Dr Frank Weakly Reader for 8.02.2019
Thursday is the New Friday Edition
The Weakly Reader is a device I use to index and catalog my own stuff on the scattered, social media infected internet of now, because quite often in this day and age one’s posts will effectively disappear shortly after making their brief debut, becoming all but unfindable even a few days later, unarchived and buried amidst the uncountable layers of the platforms’ heaps of detritus, unsearchable and unknowable.
There may be a better way to do this, but this is the best way I’ve figured out to impose just a bit of order on the Web 2.0 ephemerality and chaos, even if it is only in my tiny insignificant corner of it. It is a help. I’ve been doing it every week for quite some time now.
Can you believe we’re still suffering under the Web 2.0 regime? Should be at least 4.0 by now. Of course, Web 1.0 (Classic) worked just fine and I wish the clock could be turned back to it. No twitter, no Facebook, no corporate censorship, no “pile-ons” and “cancellations”, no “memes”: just a bunch of autonomous blogs run by individuals who could interact with each other or not as they chose. No one had the power to ban anyone else, there was no authority to appeal to to “cancel” people you didn’t like, and everything was archived and searchable. But I’m an old, not very “with it” guy. Everyone else seems pretty happy with cancelling each other and getting banned and censored, and don’t seem to mind the disappearing information system either.
Regardless, yet another Weakly Reader is now upon us. It’s the “Thursday is the New Friday Edition” because I’m most likely going to post it on Thurs. instead of Fri. as is customary because reasons. (We’ll likely miss out on one “feature,” the Friday morning cover song, but I suppose you’ll all have to bear the disappointment.) Anyway, the Dr Frank Show continues to exist, and what exists must be documented and that document indexed and annotated, otherwise… well, otherwise, it won’t be documented, indexed, and annotated and then where would we be?
FRONT BURNER
— SHOWS: the limited show schedule for the rest of the year is slow revealing itself. And when I say “limited,” I mean that in the sense of it being a rare, exclusive, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The Oct. 19th show with Sicko at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco in the poster above was announced this week and it should be a riot, just like old times. Tickets go up on Friday 8.02.2019 at 10 AM PST and I bet they go pretty fast. (As of press time I don’t have a buy link, but you can go to the BotH website when the time comes and they’ll fix you up I’m sure.)
So here’s the shows so far:
— Friday September 20: MTX with Kepi and Motorcycle, at The Blue Lamp 1400 Alhambra Blvd Sacramento, CA 95816. Get tickets here.
— Saturday September 21: MTX at Punk the Burbs Fest 3, Basecamp Pub, 5750 Lakeside Dr. Lisle, IL 60532. Get tickets here.
— Sunday September 22: Dr Frank solo, with the Straight As and Robosapien. Palmer’s Bar 500 Cedar Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55454. Get tickets here. Facebook event page here.
— Saturday October 19: MTX, Sicko, and the Pathogens at the Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th Street (17th @ Missouri) San Francisco, CA 94107. Tix will be available on Friday 8/2 at the BotH website.
More to come.
MTX FILES
— It’s Happening: Mtx forever, I mean. “Two dozen Mr. T Experience songs spanning three decades queued up and ready for mastering” by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering. It’s just the preliminary stages but, man, I can’t believe we got there! RAD-009–1!
— Sounds Rad gets in touch with its inner eight-year-old on the subject of Mtx forever.
— Re-assessing Milk Milk Lemonade eight years ago, as now. We’ve come a long way, babies, but not really.
— "I have a hard time thinking of OBOS as a consciously constructed and prepared ‘piece of work’ that we did and presented to the world. More like this weird thing that just happened…”: similarly re-assessing Our Bodies Our Selves. Things have changed a lot since 2011, but this was the beginning of the Mtx forever process that is happening now.
—We’re in good company, speaking of Mystery Room Mastering:
— The mid-90s punk rock “work shirt”: just reminiscing.
— Sexist Twatism: No Thanks
— Nothing finer: ’65 Epiphone Coronet. Did you know I’m a “notable user”?
— In which we encounter “shout-outs” in the new Lagwagon song: Several people brought these shout-outs to my attention, said shout-outs having been shouted out to the Mr T Experience and Milk Milk Lemonade, plus to Samian, Jawbreaker, Avail, Stephen King, and (maybe) the Chesterfield Kings though that could well just be a shout-out to the cigarettes themselves, or to the Jawbreaker song perhaps? I remember the Chesterfield Kings, the band, fondly, and Jawbreaker already got their shout-out, so I’m just going to go ahead and assume the Lagwagon guy remembers them fondly too.
Look at me, saying “shout-out” all over the place like regular person.
