Dr. Frank's What's-it

Notebook

It is tempting to imagine that a simple idea in the minds of simple people decades past and thousands of miles away can explain a complex event. The notion that local east European antisemitism killed the Jews of eastern Europe confers upon others a sense of superiority akin to that the Nazis once felt. These people are quite primitive, we can allow ourselves to think. Not only does this account fail as an explanation of the Holocaust; its racism prevents us from considering the possibility that not only Germans and Jews but also local peoples were individual human agents with complex goals that were reflected in politics. When we fall into the trap of ethnicization and collective responsibility, we collude with Nazi and Soviet propagandists in the abolition of political thought and the lifting of individual agency.

--Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

Aftermath

So I guess that vinyl sale was a success, in that I have hardly any of the LPs left. Thanks very much folks. I may well do it again next time I find myself with some time and some product so watch this space.

In the meantime, I still have a few inquiries about the remaining odds and ends coming in, so this is a post to make clear what's still left to be got. (Also, I found another box of assorted CDs so the CD inventory has changed a bit.) I'll leave a link to this post on the side panel as well.

Check the original post for the details on how to order something. Also, though it's not noted there, it's a good idea to let me know in your initial message if you're outside the US, because shipping costs more and I have to present the packages personally at the post office in most cases so that information will affect the shipping amount charged and the timeline for sending the stuff out.

LPs ($20): Night Shift

10" ($15): Big Black Bugs Bleed Blue Blood

7" ($8): Tapin' Up My Heart, Andromeda Klein, Bomb Bassets "Please Don't Die", Bomb Bassett/McCrackins "Trip" split.

CDs ($10): Everyone's Entitled, Night Shift, Making Things with Light, And the Women.., Love Is Dead (1 left), Revenge Is Sweet, Show Business, Alcatraz, Yesterday Rules

CDep: ($9) Miracle of Shame

CDR ($9): The Way Things Sound Like, Eight Little Songs

shirts ($20): Dr. Frank / Kepi Euro-tour (M, S, and Ladies' M only), King Dork Approximately, Sam Hellerman

Hakker 8

Spent Last Night Drinkin' Wine, a Little Bourbon, too, and Listening to the Partridge Family

I have twin aunts who are only four years older than me. When I was a kid they would sometimes babysit me, in concert or, more often, singly, but always with their respective complement of friends. I vividly remember one time when one of these aunts and all of her friends asked the 7 year old me what my favorite group was. Well, I responded with the only "group" I'd ever heard of (the Partridge Family.) They scoffed and teased me about it, and when a Partridge Family song came on the radio they would stand at attention and observe it with mock solemnity in my honor. She used to give me the albums as gifts sometimes. I guess I never lost the taste.

(They also used to say continually "hey babe take a walk on the wild side" and when I first heard the song years later it was a pretty big "click".)

While supplies last...

UPDATE: as of now, unless I'm miscounting, all the Love Is Deads are gone, as are most of the other LPs. I Still have some Night Shift, Making Things with Light, and Big Black Bugs, along with the 7"s and the CDs not struck through below. Thanks for shopping!

So, I've still got a bit of Lookout vinyl, though I don't keep track of it too carefully -- or at all really: every now and again I'll open a box and what's in there is in there. I've been selling them at shows recently, and last week, because someone asked, I did a little vinyl "sale" through a post on facebook. People seemed to appreciate it, and I recently discovered a box of LK 134s (Love Is Dead) that I thought were all gone, so here I am doing it again.

Vinyl is clearly the main point, but I've also got some CDs, if anyone's interested. I also have a few of the Dr. Frank / Kepi Eurotour shirts if anyone's interested in them, as well as King Dork Approximately and Sam Hellerman is a Genius shirts. (It's cheaper to order those from Interpunk, but if anyone wants to add them to an order for convenience I won't say no.) Also some Bomb Bassets 7"s. Finally, though it is cheaper and easier to get the digital version, I can make a CDR of the home-made live solo album The Way Things Sound Like for anyone who wants the physical object; and I also found a few old Eight Little Songs CDRs, too, if anyone wants one of those.

Here's what I've got:

LPs ($20): Alcatraz, Show Business is My Life, Revenge Is Sweet, Love Is Dead, Milk Milk Lemonade, Making Things with Light, Night Shift

10" ($15): Big Black Bugs

7" ($8): Tapin' Up My Heart, Andromeda Klein, Bomb Bassets "Please Don't Die", Bomb Bassett/McCrackins "Trip" split.

CDs ($10): Everyone's Entitled, Night Shift, And the Women.., Love Is Dead, Show Business, Alcatraz, Yesterday Rules

CDep: ($9) Miracle of Shame

CDR ($9): The Way Things Sound Like, Eight Little Songs

shirts ($20): Dr. Frank / Kepi Euro-tour (M, S, and Ladies' M only), King Dork Approximately, Sam Hellerman

If you want in on this, drop me a line (at themagnificentdrfrank@gmail.com) saying what you want, and I'll calculate the shipping and total and tell you the amount to paypal to: themagnificentdrfrank@gmail.com. Include in the paypal order a list of what you're ordering so I don't screw up. And when you do the paypal order, please do it as an order for goods/services and include your address in the order. (Avoiding the fee by making it a gift instead is a nice idea but in fact makes the whole thing more of a hassle, plus the shipping often winds up costing more.)

The Way It Sounds Like

You can get a digital version of this here if you want one.

