by Camden Joy
For I say unto you near-sighted ones who can see this but have troubles reading all else (she too was blind this way, my last, holding papers at arm’s length and scrunching her eyes up most delightsomely her name as I’ve explained was Honey-Necked Marie and now we are no more but I’m not sad so there—!) this I possess “The Knowledge” that soon you shall see—Myopia Cured!—and the wicked set straight and those otherwise impaired fixed for Teenager of the Year is the GREATEST RECORD ALBUM EVER TOLD and performs Magic. But you will want proof of my knowledge I have seen this. Proof that I know of what I say, proof that I am whom I say or vice versa, &c. For I have read things which treat Teenager of the Year as just another great record album, comparing it to Imperial Bedroom and Pet Sounds (how akin to equating fresh Coke to a flat soda!) and I do recognize that there are many here among you who know that life is but a joke and who—in learning of albums which contain fine lyrics like “The microscope/On that secret place/Where we all wanna go/Is rock and roll” and “It frightens me/The awful truth/Of how sweet life can be” and “If it’s not love then it’s the bomb/The bomb the bomb the bomb/That will bring us together”—will desire that said record albums be written up instead as THE GREATEST EVER TOLD. Or “Other” record albums with which you would imaginarily be contentedly shipwrecked—the first Stooges or the first NY Dolls or the CCR one with “Midnight Special” on it or the Kinks one they did to accompany that television show or the Beach Boys one they chickened out and never released or the Patti Smith one with cover photographed by that Mapplethorpe guy and insides produced by that Cale guy or the one with The Boss and His Telstar* leaning against the shoulder of some kindly black gentleman or the one in which the Beatles announced Paul’s death through clever use of bare feet, a dark suit, and a license plate on a Volkswagen. All of these fine, fine record albums which in simpler times have been perfectly okay to listen to, I accord you this. But contrast these with any scholarly study of songs from Teenager of the Year (abbreviated sample study to follow) and clearly evident is that Overwhelming Faith this Black man possesses in us, for beneath the humble attire of POP! music he has slyly gifted us with detailed renderings of broadly disparate historical occurrences—trusting us to muddle our mistily shrouded manner through to Enlightenment (You all must write letters! I say again). This abbreviated sample scholarly study of four songs is presented to you herewith—note how various are those events which inspire melodies in the head of our Black man—
Track One—“Whatever Happened To Pong?”
With the 1969 drop in the cost of integrated circuits, electrical engineer Nolan Bushnell at last saw the possibility of stirring computers into the mix of electro-mechanical midway carnival amusements. He hired Berkeley student Al Alcorn to “create the simplest game” he could think of (“Paddle the paddle to the side to the side/To the side to the side to the paddle the paddle/Paddle the paddle the side to the side”). “Nolan defined a ping-pong game that could be played on a TV screen,” Alcorn explains. “He defined it and I built it, though there were little things like the sound that I did add.” Alcorn recalls many arguments he had with Bushnell over whether the ball in Pong should be round or square. “What’s the difference?” Alcorn—as the one favoring the square—had objected. “Who needs all the window dressing?” Alcorn still maintains that “the best instruction on any game was the one we had on Pong: ‘Avoid missing ball for high score.’” Bushnell named his company Atari. Pong was shipped to arcades in fall of 1972. Ultimately Pong’s lack of sophistication and challenge contributed to its demise. Bushnell sold Atari in 1976 for $32 million.
Track Two—“Thalassocracy”
Despite Herodotus’ remarks (Histories, III 122) on Polykrates of Samos and Minos of Crete and decayed relics of the list of thalassocracies quoted from Diodorus in Armenian translation of the Eusebian Chronographia, the concept of thalassocracies has neither archeological nor source validation. Consequently, the hotly debated notion of thalassocratic maritime supremacy (i.e., small, independent sea-power in more or less local waters) has few supporters amongst today’s historiographers as it runs apparently contrary to any ancient histories which presuppose broad imperial Roman domination from without.
