 Frank Black Here's a little oddity I found in the nooks and crannies of fellow staffer PUP's CD collection during my extended stay at the PUP pad in LA – perhaps it should be called "The Puphouse?" "The Pup Tent?" I'll have to brew on that one a bit longer. At any rate, this CD is a radio promo that features a live-in-the-studio gig by Frank Black on the tour for his first solo album. It's basically an hour-long set recorded at the Electric Ladyland studios for a radio simulcast that is tracked on the CD on only four separate tracks, and it includes a pesky radio announcer as well as radio commercials for Lipton Iced Tea, Citibank, and Bacardi. At one point in the set Frank even begins asking if people like Lipton tea and insisting he likes Lipton tea. So it's not the usual or necessarily ideal concert keepsake. But it's of more than marginal interest to Frank Black fans, and They Might Be Giants fans as well, for TMBG crop up as special guests in the second half of the show. Six years ago, this would have been a blindingly wonderful find, but listening now I mainly hear my own nostalgia for that point in my life where Frank Black and TMBG held me captive with their out-crowd white rock. Ah, those were the days. The depression, the paranoia, the weight gain. Take me back! The set is decent – it makes much less sense to '03 ears than '93 ears – though I know a surprising number of people who still walk around with '93 ears, so to them, I say enjoy it, and ask: "You down with O.P.P.?" Frank Black has become very irrelevant, and listening to this now I realize that he was pretty much irrelevant from the get-go. That doesn't mean the music ain't good, though. I would say that Frank Black was not his best album, so these songs don't do anything in particular for me. "Los Angeles" is a great song, but it's not especially well done here, and then "Czar" is another great song, and it is done pretty well here. Fans will delight in Frank's off-the-cuff intros ("I Heard Ramona Sing" is introduced as a "love song for the Ramones," and "Czar" is introduced as "a song about John Denver"). Non-fans will note that for all his cool weirdness as a member of the Pixies, Frank's pretty much a dork like John Flansburgh, and he makes enough hammy remarks and corny band member introductions to leave longtime Pixies fans wondering "Was he always so nerdy?" Speaking of Flansburgh, his "Spy" is given about as good a treatment as possible by the extended Frank Black band vs. TMBG (Frank, Eric Drew Feldman, Joey Santiago, Tony Maimone, Nick Vincent, John Linnell, John Flansburgh, and Kurt Hoffman). It's the type of song that, especially with its conducted free-form yowling at the end, has gotten much less appealing with time. Apparently this was a new song at the time, not yet having been beaten into the ground by TMBG's still-active fascination with it, so perhaps this recording is "historically important." And you know how much I like "historically important" recordings. The sound quality is good since this is an official soundboard release. The set is hit-and-miss, mostly good but unremarkable – a cover of The Kinks' "This is Where I Belong" is a strong point, and "Fu Manchu" is very inspired – and the TMBG set in the middle ("Mammal" and "Particle Man," neither sounding all that inspired) is really only recommended to the diehardiest of TMBG diehards, since seeking this CD out is likely a pretty fruitless pursuit – I'm sure it's a pretty scarce item. Frank covers "One Step Beyond" as well – otherwise it's mainly songs off the first album. Ho-hum, I was much more interested in this before I actually listened to it.
Review by Billy Corg |