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Every other Monday, Joe posts answers to questions he receives over at the Frankophiles Forum. Ask your question now, and come back in a couple of weeks to see if it was answered.

June 4, 2007

Hypothetically speaking, what recreational drugs would you enjoy and/or recommend, if any?
MikeBC

A. I wouldn't recommend any.

i was interested to hear your aspiration to be mccoy tyner (i assume you were being serious) at one point in your life. i'm a big tyner fan... do you like don pullen or cecil taylor? is jazz dead? why hasn't piano jazz worked more prominently into your show soundscapes?
Drjoe

A. Yes, it's true, I did study and try to emulate McCoy Tyner. Which brings to mind his great solo with John Coltrane from "My Favorite Things." But I was not really a serious jazz fan. I found much of the music too abstract and difficult. I preferred performers who played hard driving, spirited jazz like Cannonball Adderley.

The music I used as background in my programs was chosen to deepen the mood. Putting in a great piano solo would have distracted the listener's attention from the monologue or scene being played.

I ran into someone the other day who said he thought you were about 90 years old - like, haven't you been doing programs for the past 45 years, or something. freaked me out.

I'm thinking you're in your 50s. I saw you in Chicago and you didn't seem that old. and even in "Goodbye" you didn't sound that old. How old are you anyway?

And, do you think about aging? Or do you just figure you'll do what you'll do and when it's done, it's done. You are who you are, as young as you feel, or something like that?

I hope that you are feeling okay. I hope you are taking care of yourself because I sure want to see what's been brewing in that mind of yours in some kind of "Joe Frank" creative manifestation! Love your work - even if you are 90
Laramie

A. That's pretty funny. No, I'm nowhere near 90 and I can't imagine living that long anyway. And where did you get the idea I've been making radio for 45 years, when I started my career at WBAI in New York City in 1976?

One of the conundrums of aging is that many of us live inside bodies hurtling toward entropy and decay as our spirits continue to strive to become more enlightened. On the other hand, I see a lot of the elderly in my own family, not to mention the people at my mother's nursing home, who have become increasingly narrow, myopic, rigid and vapid as they've aged. I just hope this doesn't happen to me or you or anybody else reading this.

As for the future, I'll be doing a six week run of live Wednesday night performances at a club in LA beginning after Labor Day in September. I'll have a live band, back-up singers, maybe even some dancers. An official announcement with the particulars will go out shortly after the July 4th weekend.

I read or heard somewhere that there were instances where you were finishing up mixing the second half of a radio show while the first half was on air. Did you really ever cut it that close, and if so, did it happen frequently?
Pleasantburg

A. It happened twice, both times on KCRW.

Single-handedly writing, recording, editing monologues, scenes and music, and finally mixing everything together in weekly radio shows (with the aid of an engineer) sometimes pushed me to the limit. In two cases, I'd finished half a show by airtime and had to work feverishly on the second half in order to get it up by the time the first half ended. There was also an instance, back in 1979, when I'd completed a radio drama at about 2am for NPR due the following morning, when the studio engineer, the director and myself realized we were roughly three minutes short. This was unacceptable. So we spent the next hour performing an oddball improv analyzing the show we'd just completed in order to meet the 59 minute requirement. That program was called "'Til You're Gone."

Back in the heady days of my youth, I really used to enjoy listening to your programs while under the influence of a certain green, herbal, inexplicably illicit substance. Something about the hypnotic drones, the music, your voice, and the free associative nature of your narratives made them really easily absorbed while in this stimulated mindset. I also recall a few references to this herb that betrayed an intimate knowledge of it. So my obvious question is, do you have a history of using said substance?
ghastly_fop

A. I once played a night football game under its influence in Iowa City, and there were one or two other occasions in my life. But no, I almost never used drugs. I saw too many of my friends rendered stupid, compromised and even destroyed by them. However, I did spend a summer in both Great Barrington and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, playing pick-up basketball, dating beautiful young German flight attendants, and being drunk almost every day. So I did have my moment.

See you next time,

Joe

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