You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you here
The Dr Frank Weakly Reader for 8.14.2020 (and 8.07.20)
Welcome, friends, to the release day of the Sounds Radical re-issue of The Mr T Experience… and the Women Who Love Them. RAD-013.
And welcome, friends, to another Dr Frank Weakly reader, my attempt to tame the chaos of my internet so all the stuff I do can be found in future should I, or anyone, wish to try to find it. I fell too far behind too soon last week and had to skip the Weakly Reader, so we’ve got a double “issue” here. As I said, I do it mainly for my own use, but you’re welcome to read along, and in view of the possibility that you might, I try to make it pretty and entertaining, insofar as such a thing is posssible.
As I said, this is the official release day of the Sounds Radical re-issue of The Mr T Experience… and the Women Who Love Them (RAD-013). The photo at the head, taken by Aaron’s brother Josh, is the only one I’ve come across of the …atWLT MTX line-up. It was a short-lived one, as Aaron had begun touring with Samiam soon after the recording. we played only a handful of shows in that form and I’m pretty sure Joel was already installed by the time the record actually came out.
Anyhow, read on (on the Front Burner below) for the run-down on RAD-13, and then further for other run-downs, if run-downs are your bag.
Let’s begin.
FRONT BURNER
— The Mr T Experience… and the Women Who Love Them: like I said, it’s August 14, which is the release date of the Sounds Radical re-issue of this 1994 release. (RAD-013.) It’s the first time this material in entirety has appeared on vinyl, which has certainly has been a long time coming. We’re lucky the tape survives. We did the restoration, transfer, and mastering as carefully as we could, with terrific results. Wait till you hear it. It blew me away, just as it will probably blow you.
As I’ve mentioned before, there were some Covid-related delays at the pressing plant, and the precise delivery date of the vinyl is still a bit uncertain, though I’m told it won’t be too long now. (A release date in these times is only an approximation where physical manufacturing is concerned, as you’ve no doubt noticed.) The second pressing (steel grey vinyl, 150 gram) is at press time still available but there’s a third one (new color, soon to be revealed) already in production.
Anyway, the CDs did come in and, though I don’t usually say such things about CDs, they’re beautiful:
And the commemorative shirts look grand:
The one on the right is a re-creation of the familiar one we used to take on tour with us way back when (beginning ca. 1995); the darker record-cover art one on the left was a special variation that Sounds Rad offered only to the mailing list and to people who called “dibs” for the record. Here’s the link for the Sounds Rad mailing list if you want in on stuff like that.
— And here’s a song-by-song listicle, by me, in New Noise Magazine. There are some “minor secrets” in there, and a player where you can listen to the whole thing. You can listen on all the places where things stream, if you want. I recommend the vinyl for the full experience, but the digital sounds good too and will do in a pinch.
— Also, in other news: Mason got his Mtx forever, which is still a thing.
MTX IS THE WORD
— Yesterday rules: a large collection of photos from MTX at the Great American Music Hall for Lookout Records’ 10th anniversary, July 2003 (from Neil Motteram on FB.) We were in the middle of recording Yesterday Rules if I remember correctly.
— Dept. of MTX memories, sort of: “The penultimate MTX show in London (November ’97, with the Ghoulies) was the day after Epic Soundtracks died, and I dedicated songs to his memory but no one had any idea what I was talking about. I tried several other references just to see till I finally found one that struck a chord: the Teletubbies
A guy on twitter was at the show and actually remembered not knowing what I was talking about!
— Artefacts: an old Gilman flier via Sounds Rad. (Those were the days); also a pandemic project (i.e., some framed fliers) at Sounds Rad HQ.
— "72 pressings, 27 pins/buttons, 23 shirts/hoodies, 21 stickers, 8 boxes, 6 posters/flyers, 4 valentines, 4 books, 2 postcards, 2 guitar picks, and a lunchbox, pennant, setlist, matchbox, and DVD….” Lauren’s 1000 days of MTX!
— Some records I signed, with an inadvertent caption.
— Cassette ephemera: Aaron posted a pic of the cassette tape I gave him of songs to learn when he joined MTX in late 1988. (The post is on that FB Lookout Records page.) The source of recordings seems to be the “Lowdown Demo.”
More about it at that link and at the Songs for Odin “minor secrets” write-up for one of those songs, “The One that Got Away.” (See directly below.)
— Odin:
First: The Mr T Experience — “The One that Got Away,” live at Gilman Street, Berkeley, August 1988.
This is an old Jon von song that never got officially recorded or release. More “minor secrets” on this and other songs on the “Lowdown demo” here.
Second: Dr Frank — “You’re the Only One”, live and out-of-sync in Rotterdam, Holland, August 2004:
“Minor secrets” here.
Songs for Odin playlist here.
