While My Guitar Passive-Aggressively Ignores You but Cries Quietly Inside
The Dr Frank Weakly Reader for 5.15.2020
Welcome friends to another Dr Frank Weakly Reader, that self-indexing thing I do, an attempt to tame the chaos of my sad little corner of the social media-ravaged internet and render it searchable at least, just in case I or anyone else might like to find any of the items therein at any point in the future.
It may not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing. As always, I will add that though I do it mainly for myself and the theoretical faceless seekers of itmes just referenced, you are certainly welcome to read along. And while I know few will do so, for those few who do do so, I try to make it as entertaining and interesting as I can so that if and when they do so they will have done so with the result that having done so has done what it was meant to do.
As for the title, well, sometimes it’s hard to come up with titles. But I have been annoying people with my guitar “playing” and oblique emoting for decades now. I only want to be loved, which is to say, I don’t much care either way and anyway I’m really not that bad at guitar or emoting compared to the worst monsters of history. Something to cling to in these troubled times.
And now, without further ado, if ado means what I think it does, let’s get on with it, shall we?
FRONT BURNER
— Keep the Freaking Out to a Minimum: Sounds Rad’s super limited pop up offer continues, with a new MTX shirt, a Mopes shirt, and special deals throughout the catalog. Details may be found in this Mothers Day themed ad from last week; and here’s the direct link. And here’s another ad.
And this one’s a video
Also, one Dr. Frank Martinis (a real person) stumbled upon the old Dr Frank shirt depicting a girl in a martini glass and bought a whole bunch of them. I can see the point. Maybe he wants to give them to his patients. This is what passes for big news around here. It’s a shirt-powered economy after all.
— and, btw, Mtx forever is still a thing:
MTX PHIALS
— The 1989 demo tape: when Rough Trade US folded, we recorded a few self-funded songs and sent out some cassette dubs to see if we could interest any other labels. (We couldn’t, it turned out. Interest any labels, I mean, other than Lookout, and six of these songs formed one half of what was later released as Making Things with Light; we recorded the rest of it in early 1990, I believe.)
Anyway, an Instagrammer, somehow, got hold of one of these cassettes and posted pictures of it (at left, inset) which is how I realized I’d never actually seen one. Before now I mean. You can read more about it in my post on the subject.
The songs on the cassette are “What Went Wrong,” “So Long Sucker” and “I Don’t Get It.” The other three from those sessions — those that wound up on the album — were “Zero,” “Psycho Girl,” and “Send Me a Postcard.” There was one other one on that reel, untitled but labelled “The Dead Frank Song” — we never finished this one, for good reason as far as I can recall. It was about the TV movie of my life that would be made after my untimely death and the only thing it had going for it was a pretty good opening riff (that I couldn’t even really play.) Now you know.
— MTX / Groovie Ghoulies / Nazmo King, at Jimmy’s in New Orleans, late ’90s, a flier posted and found on twitter. If I’m not mistaken, this is the show where I first wrote and played “Mr Ramones” solo during a broken string break, based on a couple of guys I was talking to before the show.
— Another old shirt excavation (Revenge Is Sweet tour, ca. 1997) seen on twitter.
— God, guts, and guns… this weeks Song for Odin™ was The Mr T Experience doing “I Love You, but You’re Standing on My Foot” at Emo’s in Austin, November, 1995.
Extensive “minor secrets” write-up here. Songs for Odin playlist is here. For those who care, this is the 134th entry, covering 110 songs, and well over two years of weekly posts. I wonder how long I can keep this going?
— Speaking of Songs for Odin, I was reminded by FB memories that it was two years ago that I sang “What Do I Get?” with the Smoking Popes on stage in Chicago:
It was a memorable moment, and one that felt “significant.” There’s a rather heart-felt “minor secrets” write-up about it all here.
— …and finally, your Friday morning “Told You Once,” from a guy named Mike on Instagram. It’s IG video and doesn’t seem to want to embed here for some reason; and, it turns out, the YouTube link won’t embed/load either, but if you want to see the “official” video of the original, it’s here. Anyway, here’s what Mike looks like:
LADLES AND GENTLEMEN, DR FRANK
— Yours truly, an age ago — another old pic dug up and stumbled upon on Facebook (inset, left.) It captures a certain something, approximately my essence it could be argued. I wish I still had that shirt — it was a good gig shirt because it was so threadbare and worn-through — but it caught fire in an unfortunate drunken cooking accident and did not survive.
— Dept. of bons mots:
Trying to come up with a good standard answer for “advice to the young” queries. How does “nobody gets it, nobody cares, and no one wants to help but give it a shot anyway” sound?
— Kind words on Tom Henderson, King Dork Approximately, and “balbum” from Rick Love on twitter.
— All My Vinyl, Part 3: revisiting some stuff I wrote about records: the Rosemary’s Baby soundtrack, the Kinks, Johnny Moped, Magazine, and the Hardy Boys.
— Hell of Oakland: I’m not sure how serious this flier seeking the return of a lost pigeon might be, I’m really not. Sure, I mean. The “Meyer lemon reward” seems satirical, as does “used to hang out on Marty Nemko’s roof.” On the other hand, this is a weird town. Anyway, I saw it stapled to a telephone pole in rich people Oakland and felt it should be documented.
— Yours truly with Pauline and Zoe, London, most likely at the Garage, late ’90s, noticed on Facebook:
PICTURE BOOK
— Roman calendar: Translation of the Relics of St Andrew (depicted in Wollfort’s portrait); Our Lady of China; Philip and James; Blessed Joana, Princess of Portugal; Agnes of Poitiers; Boniface of Tarsus and Aglaida, by Cabanel; St Hallvard Vebjørnsson, patron saint of Oslo, manhole cover relief…
— Behold: The Sacred Elephant by Moreau; reading into oblivion; a boat, the sea, an umbrella, a beer, and crusty old seaman… just your typical SF scene yeah?; a very young Barbara Stanwyck, en flapper; calling all combatants…
— … and finally:
IN THE NEWS
— RIP: Little Richard and Betty Wright died this week. Very sad and an occasion for appreciation and solemn reflection in both cases, but also for celebration in that they made the world a vastly richer, more beautiful, and more meaningful place and we can still listen to them sing any time we want.
FIN
And that’s all there is to this week’s Dr Frank Weakly Reader. But for those who’ve made it this far down the page, here’s Falero’s Enchantress:
See you next week.
