All about my man Frank. I totally missed this tour. Ah well.
There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father’s music because they’ve been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone. For example, Rolling Stone recently printed a poor artist-rendering of Frank holding a joint. Frank has always been well-known for being anti-drug yet they would rather continue to perpetuate a false image of him, even after death, so they can mutate and manipulate their readers’ perception of him. It’s irresponsible, it’s obnoxious and offensive. I think it’s time people know what Frank was really about, and they should discover it through his music.
And…
Frank’s bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal. With Franks inclusion of certain themes, political ideas, or even having the “Secret Word of the Day” in the show, there was always an opportunity for the unexpected, musically and otherwise. You didn’t know what you were going to see. And that has not been part of anything I have seen recently in popular music or even really at the time when Frank was doing it. Modern bands, or shall I refer to them as “Artists,” perform their music with the intent to sound as close to their perfectly computer manipulated records as possible without deviation. They might as well be miming. In fact many are. One of my favorite quotes of Frank’s and I’ll paraphrase is, “Progress is not possible without deviation from the norm.” I would like to see more bands expand on the arrangements of some of their music and allow for some musicianship elements to generate excitement rather than dance moves or lasers.
