Frank Black at Brooklyn Steel, February 1, 2025. The Teenager of the Year Tour

​Frank Black and Layla from Connecticut

 
Sometimes, I can't even believe that I leave my house. I sometimes venture outside. I drive after dark. But when someone from the wayback starts touring, I gotta think, maybe I'm obligated to go out. So I buy a ticket–in this case, way cheaper than it should be. Compared to stadium shows where people pay hundreds of dollars, and most of those people, I wouldn't be stuck in a stadium where I can take a comfortable piss if you PAID me $200, right? 

And then these first two solo albums by Frank Black that he would be playing the songs from– imnho (in my not humble opinion)- really are the best music he every wrote. Not as groundbreaking, but better than the Pixies 
 
I also think the Breeders were better than the Pixies, so there. Such sacrilege. The Pixies were a sort of starter band for better things that came later. Or at least better one-off, two-off albums. 
 
But yeah, if someone that's my age - and supposedly Frank Black, aka Black Francis, aka Charles Kitteridge the IV is exactly my age–and they're going to put together a tour and travel all over the place in a bus, I can at least get in the comfy Highlander –ugh!–and drive to Brooklyn.
 
How can that be? It feels like the Pixies were from an earlier generation. I was wearing a smock and having a panic attack behind the counter of the Hop-In Grocery, when the Pixies were already College Radio legends. They were everywhere and huge when I was SOL. Seems like.
 
But now that I look it up, they formed in 1986, and their first ep was in '87, and Surfer Rosa and Doolittle were 88 and 89 ... so that timeline makes sense. If I'd stayed clean and hadn't blown up My Eye, that could have been our trajectory. If Steve didn't decide to sing like he had a mouthful of Quinoa and Garbanzo Beans. We put out our first tape in what, 84? And then the drugs got a chokehold around my neck and what a mess. Same old story. It's my story.
 
So anyway, even though I was dreading it I got behind the wheel of the Hybrid Highlander, departed the charming progressive hamlet of Montclair, NJ and headed for Brooklyn, by way of the George Washington Bridge.
 
And so I did and as mostly always happens, I was glad I did.
 
I'm not just focussed on Age because my knees are killing me and my back goes out when I do stuff like, shake out the pillowcases. My first impression of the band was golly, these guys are OLD. And it's not like the crowd was a bunch of teenybopper whipper snaps either. I mean, crap, I'm sitting writing this in a cafe in Hermosa Beach, and I'm like "my sciatica is acting up, damn." So that's the audience.
 
To set the clock: Teenager of the Year came out right when I moved to LA. So It's been 30 years since I moved out of Seattle. It also means that I've been working in advertising for LONGER than 30 years. Which absolutely was not my intention, and I'm amazed every day I'm still making a paycheck at something I don't care about and in my view, am no longer very good at. In summary, it's been 30 years since I got sober, met Tracey and ... yea. 30 years.
 
Now a bit about the actual album, Teenager of the Year. In other words, this is the actual part of the review and might be the only thing that remains, after I control-alt-delete everything that came before this. Or maybe I'll just leave it. Like who cares you know?
 
You gotta dance like no one's looking, write like no one's reading.
 
Teenager of the Year, and the album that immediately preceded it, Los Angeles are so evocative of Los Angeles and the early 90's. You listen to these albums, and you can literally smell the wild sage of the Santa Monica mountains, feel like heat rising off the pavement in Vermont Avenue, feel the high clear sinus burn of the Santa Anas. These albums are the landlocked Gen X equivalent of the Beach Boys ode to SoCal.
 
A top-of-mind list of most evocative songs, Los Angeles, the title track.
 
I want to live in Los Angeles, not the one in "Los Angeles"
No, not the one in South California, they got one in South Patagonia ...
 