— OMG THIS IS AMAZING: in which the Velveeta corporation twitter account asks for “cheesy” songs for a playlist and discovers, well you know…
… and your Friday morning “Hitler”… found on youtube:
…and on the covers playlist it goes.
DR FRANK IS ALMOST LITERALLY ON FIRE
— Shave Your Legs: I snapped this photo (inset left) in a touristical witchy shop in Salem, Mass. during a recent trip, in the spell section labelled “Love and Romance.” Not sure how it’s supposed to “work.” But those who understand that it’s funny know why it’s funny in the context of the Dr Frank Weakly Reader (and that’s probably pretty much everybody reading this, if there are any.)
— On being mistaken for Dave Matthews and asked to sign a Starbucks cup: everyone was left disappointed.
— I was born in San Fran-sissy-co, grew up in Mildew and Boringame in San Ma-gay-o County, went to college in Brokely, and settled in Phlegmescal, Choke-land… Always been interested in and charmed by the derogatory names people give their towns, and this map is a nice, though obviously incomplete, resource.
(nb. Hellmont, Slut Heaven, Queerview…)
— The New Left and Me, Part 2: Some stuff I wrote about the Weather Underground and the SLA, by way of reviewing a couple of documentaries. The post is on Medium.
— A dissent on the apparently universally-loved HBO Perry Mason re-vamp: I’m having a hard time getting into it, and I wrote a little essay about it: “Too Much Plot Getting in the Way of the Story.” (That title borrows a Joe Bob Briggs line, if you didn’t catch it.)
— Soda bomb: It looks like a crime scene, but it’s actually just an unfortunate home-made blueberry soda explosion. These things happen.
PICTURE BOOK
— Roman calendar: Holy Maccabees; Our Lady of the Angels, painting by Bougeureau; manuscript page from the Office of the Finding of the Relics of Saint Stephen; Saint Dominic and Religiosam vitam; Oswald the Martyr in stained glass; The Transfiguration, illumination from the Floreffe Bible: Quem Moyses velat vox ecce paterna revelat. Quemque prophetia tegit est enixa Maria. (“That which Moses veiled, behold the voice of the fathers reveals, and that which the prophets covered, Maria brought forth”); Saint Cajetan; Cyriacus the Martyr, by Mattias Grunewald; the Blessed John of Salerno; Saint Lawrence; Saint Philomena; Clare of Assisi; Saint Irene of Hungary (with John II Komnenos) by Antoine Helbert; Dormition and Vigil of the Assumption…
— Behold: the vampire’s daughter; a girl and her sword; Lady Satan hurries toward the government building; a woman with a tangerine head, from lexicon love; poster for Gun Crazy, one of the greatest films ever made; a gal and her torpedo; in the artist’s studio; everything is going to be fine; lady with lion; four naked ladies in a boat; underwater moonlight; just a girl with a great big king’s head, demons looking on; sailor Morelle and his hundred brides; bookcase converts to a coffin when needed; Doctor and robot; grass happens; and: Pinhead Po will tear your soul apart…
IN THE NEWS
— lol: ‘Ek said that although musicians don’t often publicly praise Spotify, the data suggests they’re actually satisfied with the payout rates. “In private they have done that [praised Spotify] many times, but in public they have no incentive to do it,” he remarked.’
This by way of comment, sort of.
— Spotify To Stop Paying Artists For Time In Songs When They’re Not Singing: “We’re also going to come down hard on made-up lyrics like ‘ba-da-da-da’ or just repeating the word ‘yeah.’”
— To every social problem there is an equal and opposite solution:
Problem: “the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline, in which African American, Latinx and other kids of color are criminalized rather than educated. Five- and 6-year-olds are handcuffed and hauled off to jail routinely in this country. And this criminalizing of children increases dramatically when cops are assigned to work in schools.”
Solution: cancel screening of Kindergarten Cop, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
— You are presenting at a graduate conference in the humanities — what is the vague title of your paper?
Just a dumb old game / meme, but still kinda funny. Mine was: I remember that (or I remember you remembering it): the politics of normativity as a form of erasure.
Even though I know people still write this way in academe, and it’s still as silly and funny as ever, there’s something almost quaint about this in 2020. These days there’s arguably a lot more dangerous stuff afoot than insular elite code-talking etiquette and the bad writing that ensues from it. The destruction of the American republic, of liberal values, of Western Civilization… witch hunts and Maoist struggle sessions… incipient mob-enforced totalitarianism… not quite so funny now. We didn’t know how good we had it way back when our Foucault-quoting TA left it in the classroom and everybody wasn’t trying to get everybody else fired for telling jokes or “liking” the wrong tweet, or trying to cancel screenings of Arnold Schwarzenegger films.
FIN
And that’s it for this Weakly Reader. But for those who’ve made it this far all the way down the page, here’s Raquel Welch:
See you next week.
