Black who restores me completely to myself by saying he wants to sing for me (“I want to sing for you/And make your head go POP!POP!POP!POP!POP!”). And POP it has! It has and what must the Board have made of this at their shareholder’s meeting in the executive bunny room when they received these tapes (“There it is—Take it!”) twenty-two tracks of the best pop marvels ever recorded, the whole endeavor transpiring over just sixty-two minutes and fifty-three seconds (for an average song length of two minutes forty-nine seconds—optimal AM radio length!), each song a compact feast dense as a collapsed star with melodies smushed into more melodies, offering as many varied colors and textures as a Moroccan carpeteria, each track with a thousand choruses, a bunch of bridges, untold verses, impossible guitar catchiness, everything spry and lovely and irresistible—“YET”—and here comes the boo-hoo-hoo face—there is “Challenging Content” here too—even “REVOLUTIONARY”—and one thing these wicked shareholding Romanov despots hate more than a release which does not sell is an artist chatting “Geographically” as in Laurasia, Calistan, Españo Nuevo, singing “Nobody owns/The pleasure of tones,” singing “How many stars girl/Can you both count/And then classify?” singing “How can you free me/How can you free me/How can you free me/How can you free me/When I am free?” The pliant meek musicmakers, the tasteless producers and imitators, they are adored by the Romanovs yes, but just like Western Exterminators these Romanovs love the dead ones best, the Croces, Cobains, and Big Boppers, the Janis Joplins, Sid Viciouses, Gram Parsonses—how uncomplicated to market those tribute* albums, how little those stiffs resist, how completely they take on the amenable behavior of cash-dispensing corpses, the record album companies might just as well install vast ATMS into the celebrity sarcophaguses so brazenly do they profit from deceased talent—And so before their cash registers and adding machines—before all those gathered Western Exterminators—this Black man planted a stance (“There it is—Take it!”) and bellowed NO! in a voice that tore flesh from bone (he requires no megaphone) and for this—because Frank Black shunned any publicity for his last CD, would permit NO pictures, grant NO interviews, make NO response to the insistent questions of the media horde, the inane rockarazzi (‘How do you write songs? Why didn’t you let Kim Deal sing more? What’s a guitar? Have you always been so round? How come your lyrics are hard? Your thoughts on TicketMaster? How do you explain losing your hair? Am I being clever yet flirty yet cynical yet kiss-ass enough for you, Monsieur Le Noir?’), because he wanted his greatest life’s work examined free of childish prejudice and artist’s commentary—he was dispatched to a far-off kingdom to rot and the Romanovs built a wall sixty hands high, nine cubits in breadth, and barbed they the top with Breeders discs to guard this immaculate space and prevent his reentry—
You all must mail letters of protest for you are as much to blame as anyone, even more so, for look inside your soul and answer honestly these hard-put questions: Did You Tout This CD to all you came in contact with (&c.), did you organize sign-up drives, incentives for Frank Black listeners, did you call radio stations to demand ‘Less Breeders, More Black Man,’ did you send the world your message proudly? Did you to catered gatherings go decked-out in festive garb and holding out but one CD which you persistently pressed upon the DJ and insisted she play in its entirety, did you into the yielding flesh of ficus and succulents carve and upon bus kiosks and overpasses and blank alley spaces daub Frank Black compliments so thusly those headed to work might consider these advertisings all day while at their labors? Did you figure out where the impressionable ones congregate and did you then approach them there, confront the wary, debate the cagey? Glib people might in a fast-moving car in which you were a passenger idly put down Frank Black as “too Clever, too Complicated, too Weird, too Slick”—and did you then announce loudly to them your disagreement and encourage them yet still to seek that enlightenment which was eluding them and grandly upon your body paint the news and upon every specimen of American currency you handled did you write how there is none finer than this record album Teenager of the Year—if to any single one of these you answered less than “yes” you are then obligated to undo this damage, you as a fan are as mighty as a president just swimming in the slop of this sauce of chaos and must grab responsibility now. They will of course respond that they can do nothing—it would be easy for those of us advocating change to take the Romanovs’ word for it but it would be a Mistake—this can be remedied!
Let me hammer this into your idiot mouse-brains: you must “Write” “Write” and “Write”—“Write” the Western Exterminators, the Elektra/Asylum/4AD Romanov Despots, look them up each in the Million Dollar Directory at your local library and “write”—for this is an urgent action, “involve thyself”—you must “act” to stop these abuses and exchange this world for some better thing—remember that although you oppose human rights violations wherever they occur, you cannot defeat the greed-driven conglomerates or even a few deaf record album executives so LETTERS SHOULD NOT BE ACCUSATORY, it is better to assume that the cruel profiteers at 4AD and Elektra are, in fact, willing to seek a remedy for stripping our greatest national asset of his livelihood “IF” they are properly informed. Please be courteous and send your letter promptly. You may wish—to reassure the badged men in front, given the recent difficulties—to upon your envelope write “NO EXPLOSIVES ENCLOSED HEREIN but merely things of EXPLOSIV
E IMPACT.” You must remember as you talk with them that sometimes when you have talked to someone you mistakenly believe yourselves in complete agreement like with blossom-faced, bough-armed Marie and me when she says, ‘This is so cool’ and you see her big lips draw back to smile, happy happy, and you’re happy too, you say, ‘Definitely, so cool’ and you two kiss to the sound of “Velouria” in the great laser-riddled dancehall while thousands upon thousands gyrate in merriment and much later I come to find we were two totally wrong for each other—candy-mouthed Marie, you were watching bassist Mrs. John Murphy onstage as said wasted-looking bassist panted tobacco clouds and not like me focused on the microphoned prodigy of our times—his head a peeled grape, his voice a pained dog—who is so rare and special and magnificent I cry, I can cry over it—far more than I ever cried over us splitting (—!), although I have cried, I will, I will, I do I promise.
“TELL THEM!!”
Say unto them I am writing you this because no one has yet rammed Frank Black into your damn public head and his sponsors in fact as I have said threw high their frustrated arms and quit the set* and Frank Black’s perspicacity is contractually bound now to no one, for like the wandering King of the Jews this despised Teenager of the Year has been chastised and let go and our Black man has already lost his name so many times how much more must he be faced with—this morning I baltered into the bollard at the bottom bank of the pedestrian overpass, my thigh is bruised and bothered I feel a wreck but truly I’m fine, just fine, and I am writing this because you never liked him and instead always told me to put on something else w/more music, less words (aaaaaaaarrrRRRRRRGGGHHH!) and thusly Teenager of the Year languished—from lazy listeners like lemon-eared Marie—clung low on the pop charts until it fell with a clatter (with no windows thrown wide/to see what was the matter).