Track Ten—“Two Reeler”
As with Frank Black, the Three Stooges too lost their names. This was because they were asked to please not be Jewish and so Samuel Horwitz, he turned into Shemp Howard, Moses Horwitz into Moe Howard, Jerome Lester Horwitz into Curly Howard, and comic violinist Louis Feinberg into Larry Fine (“Louis was so very fine”). Black’s history of the troupe is rendered accurately in every manner and bespeaks tremendous hours of dedicated microfiche research. Jerome/Curly was in truth a terribly unhappy individual, a drinker of liquor, a squanderer of money, a divorcer of women, “all his life was in pain.” His depressed state was said to be exacerbated by the element of their act which required his pate to remain shaved. Though he became world-famous for said baldness, he was always terribly embarrassed (“Did you know he missed his comb?”) and at a too young age—after numerous breakdowns and strokes—he was committed to a fancy pants sanitarium where he curled up and died (“Made us laugh never did complain”). After Curly’s departure, Moe reintroduced his original partner back into the act, his brother Shemp (“returned once more to save the day”). Soon thereafter Shemp keeled over into a heap-heap-heap-heap from those lethal sorts of chest-pains so Moe, having at last undisputed primogeniture, next brought in Joe Besser, who was later replaced by ‘Curly Joe’ De Rita (“He got a Joe and another Joe/He would not quit he would not quit”). The Stooges had the longest-running series of two reel comedies in the history of sound film (197 shorts). Columbia Pictures producer/director Jules White with studio Romanov head Harry Cohn at last exterminated the short film division in 1958, long after all other studios had done so (“And so it ends the two reeler short”).
Track Twelve—“Olé Mulholland”
Unattributed on the lyric sheet are direct quotes from Los Angeles Chief Engineer William Mulholland. By turn of the century—exemplified by certain architectural feats, most notably downtown’s Bradbury Building—the pending international status of L.A. was hampered only by its limited supply of drinking water. Mulholland transformed uninhabitable Southland desertscape into urban sprawl (a good thing?) by designing longest aqueduct in Western Hemisphere that ran from Sierra Nevada’s snow pack to coastline, an engineering challenge some lately compare in difficulty to sending man to the moon. In late 1911 Socialist candidate for mayor Job Harriman called the L.A. Aqueduct a conspiratorial trick to benefit the city’s ruling oligarchy; City Council subsequently ordered an investigation. After four straight days of draining testimony, Mulholland stormed out, erupting: “The concrete of the Aqueduct will last as long as the pyramids of Egypt or the Parthenon of Athens, long after Job Harriman is elected mayor of Los Angeles.” The following morning, this quote appeared on every Californian newspaper’s front page. Soon after, Harriman lost mayoral race (in the wake of bad publicity following dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times). The Aqueduct opened November 5, 1913 at massive public event. As first torrent of water came rushing through culvert, Mulholland commanded the forty-three thousand in attendance: “There it is—Take it!” And the thirsty public waded into the water as happily they drank.
Does this not move you, can you honestly say you have emerged from this abbreviated sample scholarly study unimpressed with Our Black Man? Then consider that the genius of our Teenager of the Year attracted together such fine collaborators—though actually as may need pointing out this Frank Black truly be in fact “No Teenager” but a grown man of twenty-eight—that twenty-eight the same age at which Einstein invents his special theory of relativity, Stravinsky first works with Diaghilev, Trotsky escapes Siberian banishment, McCartney splits up the Beatles, Mme. Curie begins to investigate uranium, Gropius builds his first factories, Thoreau constructs himself a small cabin at Walden Pond, Poe moves to New York City, Nijinsky goes mad—this sa
me-style genius, as I say, lured in the aid of exceptional fellows (Prepare to be Impressed!) like Jeff Morris Tepper (the renowned illusionist who in 1978 got a job in Captain Beefheart’s Magic Act) and Eric Drew Feldman (sleight-of-hand pianist for same Magic Act) and Joey Santiago (the guitar player who in 1985 shared a college dorm room with Charles Thompson in Massachusetts)—and that genius to which I refer of course is how exceptionally well Frank Black does NOT the dictum follow: “Write What You Know” but rather educates himself and proceeds to catalogue All That He Did Not Know—not particularly caring if anyone else did not know it either, not caring to have an academic explain it any further.
