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LA Weekly - 1997
"Joe Frank is Off the Air" Los Angeles, California (contd)
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Cherokee called him at the station and left messages, told him she thought they were kindred spirits, something she figured he hears a lot. He does. Frank is always being told that he speaks for someone, to someone, that people know exactly where he's coming from, that they "get" him. Some share life experiences. Others send him presents: pictures of Josephine Baker, decorated crosses, pretend money. What Cherokee could offer was the club she worked at. You ought to see the club, she told him over the phone, it might spark something. Her description intrigued him: a gentlemen's club where male customers pay $21 for an hour of dancing, the definition of which is open to negotiation. "I don't know, maybe I'll find something there I can use," he said, though he had no idea for what medium. His only leads since deciding to quit radio were Cherokee's club and an invitation from a New York band called Firewater, which asked him to do a live set at the Viper Room. He'd never heard of the band. But its members had gotten their hands on some of his tapes and had the usual reaction. "It produced exactly the reaction any good and effective art should," says Firewater's Todd Ashley. "'What the fuck was that?'"
Frank was intrigued by the idea of live performance, the opportunity to actually work a crowd, to feed off its energy. On the other hand, his radio shows were masterworks of editing, and there is none of that onstage. And there was the other thing. "It could be a complete and total catastrophe. I mean, I could be up there and just go down in flames. Completely humiliated. People could be disappointed, they could see me as a fraud. I mean, it could be really, really awful." So the live gig was still a question mark. The one thing he was sure of was meeting Cherokee in person for the first time.
He arrives well before their appointed time, paying his $5 cover and attempting to look at ease among the mirrored balls, time cards and 30 young women displayed like kewpie dolls against the wall. He takes a seat and glances around the room, then at the ladies in waiting, and hails a waitress. "Is Cherokee here?"
Silence, her glance screaming "Stalker."
"It's okay, she's a fan of his," says a companion. "He's on the radio." Frank winces.
"You're on the radio? What do you do?"
"I just do a show."
"What kind of show?"
"It's a radio show . . . you know . . . don't worry about it."
"Are you a DJ?"
"No."
"Do you do talk radio?"
"Uh, not really. It's just a show . . . We'll just wait."
He is not being coy. Though current media law seems to dictate that every story about him contain the words edgy or dark, Frank is actually polite to a fault. It's just that even he can't describe what he does in the confines of casual conversation. Perhaps that's the show's power. Cherokee happened onto Joe Frank one Friday night, his voice drawing her in like an undertow until she felt the requisite confusion and excitement. "I'd listen and think, 'What the hell is this?' I always found myself trying to figure out how much of this came from Joe's life and how much came from his imagination." She wondered about the woman who rents her children out to lonely men and the small-town terrorist who settles for cut-rate anarchy - arranging the deaths of cab drivers - because he can't get his hands on any decent firepower. There were the experts who analyzed pornography via Newton's theorems and who discussed the upside of cancer: "We should be embracing cancer. After all, what is cancer but the growth of cells. Isn't that what we're all after? Unlimited growth and progress?" The shows spoke to her, probably because they didn't speak at her. If there is one thing that distinguishes a Frank program, it is that there are no answers. "His shows are about life. There are no easy answers," says Cherokee, who dances for pay at night and in the daytime works in real estate, where she's learned to feign nonchalance when her boss asks her to rate the asses of other women. "I don't believe there are any answers," Frank says.
KCRW has chosen to start its Frank retrospective with "The 80-Yard Run," and that's a shame. Not that "The 80-Yard Run" isn't a deserving show and an obvious choice - Frank himself suggested it, the earliest extant recording of Joe on the air, an hourlong monologue about his experiences attending the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. Still, any retrospective of Frank's work would do well to begin with 1979's "A Call in the Night." This early show contains all the elements that would become hallmarks of Frank's work: part monologue, part ensemble cast, part panel discussion, it varies between autobiography and farce. In it, he recalls his father, Meyer Langerman, dying when Joe was 5 years old. Joe wasn't told about it until days later. Not wanting to upset her son before major surgery - Frank was born with clubfeet - his mother, Fritzi, told Joe that his father was away in Boston on business. He didn't learn the truth until he got home. When Fritzi remarried to Freddy Frank a year later, she thoroughly, meticulously removed every reminder of his father - pictures, personal effects - and Meyer's name was never mentioned again.