Dr Frank Weakly Reader for 11.26.2018
So, as I mentioned before, I had to delay the “weakly reader” roundup this week because of Thanksgiving shenanigans. (Not that it should matter to anyone, but its usual scheduled time is Friday, after the “your Friday morning ‘Hitler’ or equivalent” feature. The reason it’s scheduled is just that I’ve learned that if I don’t have some structure, everything falls apart. The reason I do it at all is because the internet needs an index, and since it doesn’t provide a reliable one, I have to make my own.)
One note: most of the links here-in are to individual posts on minds.com, which I have started using as the main home-base from which items are spread to the “platforms” (which hide, bury, and suppress them according to their own wonderful policies.) Last night it was brought to my attention that the post on Iggy Pop’s New Values was turning up a “couldn’t load the activity” page, and when I checked my other posts just to see, none of them worked. Of course, coming from Facebook I suspected skullduggery, but it could just be that minds was being particularly, innocently buggy. It seems okay now. But, if you run into trouble of that kind, you can go to the main Dr Frank page and scroll through. Whether bug or skullduggery, that was not affected by last night’s glitch. (Here’s my minds referral link, if you’d like to join in and fight the power with me.)
Anyway, now Thanksgiving is over and we’re on the Christmas train. Or, I should say “MTXmas,” because that’s what it’s called now, evidently. Sounds Radical has some plans, to be revealed. Stay tuned. (And look here and here.)
And now, on with the links….
MTX OLOGY
— The Mr T Experience — “Up and Down”, live at Gilman, 1988, video on Youtube.
— Minor secrets of The Mr T Experience — “Up and Down”, live at Gilman, 1988 revealed! Write up on minds.
— The Mr T Experience — “Thank You for Not Being One of Them”, live at RCKNDY, Seattle, 1998. Closest thing I’ve got to a being-thankful-for-stuff song.
— Your Sunday morning “Here She Comes”, on ukelele from Spike Forehand. (That’s a Facebook video post, just so you know.)
— We’re Bad. We’re Nationwide. MTX Shards LP and CD, and the King Dork Approximately the Album CD, spotted in meat space at Vintage Vinyl in New Jersey by our own Lauren Banjo. (Also, the Lookouting live album — the tale is here.)
— More medals than Brezhnev: Lauren has all the pins. (And since press time, she’s discovered even more. At this rate, she’ll never forget us.)
DR FRANK OLOGY
— The solo show at the Make Out Room happened, and here are some post-show reflections, on guitar playing, new songs, old songs, etc.
— As you may have been able to gather from the photo above, Lauren Banjo got her Andromeda Klein box.
— Because I referenced (in my Vinyl Collector post on the Humans) the influence of college radio on my teenaged musical horizons, I linked to my old essay “How College Radio, Dr Demento, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus Turned Me into a Punk Rock Antiquarian.” Turns out a lot of people missed it the first time around.
— I am still laughing at this stock-photo “cover” art image for a public-domain Kindle edition of The Brothers Karamazov. As John Ross Bowie commented on twitter: “those two knuckleheads!”
OTHER PEOPLE’S MUSIC
— On minds.com’s Vinyl Collector group: it’s a group, on minds, for vinyl collectors. We post pictures of records with little write-ups about them. (Join up and join in if you like, or just lurk.)
- Funky Junction Play a Tribute to Deep Purple: it’s Thin Lizzy as you’ve most likely never heard them before, and also a tribute to how nutty it gets when you’re a record collector who likes Thin Lizzy that much.
- The Humans — Beat e.p. featuring “I Live in the City”. Sometimes, with records, it’s a matter of “right place right time”…
- Iggy Pop — New Values. Not everybody’s favorite Iggy record, but it is mine. Give it a chance.
— As with last week’s essay on Yes and ideology, this extensive essay on the history and compelling strangeness of Blue Oyster Cult’s Imaginos, and how I met Sandy Pearlman too early, was a Vinyl Collector post that swelled outside of its box and migrated to Medium.
— Good Morning World: Gene Simmons — “Drinkin’ Wine”; M.O.T.O. — “The Chicks Can Tell”; Ray Davies — “Thanksgiving Day” live on TV; Parry Gripp — “You’re a Turkey”.
THE WORLD’S IN PICS
— This is somebody’s mom, in a tree, in the rain.
— Nicolas Roeg died. Walkabout is one of my favorite films.
— Bertolucci died. The Conformist is one of my favorite films.
— Sex and Death; Elizabeth of Hungary; Marlo and friend; it’s a turkey hooker; Bradys by Greg; Edmund the Martyr; three little pilgrims; nobody knits for Sue Brett; Cecilia; don’t cry, honey, we’ll make it fit; Clement I; Chrysogonus; Catherine of Alexandria; as John McLaughlin used to say, gobble gobble; stop cutting down trees idiots; tree skirt.
IN THE NEWS
— “Selfie” Saves Man from 99 Years in Prison. Not so sure I agree with 100% of your police work there.
— That homeless guy who bought gas for the lady Go Fund Me turned out to be a scam, surprising everyone but me. Did you know (little known fact) that the world “gullible” is not actually in the dictionary?
— “No, Sex Wasn’t Better for Women under Socialism.”
— Elevator-gate update. Refer to “lingerie” in the presence of a lady at your peril.
Till next time,
I will remain,
a doctor of nothing.
It sounds important and hurts no one.
Unlike most doctors.