Oh you think you can live for some time without working especially now with expenses down with flower-headed Marie gone and everything—but then things start breaking—at first little things which seem inconceivable like your toothbrush snaps apart in your mouth (—?) and your favorite coffee mug slips from a shelf and then Triple A wants a check and if you’re going to get anywhere in this town you need Triple A! And then—and this has only been four days of not working—the feral cat that lives on the stoop out front starts spasming and the vet (I explained to the vet that I had no job but like any ex-military dude he just laughed and laughed) wants his money before he’ll fix anything and then you droop out of there a lot poorer and your hood’s up and your stupid battery’s been taken by some pathetic vandals and then out of nowhere some powerful somebody insists the pests and vermin in your building have to be taken care of so all the people at your place contribute $50 each to hire the Western Exterminator Co. (MY GOD NO) and your tires get slashed by perfume-eyed Marie’s new friend and there’s food to buy then the power bill then before you know it the money’s gone and you’re applying as a register dolt at “9 OK Liquor-Deli & Wine Mkt” but if you “Want” the job you must commit “Heart and Soul” and give them sixty seventy eighty hours a week (C’mon! You’re Not Up To It, My Man!) and it’s like, you thought you could NOT WORK but they can’t abide that, the Western Exterminator Co. will find you out and maybe now I should be napping—the sky is yellow rose at ten minutes to sunrise and I feel sorta light-headed and dizzy like maybe having had too much coffee or hungry, weak or needing more coffee or needing a little sleep, maybe that’s it, calf still itchy, that bruised thigh—while instead I’m going off on ‘Frank Black this and Teenager of the Year that’ for now I have declared that I would justify its status as The Greatest Record Album Ever Told and—has this been done? How might this be done? It might perhaps best be done thusly: if in fact—as some suggest—EVERY RECORD ALBUM IS A POP OPERA—which means consequently we listen to everything as a way of hearing about the life of this singer, the towns whereat he’s lived, the folks to him that count—in other words most record albums make dull stories as they only star the singer and his feelings—than this Teenager of the Year documents minds being lost, the shock of primitive peoples as sure things scatter—and how all the more astounding is this Teenager of the Year for how little we learn of Him, how completely this Black man disguises his face and limbs behind every lyric, telling us nothing. From hearing his record albums we learn no details of Frank Blank’s life, whether he is married or divorced, has some children or some parents or the blues, looks forward to the weekend, likes sports, all that autobiographical crap, because he seems so busy visiting other Abstract Plains and bringing us back stories of There that some listeners ask, for example, if he Truly believes in UFOS (on the other hand there are those—not easily dismissed—who insist this entire record album is to be heard as the travel diary of someone kidnapped by extraterrestrials recalling snatches of earth life while gazing out at galaxies zipping past; for details of said phenomenon, see case history of architect David Vincent) (and then there are others who will work to convince you that Black is addicted to some rare and expensive designer drug which crunches dimensions and sends the addict uncontrollably hurtling up and down through this planet’s long history). For ’tis true that down onto every landscape which congeals from the head of this Black man there descends an aviational aberration (select random shuffle on the CD player and on nearly every track you will find objects traveling six trillion miles a year, invisible planes cracking the concrete, hopes that they crash in the sea, wishes that the singer can see a radar blip then he’ll totally flip for if you say it’s nothing but sky he will be one lonely guy, details of how one requires just photon power and eight minutes of an hour to make it to our sun, &c.), onto his radar screen there eternally gleams saucery light, a space alien having lost his way—on Track Twenty Frank Black works desperately to downplay his poetry and freakiness in order to convince the truckers and CB folks he is one of them “I’ve driven every place that they call land/I talk plain talk” when—as if he couldn’t tell this would blow his entire case—he continues still more earnestly, “I’ve seen the moon sitting on the road.” As for the seriousness of his affection for UFOS, okay, it’s like when you follow someone out to their car to help load in something—they might be someone you’re starting to dig, potential friend-stuff—until they pop the trunk and you see something astonishing, a side of them you never expected, your every preconception about them