I put it together as a CDR to sell on a solo acoustic tour of Europe that I did with Kepi in the Fall of 2012. We had a bunch of printed "covers" and would make ten to fifteen discs on Stefan's laptop in the car on the way to each gig. We probably unloaded around a hundred of them in all. Its purpose was to be a souvenir item for people who went to those particular shows, a purpose which was served, and then pretty much to disappear and fade away thereafter, which it pretty much did. However, I do get regular requests to make it available, which is what I'm doing now.

They're all live solo acoustic songs from a variety of sources, basically whatever I could lay my hands on in the few days before flying to Italy. The quality varies (so this is fair warning of that) but that's life, and they are what they are, and it is to be honest pretty much what I sound like live solo acoustic, mostly.

Doing this only via bandcamp, and I'm not sure how long I'll keep it up before I take it down, so get it while it lasts.

Songs: I Just Wanna Do It with You / She Turned Out to Be Crazy / I Don't Need You Now / Danny Partridge / Sorry for Freaking Out on the Phone Last Night / King Dork / How'd the Date End? / I Wanna Ramone You / Jill / Goody Goody Gumdrops / Knock Knock (Please Let Me In) / Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend / I Wrote a Book about Rock and Roll / You Today / Cingular Wireless (Worse than Hitler)

Thought for the Day

JoAnn Wypijewski in the Nation, addressing the strange paradox of putative liberals' calls for greater state power as a way of addressing state abuses of power:

Now, so drilled are we in the language of crime and punishment that any skepticism about the central role of victims seems scandalous. It is an effort to recall that due-process rights belong to the accused. It is an effort to presume innocence of the accused, to see a trial as the opposite of a forum for the aggrieved, to acknowledge that the state is not free—under that crumpled thing the Constitution—to do whatever it takes to “get the bad guy,” and we are not free when it does.

(via Fredrik deBoer.)

Show Update once again

So the new stuff here is the details for the Oct 10 daytime YA convention and the Casper WY show on 11/20. More to come.

Saturday, Oct. 10

Two things happening. First:

I will be speaking (and probably doing a song or two) at the San Mateo County Library YA Novelist Convention. Also: Courtney Alameda, Alexis Bass, Linda Covella, Maurene Goo, Ann Jacobus, Stephanie Kuehn, Gretchen McNeil, Tamara Ireland Stone. Burlingame High School cafeteria building, 1 Mangini Way, Burlingame, CA 94010. 2PM-6PM. I'll be on near the beginning.

Then, later that night:

I'll be part of a truly impressive line-up of satirical writers, presented by Litquake under the name Foolishness, Stupidity, and Vice, Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco CA. 8PM. Tickets available here.

w/host Ben Griffin and featuring Lisa Brown, Will Durst, Mark Fiore, Daniel Handler, T. Geronimo Johnson, Frank Portman, and Tom Toro

Friday, Nov. 20

This is the 20th anniversary Lillingtons show, with the Queers, MTX, PEARS and Chesterfield, Hall of Champions, Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, 1700 Fairgrounds Road, Caspar, Wyoming.

Saturday, Nov. 21

Queers, MTX, Lillingtons at the Gothic Theatre, 3263 South Broadway, Englewood, Colorado. Tickets here.

More MTX shows TBA in December... soon.

Guitar News

The attempt to get my old Les Paul Jr. (the white one) into playing condition had hit a major snag a ways back because one of the bridge posts seems to have been epoxied in at some point and wouldn't come out without risk of major wood loss. (The reason it has to come out is a problem that is pretty typical of the 50s Juniors apparently: over the last 60 years the posts had gradually leaned forward and were actually touching the pick up. I think this was a problem early on that I didn't quite notice, because in order to play it halfway in tune, I learned to play the parts of chords on the upper strings a half step down and bend them up as I went up the neck, requiring a real re-adjustment of technique when I finally switched to a less idiosyncratic instrument.)

Anyway, just got word that the damn thing finally did come out, with no drilling necessary even. Smooth sailing from here according to the guy who's working on it. Best news ever, because it always sounded great and here's how cool it looks:

Uber Convo

You know, Uber rides often make me feel pretty good about America. Last night's driver was Egyptian and we had a very interesting conversation about authoritarian governments, media spin, history, and Egyptian politics. He said his family and friends back home don't really grasp what freedom or liberty is, and that he first realized there was something different about the US when he first witnessed police officers waiting in line with everyone else, something that had been simply beyond his comprehension previously. There's lots wrong with America obviously and plenty to criticize; nevertheless I won't soon forget that statement, and there's definitely something in it.

"Those people, the American writers of the 1920s and thereabouts, knew how to conjure two universes at once, the ordinary one in front of us, and the invisible one that occasionally winks at us from behind a column..."

Paul Berman talks Popes and Catholicism:

It is sometimes said of Chateaubriand, the author of The Genius of Christianity in 1800, that he was drawn to every aspect of the Catholic Church except its Christianity; and I find this understandable. In modern society it is the Catholic Church that most assiduously cultivates the memory of ancient Rome and its civilization—the Roman arts and their medieval legacies, and the Roman philosophical doctrines and their own legacies. The idea that some corner of modern culture is devoted to maintaining those particular legacies seems to me immensely moving. Now and then I read that a 100-year-old church in Brooklyn or the Bronx or some other American place is about to be sold to real-estate developers, and I become nearly as agitated as the half-dozen elderly parishioners who are sorry to see their old temple get torn down. The exterior architecture of those churches is often of merit, and, whatever the quality of the interiors and the statuary and artwork may be, I regard those buildings as temples to temple-ness. They house whatever is left of Rome.