That pretty much summed up my sense of isolation and emotional displacement. As did Abstract Plain:
 
I've had it with this town
I never saw those shifting skies
I never saw the ground
Or the sunset rise
I want to live on an abstract plain
I'm building a frame
A place to put my ten-yard stare
Thinking of that paint
Painted in plain air
I want to live on an abstract plain
I need a new address
I want some new terrain
Is it North or South?
I want to live on an abstract plain
 
Headache:
 
This wrinkle in time, I can't give it no credit
I thought about my space and I really got me down
(got me down)
Got me so down, I got me a headache
My heart is crammed in my cranium and it still knows how to pound
 
(I was always getting headaches when I lived in Southern California. They cleared up when I moved to the east coast, where I now live in Montclair, New Jersey. I have no idea if it was the air quality, or the pollen or the desert dryness or the stress - but I haven't had the same headaches since I moved to the East Coast. The crushing, migraine-level headaches were replaced with debilitating, suicidal, depression that caused a lot of neurological, um, imbalance. Overall, I'd take the headaches.)
 
And finally, Calistan:
 
Used to be sixteen lanes
Used to be Nuevo Spain
Used to be Juan Wayne
Used to be Mexico
Used to be Navajo
Used to be yippy-ay-I-don't-know
 
Oh, and how could I forget Olé Mullholland!?
 
The concrete of the aqueduct
Will last as long as the Pyramids of Egypt
Or the Parthenon of Athens
Long after Joe Harriman is elected Mayor of Los Angeles
Ole, ole, ole for Mulholland
See the water fall
And hooray, hooray the ants are crawling
Down in Bradbury's mall
Ole, ole, ole for Mulholland
Yeah, it's quite a sprawl
And hooray, hooray the sky is falling
Down on Bradbury's mall
Ole, ole, ole for Mulholland
Ole!
 
 
I was always getting headaches when I lived in Southern California. They cleared up when I moved to the east coast, where I now live in Montclair, New Jersey. I have no idea if it was the air quality, or the pollen or the desert dryness or the stress - but I haven't had the same headaches since I moved to the East Coast. The crushing, migraine-level headaches were replaced with debilitating, suicidal, depression that caused a lot of neurological, um, imbalance. Overall, I'd take the headaches.
 
So Frank and the guys - which were all session musician from that time, I gathered from the listening to nearly all of a podcast that was dropped on Spotify–opened with a couple songs from Los Angeles, and closed with about four, and in-between played Teenager of the Year in its entirety. Some guy who's name I've already forgotten opened. He sounded like a talent show Tom Waites, played droney rockabilly riffs on a hollow body that wouldn't stay in tune, and had one good song which he saved until last. A woman that seemed mildly inebriated next to me yelled in a sort of heckling way between songs-not completely unjustified. She lamented to her friends that they'd taken away her air horn at the door. Can you believe that? I, of course, was relieved. I had set up right behind the sound board at the back of the hall. I could see the stage and the sound was good and I wasn't going to budge. I'm thinking, Brooklyn Steel is a good place to see shows and then this woman comes along. She's going to dance, scream inappropriately and otherwise make me miserable. Between sets she strikes up a conversation. Of course. And I just can't be mean, but I give her such focused thoughtful attention, it sobers her up a bit. She becomes convinced I'm somebody, because I'm dressed in my nice gray sweater, have no visible tattoos. I look like someone's dad or a music exec. I'm the band's manager, she decides. She tells me of growing up back in the 70's. And how she loved this album. I ask her name and where she's from. When the band comes out, I ask her over the din, "What ever happened to Pong, Layla from Connecticut? Did you play pong back in the 70's?"
 
After had talked to her, Layla from Connecticut sees to be an annoyance.
And as the Beatles it's all too much played, I felt a wave of gratitude for making the effort - to come stand and the gravestone of Rock and Roll, one more time, and worshipfully behold the beauty of loud guitars. Someone's dad, with my souvenir t-shirt stuck in my left pocket. In that moment, it was suddenly worth the inconvenience of driving and parking in the chill of a New York February, and next-morning the ringing of the ears.
 
Yes, Rock and roll is dead. But like many an avatar, the rock rolls back from the mouth of the cave and out it steps when the world most needs saving.