shifts, like when rose-nosed, candy-mouthed Marie blurted out that thing at that party about how “There should be a law against governments,” like maybe they are closet astrology buffs and they carry a whole horoscopic kit in their trunk or they turn out to be hostile to Darwin or Marx or into B&D (or D&D!), they believe Reagan Was Right or they play in badminton championships, maybe they are practicing pagans with a trunkful of books about white witchery and the mystical properties of nettles and burnt cumin, they are revealed to be secretly “Different” in other words. Seeing such things one at first always naturally recoils in horror but we are next obliged to “INVESTIGATE” (as in: “A law against governments, bough-armed, peach-fuzzed Marie, what a cool idea but who’d enforce it?”) for many people are first completely one thing and then completely another and they might have been dedicated Scientologists just a few years before—WHO ARE WE THAT WE “DARE” TO JUDGE—and this says what I mean to say about the affection Frank Black bears for items of a saucery flying nature: how we must tolerate it with sympathy for they are to him the only hope worth hoping, clearly all else pales next to life on other planets. So yes, perhaps Roswell did turn out to be No More than a crashed high-altitude aluminum balloon and other Unexplained Phenomena of The Sky often resolve themselves into less controversial searchlights, meteors, marsh gas, ball lightning, weed seeds, temperature inversions, even experimental runs of the Navy’s XF5U and Yet Still even the skepticalest critics amongst us HOW CAN “THEY” EXPLAIN the nine bright cigar-shaped objects first seen by Kenneth Arnold on 25 June 1947 bouncing about between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams (Kenneth Arnold: “Half the people I see look at me as a combination of Einstein, Flash Gordon and Screwball”), the twenty discs in the sky seen by sixty 4th of July picnickers in Twin Falls, Idaho on “The Same Day” as a United Airlines pilot, first officer, and stewardess sighted two groups of oddly lit craft? The waves of sightings in 1947, and again in August 1952, November 1957, August 1965, March 1966, the airborne things observed by Fain Cole in Anniston, Alabama 8 July, in Wheeling by Mrs. Jess Jarrell of 1313 Lind Street, in Indio by Mrs. Pauline Watts, in Chicago by Capt. Paul L. Carpenter, in Dayton, in Buffalo, in Richmond (“One witness estimated they were traveling at 27,000 miles an hour”), in Warren, Ohio (Walter Bak of Benton Road), in Washington, DC (in the restricted air corridor above the White House), in Levelland, Texas (cars were shut down), in Fort Knox (Capt. Mantell’s F-51 crashed), in Hillsdale, Michigan (watched by eighty-seven coeds and a county civil defense director)? Explain away these and then one must still justify the government’s blatant suppression of the cold hard facts, the CIA’S track record of withholding UFO data, the US Air Force’s bizarre pattern of deletions from its so-called public Project Blue Book—Oh but this too needs further delineation elsewhere for my alarm clock just went clatt
ering off to disturb my slumber, gave me a jolt—I look up and now the day is burning dawn and the sun like some thoroughly boring science project has illumined my apartment and simple items which into mystic shadow had fallen while I composed you this now fiercely are animated and radiantly dressed and though all seems so much clearer than before my throat catches as I contemplate how sugar-cheeked Marie at this moment in time is elsewhere yawning and stretching her arms languorously like tree boughs and probably remarking how the light is like something painted by some famous melancholic Frenchman, god how I hate her, and the night—is that the night there, is that it, rumpled behind me like a carelessly cast-off tarp?—DO YOU MEAN TO SAY I HAVE BEEN WASTING MY BREATH?!—Please no! for they all must learn how wrong it is to forsake and forswear good peoples as “These” Western Exterminators have done to all of us by abandoning this half-built enterprise which is the now teetering career of Frank Black—I must go shower and change clothes for work this very second I am out of time—
* And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? MATTHEW 17:24
* And Pilate gave sentence it would be as they required. LUKE 23:24
* Telstar: Commonly accepted abbreviation for Fender Telecaster; also title of instrumental written by Joe Meek (winner of Ivor Novello Award, 1962). Unclear which is being referenced during Track Nineteen in line, “It’s been so long since my Telstar.”
THEM LOST MANIFESTOES
Publisher’s Note: These street rants appeared in New York City during the last eleven weeks of 1995. Written mainly in pen and ink, they were xeroxed and pasted as 8½” × 11” sheets upon postal kiosks, vending machines, electrical posts, dumpsters, community bulletin boards, subway pillars, fire boxes, salt trucks, ambulette bumpers, and roadblocks.