The song is called “Bubble” and you can hear it here. I can relate.
— The MTX / Sicko split 7": A picture of Josh’s copy, plus some “minor secrets” about “Together Tonight” and ruminations on re-issue strategies.
— On The Mr T Experience… and the Women Who Love Them and its artwork: I came across a pic of the promo poster for the “Special Addition” CD re-issue/compilation of this and had some things to say about the confusing legacy of the re-issue and the art, which is possibly Chris Appelgren’s finest design hour.
— Song for Odin: the Mr T Experience — “High School Is the Penalty for Transgressions yet to Be Specified”. Music video by Jonathan London, reposted so I could enter these “minor secrets” and add it to the Song for Odin annals, if annals is the word I want. Turns out there was a lot to say about this one. And have you seen the “Official and semi-official music videos” playlist? Click friend and enter.
— The Making of…: The “King Dork Approximately” music video and how it came to be. Given an excuse to share what I consider one of the best depictions of one of my songs ever, I’ll always take it:
—National Spider-Man Awareness Day is today, so the Internet informs me. (What color ribbon is that?) I figure I might as well do my part, as it’s in a good cause, probably:
This video (that I came across randomly some time ago) is a clever idea and a whole lot of fun. This is the Spider-Man I remember as a kid (the TV show) and is the entire reason I ever wanted to a cover of this song. I haven’t seen, nor am I much interested in, any of the gazillion big budget live action Spider-Man movies they keep releasing. There’s more about that in the “minor secrets” write-up I did for this live version. Super heroes no longer interest me, but songs do and this is a good one.
Obviously the opening credits of the cartoon don’t last as long as the recorded song, resulting in a slide show, but with some effort and editing it could certainly be made to work and synch up. Probably not worth said effort but maybe it’s something to try one day.
At any rate, I wish you and your family a happy and healthy National Spider-Man Awareness Day, those who celebrate it. Don’t drink too much and drive, though, that’s a common problem on NSMA Day and while it’s fine to celebrate and raise a little hell from time to time, safety first.
DR FRANK IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN BUNK CITY
— God, I hate being right all the time: some posts about on-line mobs and censorious authoritarians popped up right in a row on that Facebook “on this date” thing, from three and four years ago. We’re still in that Twilight Zone episode, if not yet quite in the gulag.
— Pimpin’ it: our friend Nate has some thoughts about lyrics, audience, and art in this twitter thread stepping off from a misheard rhyme in the MTX song “Here She Comes”. I think he’s on to something besides “pimpin’ it” just being funny. Whether you plan for it or not, or care or not, a big part and maybe the biggest part of writing a song (or doing any kind of art really) is what happens when it bounces off an individual. Once it leaves you and hits the audience, the resulting interaction of source and target takes on a life of its own that you can’t control. And, as I commented: “that is a good, interesting, and no doubt all-too-flattering assessment of my stuff.” Thanks, Nate.
— My Dad, the Clash, and Me: this week we re-visited this punk rock memoir of going to the city to see the Clash in 1979, secretly shadowed by my dad. It really happened, exactly as I’ve described it.
— E-vite spam: in which the Doctor discovers the spam of all spam least likely to appeal to one such as he.
— Bass all tone no string: the struggle is real.
— King Dork Approximately: the truth about one of the all-time best ever balbum covers.
— When you make a sacrifice you’re supposed to get a wish: sometimes you just gotta quote yourself. It usually happens when I’m a bit drunk, and even when I wake up the next morning to the usual regrets which may include the fact of doing that, of which I have only a vague, or indeed no, memory, people seem to like it. In this case I happened to be listening to the remastered “More than Toast,” and, well, a wish would be nice but it only works in theory, if that, and never in practice as we well know. And if you have no idea what I’m going on about, you must not be in our weird little club, of which it can truly be said: if you’re not in it, you’re out of it.
PICTURE BOOK
— Behold: Boys’ Life / Nuns’ Life; women in tech; Gee, this is serious; Muni, shoppers line; curtain; Nervine; green must be the color of the blues; Calling All Girls; just another groovy chick.
— Just some saints: St. Pantaleon; St. Martha and the dragon; Abdon and Sennen; Ignatius of Loyola; Holy Maccabees, mural by Ernest William Tristram…
— …and finally, a girl in leopard print sitting next to a giant telephone:
IN THE NEWS
— Nothing happened, not that I noticed, anyway.
And that’ll about wrap it up for the Dr Frank Weakly Reader Thursday Is the New Friday Edition. I’ll be back next week with another round-up I’m sure. But for those who made it all the way to the bottom of the page, this Bud’s for you.
